Dear DoctorQ,
On the bright side, you guys sound better than most of the couples in my current divorce cases.
1. Go to a real doctor, an MD, & get a diagnosis. Try not to talk about a lot of extraneous stuff - you just need the medical label for now. Tell the doctor your symptoms, etc. Changing careers is key.
2. Do not insult this woman or tell her she is wrong in any way. This woman clearly wants to be right to the point that she will be "dead right." This is evidenced by the fact that she refused to get counseling until it was too late. You gain nothing by making her mad.
3. Try to set up a teamwork dynamic. For instance, you could lie through your teeth & tell her how helpful her medical expertise has been & you hope she'll continue to support you since you are seeking treatment.
4. You're right, but denounce it. Am I telling you to swallow your pride? Yes. I think people miss a lot in life & experience negative relationships because of pride. She's the mother of (some of) your children. You know the truth. Still, there's so much to be gained by creating a teamwork dynamic. If she sees you as being on her side, she will listen to you. This woman will not listen to you as long as you are in an adversarial position. I see it all the time. Agree with her on every point you can tolerate.
5. Remember what matters: Your health, children, & future. The relationship with this woman bears on all of these. Note that stress caused by bad interaction with her will give you all sorts of health problems - acid reflux, insomnia, etc. Your children are going to be affected if they turn out to have ADD & you have not established the precedent of effectively dealing with ADD yourself. You need to learn about it & tackle it for their good - if you can't make yourself do it for your own good. Also, your future can be so much brighter when you have been diagnosed & feel positive & identify & act to effectuate changes you know you need to make. You must identify these changes.
You have already identified one problem - this ex. Do what it takes to make changes that will create a good relationship with her.
6. Acknowledge her problems. For what it's worth, I'm a woman & I think this woman is hurting, too. She did eventually want therapy. She knows what she has lost. She tries to reduce the value of what she has lost in her own eyes by insulting you. This is a defense mechanism on her part. If you are great, she is a failure for failing the relationship. If you are a screw-up, she's done the right thing. If what has happened is due to a medical problem - hell, she's a nurse, she should have helped you! At least, that's probably how she perceives it. Thus, she tries to make this about character. If you have character flaws, what expertise could she offer to save you & the relationship? She would say in that case it wasn't worth saving anyway. Everyone knows someone with a medical problem needs patience. She clearly didn't give you much patience. This woman is guilty. Being a nurse does not help.
As someone who also has a perfect father, I'll tell you that standard isn't just hard for her husbands to match - it's hard for her, too. She seems to be dealing with a lot of inferiority issues. Try to be the bigger person & be more empathetic with her than she has been with you. Good luck.
DJ
I agree with DeannaJoy-- your ex is probably hurting and having to deal with all that a loss of a relationship means: self-esteem issues, pain, anger, etc. People who are hurting put up their defenses and lash out often without the ability to realize how their own behaviors are exacerbating the situation.
Also, she may have an intellectual understanding of ADD/ADHD, but no subjective understanding of how the disease manifests in you, how you handle life on a day-to-day basis, how her own issues and behaviors affect you, etc. I wasn't even aware of how differently my thought processes, motivations, attention span, etc. due to ADD were from other people's and how profoundly they affected my life. How can someone who does not have our disability and does not really know the depth of the disorder's influence on how we operate be sympathic?
There are lots and lots of things happening that may work for you in your situation.You need to get an official diagnosis. At one time, it was believed that adults could not have ADHD and I think that is where your son's counselor was coming from. My own dr did the same thing to me, stating that if I had been a child or very young adult, I would be a classic case, but that adults can't have it. All that has changed now and yes, you can be an adult and be diagnosed with ADHD.
Once you have a dx, your dr can help you find the med that works best for you if you choose to go that route. There are also coaching and alterntives to meds in the form of supplements.
You are not alone! There are many of us here who understand what you are going through and dealing with. I found that helped me immensely just to know there was a place where I could come and be one of the "normal" ones. Its the straight, in the box thinkers who are out of sync here!
Like most, I knew I was "different" early in my schooling, around age 6 or 7. My parents never noticed, my teachers never cared, because I wasn't a rowdy kid but enjoyed solitary activities. As I grew, I was able to implement (what now clearly were) coping strategies but which to me at the time were simply going-my-own-way choices - picking advanced-placement classes that allowed me to implement assignments creatively, where debate was the norm, rather than sitting quietly. By college, I had many strategies, and I managed pretty well.
Twenty years in the working world have seen many strategies come and go. Working 9 to 5 is almost death to me - since I never know, one day to the next, which cognitive hat I'll be wearing, it is almost impossible for me to plan ahead. I have had three careers and I've lost count of my jobs. I did best when I was in a mid-level management role, able to delegate tasks and hand things off.
I remained undiagnosed well into my 30s. When one of my teenage kids was having trouble in school, and I took him to a counselor, that counselor explored the possibility of ADHD in my son. As I heard him rattle off the symptoms, I thought - and then blurted out - "That's me!" The counselor calmly looked at me and asked if I'd been diagnosed with ADHD as a child. I said No. He explained that since I hadn't had ADHD as a child, I couldn't have it now. (The disconnect in his logic is obvious, in hindsight ... I was simply undiagnosed ... )
At this time, I was in a second child-producing relationship that had never been great and was getting worse. She had a father who was one of those dream dads you read about - a perfect carpenter, perfect plumber, master auto mechanic, you name it. The man could do anything. And his daughter was spoiled rotten by this.
Can you imagine how she treated me? Bad enough to live in constant comparison to her father, but for me to be ADHD, and held up to his perfect competence?
On top of this, my survival strategy for family finances - padding the family purse with consulting fees - meant mountains of tax work that I was (and still am not) competent to do alone. In addition to her other skills, she was a tax consultant! Yet she refused to help me, calling me lazy, too much trouble, etc.
I lived with this for years. I was never good enough, I was lazy, I was too disorganized, blah blah - we've all heard it again and again. When I ran into career troubles, running afoul with superiors over missed deadlines and a too-casual schedule, she always sided against me - "You deserved to be demoted!" I pleaded with her to help me. She wouldn't. I pleaded with her for us to get counseling. She refused, doing a 180 and becoming willing long after we'd split up.
More years. My two older children - not hers - got into trouble themselves, having inherited my "disability" - and she could not abide them. They are no good, and when they came of age, I was bad for not cutting them loose and focusing solely on the two younger kids I shared with her.
Finally, when I hit middle age, my metabolism crashed out badly, to the point where I had blackouts. I was worthless, I was a "loser," I couldn't be counted on - and we broke up (for the second time, this time permanently).
Then - get this - she diagnosed me! She had undertaken nursing training the previous year, because she needed something to fall back on, since I was "so unreliable."
Well, in early 2003 she plopped down a magazine article that described me in deep detail. I had long since dismissed the ADHD possibility on the word of my son's counselor - but in revisiting it, it was obviously the explanation. I went on meds and began to rebuild my life.
She professed many, many times that she wanted to reconcile, that she wanted to get the relationship back together, but in spite of acknowledging my ADHD, she exacerbates it constantly. It is all the worse because one feature of my particular experience is that unsettling confrontation scrambles my head for 2-3 days, and this is unacceptable, because my career requires that I write and do complex computer development work. I can't afford 2-3 days of down time, and it's hard enough to remain productive under normal circumstances. So, as you might guess, I avoid confrontation whenever I can. She thinks nothing of starting fights whenever she's in a bad mood. And she can't understand why I try to be around her as little as possible, even though it means seeing far less of my younger kids ... her lashing out makes me unable to work, and it's my work that's putting a roof over her head!
I never know when she's going to blind-side me again with the hostility. I've moved on, and she resents it, and makes communication as difficult as possible. She turns every situation around, making it my fault. She is not only utterly insensitive to the conditions of ADHD and its effects on me, she turns them into character attacks, despite her clinical understanding that ADHD symptoms are not character-related. I put a roof over her head and pay her lots of money every month to help with the kids, even though we share custody, and this is never appreciated. I have tried to do odd jobs to keep that house up, since Miracle Dad lives 1000 miles away now. All she does is criticize, since my work is never of the quality of Miracle Dad's (he's great, by the way, I think the world of him) and she endlessly complains that I never finish things on a schedule that suits her. She's not at all appreciative of the effort, and never has been.
And - to make it all scarier still - it is possible, though not yet clear, that one or both of my younger two kids may have ADD. How will their mother treat them?
Is there some pill I can take for this, other than cyanide?
DoctorQ38651.5028125she is the pscho & i think her dad might be gay
[QUOTE=rayray812]she is the pscho & i think her dad might be gay[/QUOTE]
RayRay, Are you talking about your self? I think that is what you meant to say about yourself..go ahead say it, it'll be O.K. ...""I am pscho and I might be gay".
Contrary38652.919837963ray ray you're funny.