I can't continue my honest account of wanting to save my marriage without acknowledging my issues with my husband. I do plan on explaining how truly wonderful he is also, so please don't take this to be my description of him in its entirety.
He has pretty bad ADHD, which he won't seek treatment for. His ADHD causes him to have some fairly anti-social qualities. He has no self-censoring mechanism. He blurts. Unfortunately, his outbursts are sometimes hurtful. He's not abusive, don't get me wrong, but he often is a lot harsher with me than he should be. I get my feelings rubbed the wrong way, or even hurt, on an almost daily basis.
He is impulsive. We will often discuss plans, come to an agreement, and talk about how to implement whatever scheme we've decided on. This is all great and as it should be. However...I will come to find that Scott has gone and done something completely different and without my knowledge or consent. When we first got married, we bought a rundown little craftsman and went about the happy business of making it our home. Our front yard was a mass of lumpy, weed infested grass. We had many detailed conversations about what to do with it. I had only one stipulation, he could do whatever he wanted, as long as he left some grass so that in the rainy winter months our front yard wouldn't become a mud pit. I woke up late one Saturday morning to find that Scott had dug up most of the front yard.
He doesn't follow through. Back to the yard. I finally just gave in and decided to help him in his endeavors. We rented a bobcat and dug the whole thing up. He had me order a large load of dirt so that he could fix the quality of the soil. The day after we dug up the front yard, a large truck came and dumped many, many yards of compost-y dirt in our front yard. The dirt sat there for the next 12 months. When he started talking about working on the yard again, we made the unhappy discovery that a good portion of the dirt had washed away over the winter. So, we ordered more, which also sat untouched for a year. Eventually, we moved out of that house, the yard was still undone.
He's moody. I often don't know what kind of reception I'm going to get when I talk to him. He's never intentionally hurtful, but if he's in a bad mood it's dangerous for a sensitive person like me to talk to him. We end up fighting. (And yes, he actually is moody, by his own admission.)
He wants to be a rebel. He has a deep seated hatred of authority. Unfortunately, that often gets directed at me. He gets very angry if I try to help him, or if I get upset with him because he's done something that I consider to be detrimental to our life together. I think he may even have a mild case of Oppositional Defiant Disorder (my brother, who also has ADHD, has it). He has trouble with the idea of doing a job just for a paycheck. I actually understand that. I do. But, I wouldn't be willing to compromise our financial safety by impulsively quitting my job. He would. Thankfully he's never done that, but he's threatened to.
He's not always emotionally astute. Shortly after we started dating, I began hemorrhaging one day (yes, in my girly bits). He raced me to the ER and I went right in with my closest friend, G. I was very freaked out. I have a serious phobia of all things gynecological and this was just so incredibly traumatic. It was a many hour ordeal, the outcome of which was that I'd had a spontaneous hormonal D & C. About a year later, he got drunk and berated me for not bringing him into the exam room. He said he was angry because I didn't give him any info and he was worried. While I was touched that he was that worried, I was also livid with him for making such a big deal about something that was so traumatic FOR ME! Not him...ME! We'd only been dating for a month at the time, and I really didn't feel comfortable including him in something that medically intimate. I also didn't want to begin associating him with my pelvic exam phobia. I had my reasons. I also sent G out to tell him anytime we learned something new. He was no more in the dark than I was.
This is the sum of my issues with Scott, the main reasons why I become frustrated with him. I'm sure there are other things, but this is enough to be getting on with.
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