Hi Mia,

Thank you for your reply. It’s so comforting and validating to know I’m not the only one that’s been in this situation. I battle myself constantly, swinging back and forth between “no, I know something is wrong here” and “I’m just being difficult, insecure, and a stick-in-the-mud and I need to try harder.”

I think what I’ve realized since posting from what you and others have said is that he does have his own set of issues that he is deflecting. And that one of the ways he deflects is by focusing on my issues. I never thought about it that way, because we never talk about him having issues.  The story he’s created is that he does have ADHD, but he takes meds and has done a ton of work to manage it, and uses his coping skills. That is what has allowed him to be successful in his master’s program and now his PhD, which obviously requires a great deal of time just sitting, researching, writing, and working on projects. I’m seeing now that I heard this story from him and I took it as the end of the story- he’s overcome his issues, and he functions well. That’s interesting to me, because though I function very well with anxiety, I know I always have my areas for improvement that I consistently work on.

One of his coping mechanisms is high activity. I’ve always been so supportive of all of this. But what I missed is that he still struggles greatly with planning and impulsiveness. And instead of acknowledging that and how it affects (and often hurts) the people around him, he has pretty much decided that those are aspects of himself and his ADHD that he is not willing to change or work on.

I know this because when we broke up in January, we talked about planning issues and how he just impulsively does things and doesn’t plan things well with me. He would rather he plans stuff and I join along, then I plan stuff and he joins along. In practice, he always has a say in my plans but I don’t have much in his, whether he realizes this or not. When I suggested we make plans together, check in with each other, etc., he literally acknowledged that he can do “some of that,” but at the end of the day he wants to do what he wants to do. This manifests itself in quite a few different ways. I’m seeing now that this is why he is so insistent on me “going with the flow” and forgetting our plans or being upset when I attempt to set some boundaries on some of the stuff we do together. There, of course, are times when he does try, but the effort is short lived and seems to be a struggle and a burden for him. When I’ve mentioned this to him, he often says things like “no, that’s just the way you’re interpreting it, that’s your perception.” But I’m not a crazy person with crazy expectations. I spend a lot of time with him and know how he operates, I think he just doesn’t like that I can see through the facade he puts up sometimes, because I’ve watched him do it with other people.

So, extremely long explanation here again. Sorry about that. Basically I agree- he still has major issues from ADHD that he refuses at this point to even acknowledge and instead states them as normal aspects of his personality. I think perhaps this is what Anita was saying earlier. He completely missed an important meeting he had with a child last week. When another person on the project asked him where he was and told him that she needed to know in advance if he was going to miss a meeting like that, he was very angry at her. He expressed this to me and acted like she was being unreasonable, he said he forgot so of course he couldn’t let her know next time because he didn’t know he was going to miss it. All of the focus was on her response, which I truly thought was mild and professional considering the situation. But instead of lamenting and saying “wow I really blew it here, I feel so bad about disappointing this kid,” he directed all of those feelings of shame at this woman. I didn’t point any of that out, but I did say “everyone makes mistakes, and you feel badly about this and will do your best to make it up next time” but it didn’t really seem to calm him down. What I took away from this situation was his unwillingness to look at how his ADHD is still having a major impact on his life. I mean, he’s never forgotten or missed a time to hang out with someone to do one of his activities. His priorities are clear, and he gets upset and defensive any time anyone challenges or looks at that. Which is why, I think, I’ve subconsciously learned not to bring it up.

I’ve thought about what you’ve said and I will most likely talk to him today. I may bring these things up. I hear you, and always want to feel like I gave it one last try. I think my problem here is I’m very tired. I’ve tried a lot. And even if by some miracle he does acknowledge his issues, he would have to commit to change. I don’t have much hope that this will be the case, given past discussions. I guess we will see.

Again, thank you. I’m sorry you went through this too. If you’re anything like me, you’ve worked so, so hard on your anxiety issues and felt like you had made a ton of progress, but being with your ex made you feel like you were still failing constantly. It’s hard to feel supported and encouraged when there is so much blame being directed at you, especially in the extremely subtle, back-handed and often manipulated ways it is. I don’t think they are bad people, I think they are doing the best they can with where they are at. I just don’t think we are on the same page anymore.