Dear butterfly:

I want to re-reply to your original post more attentively than yesterday:

You: “I like being organized and tidy in my physical space, tend to be very focused and detail-oriented when I do stuff, I always seek peace and harmony… I need huge chunks of focus time and hate being bothered when I am working. I tend to hyperfocus on the task and is very sensitive to interruptions. I feel stressed out for him to barge in dramatically every time he has emotional outbursts”.

Him: “he is a great guy…  he has ADHD… He is spatially chaotic, extravagant…  He has constant meetings with clients and he pointed out that he LOVES when I am here too, since he can share everything that happens at his job, which he is very, very fond of. And that he wants to share that spontaneously, when it happens… He admitted to be very intense and would not change as it has always been like this… He said that he would still open the door and barge in”.

Question: if you were spatially chaotic, extravagant, very intense, and would share with him everything that happens at your job any time you felt like it, spontaneously when it happens, barging into his space when he is focused on his job, either during a meeting with a client, or when preparing for one, would he like it?

It so happens that I’ve had ADHD since I was 5 or so. When I happen to just be around, or interact with other hyper, untidy people, I get distressed. I can’t even follow what they are saying, nor do I want to. What suits me is people who are the opposite of me: tidy, organized;  people who appear calm, even keeled, composed, people who are not talking fast or too much. People who talk slowly, with some breaks between words and sentences. So, if I was in your place, butterfly, I would go crazy!

Maybe he is like me in that if he lived with a woman like him, hyper, untidy and all, he’d go crazy, so he needs someone who is the opposite of him, someone like you.

Here is a key word for me in what you shared: LOVE- not his love for you, but his love for accommodating his ADHD: “he LOVES when I am here too, since he can share everything that happens at his job“- I used to let ADHD take over me but I have learned not to accommodate it anymore because I know how unpleasant and distressing it is for me to absorb someone else’s ADHD, let alone to experience my own. (Maybe his ADHD is stronger than mine, I don’t know).

It is now possible for me to want to say something and.. not to say it. As a matter of practice, I do my best every day to use what I term the NPARR Strategy: when I feel distressed, I Notice that I do, I Pause (before I say or do something), Address the situation (asking myself various questions, one of which is: should I say or do this or that in this situation, will it help or harm me/ others?), next: I Respond-or-not (I say or do something, or not), and finally I Redirect (my attention elsewhere).

“He wants to be close to me so much, and I love it but at the same time I hate it.. What do you think?“- I think that if he is not able,  and/ or is not willing to adequately discipline his reactions to his ADHD, then the only way you can be in a relationship with him is in smaller portions: working (and perhaps living) separately in two locations far enough from each other so that he can’t barge into your space whenever he feels like it.

Looking at the title of your thread: “I try setting boundaries and fail a lot“- physical boundaries: working and perhaps living in two different locations, far away from each other, is all I can think of.

anita