Eddie, Your posts are really interesting to me. There is such a lot of similarity between you and my H but I was totally unaware of any of the "internal" stuff that may be going on for him. But from the outside he behaves much as you do.
His mum, dad and brother are all neat, tidy, organised people, he was regarded as the black sheep of the family, the one with two left feet, the one with the bomb-pit of a bedroom. His dad has told me that H was a difficult child - but not gone into detail.
I can't really see that he suffers from ADD but it is possible. (although I see more of that in myself frankly). He has hyper-focus for sure which is supposed to be a trait of ADD. He also uses caffiene, alcohol and nicotine definitely in a medicating way. I am almost sure now from what I'm reading about you that he uses alcohol to sedate himself into concentrating. He comes home at night, cracks open a beer and gets straight to the computer to finish off all kinds of work he feels duty bound to finish. The rest of the evening is spent drinking beer while at the computer. With regular trips out back to smoke a cigarette.
The H part of ADHD is not really him at all. He is the most physically unenergetic person I have ever come across.
He certainly acts serious most of the time and can't abide silliness. Certainly he has the bad attitude you speak of. I have long ago given up even asking him to do anything for me because I know I will just get a bad attitude. If it is something I can't do myself then I leave it until it is a glaring necessity that he just can't ignore. And he still gets a bad attitude about it. Except it is him that is beating himself up about it but he somehow seems to be able to act like it is me. He also seems to need telling about things several times over even something obvious and that he agrees with. Example: there is a tree outside our house, if you park the car under the tree it ends up with bird-sh!t on it, so I prefer to park the car not under the tree. H knows this, knows why, is totally congruent with the idea that he doesn't want bird-sh!t on the car and yet he consistently parks the car under the tree unless I yell at him. (asking nicely has no effect). If I yell at him then he won't do it for about 6 months then he goes back to doing it.
Quote:
Have you ever had someone ask you to play a game, and you were very reluctant to because you "felt silly", and that someone got frustrated with you because you wouldn't play? Or you tried to get into it, just couldn't get there quickly enough (or at all), and that someone got frustrated with you because you weren't making it any fun to play with you? That's how it feels when she's feeling neglected, you can't seem to let loose and play, and then she gets frustrated while you're trying to get into the right mindset and her frustration makes you even more self-conscious.
This has a ring to it that reminds me of my H. There has always been something of the wet blanket about him to me. If I am having fun he just seems to want to extinguish it.
I am feeling pretty despondent about our sitch right now. I just can't see it getting better. I've invited him to this board but he won't come. We tried C but it didn't help. I didn't really even have to say much during the C sessions. I let him do most of the talking. Then the C would say things that made me think (YESS!) and H would feel guilty, put-upon and down-hearted.
I would like to get him to read this thread. He may recognise himself and seek some treatment.
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
