I'm back and looking for insight

[flowmom]

LauraOh, I think I have undiagnosed inattentive type ADHD, but I wouldn't have realized it except that my S got diagnosed with it and I learned more about it. I think that the ADHD is part of it. Perfectionism is part of it too, but perfectionism is only one of the many causes of procrastination. Anxiety is another, something that is probably more of a cause for me than perfectionism.

But this is a HUGE issue in our marriage and it's really not fair.

I agree it's not fair. But that is part of marriage...our spouse's faults and choices affect us negatively.

Your living conditions sound unreasonable and that is a huge problem. It sounds like you and your H need to look at the situation very carefully and make a plan. I know that's easy for me to say because I wasn't able to do that with my H when there were structural problems in our lifestyle. But nagging your H and listing projects for him to finish probably won't work...either to get it done or for your M.

And my counselor feels it is a reason for divorce if he can't respect his family enough to do something about it (And this was a Christian Pastor who told me this!)

As for procrastination being a respect/boundary issue...in my case I tried very hard to overcome procrastination, with limited success. It was never a respect issue and though H would try to set expectations for me, it's not reasonable to set a boundary that a person cannot meet in spite of trying to.

I would question whether your counselor is qualified to address your H's procrastination issues and their impact on the M. The way you've described sounds like an oversimplification on your and the counselor's part. Many people think that they understand chronic procrastination because they drag their feet on finishing their taxes, etc. But they do not understand what it's like to be paralyzed in certain areas of one's life.

A reasonable boundary for you to set is: "I want our family to have decent living conditions". I would set that as a bottom line and then problem-solve ways to get there. Your H finishing all those projects on top of having a job seems unrealistic to me, given his history. Ideally both of you would decide to hire out the work or move, both costly and undesirable options, but perhaps the lesser of the evils.

My H is not a procrastinator, but he never cared about our home and wouldn't even change lightbulbs or do anything related to maintenance...I did it all. Fortunately, we chose to live in a new apartment, so it's manageable. But I would never expect that he'd be fiddling with baseboards, etc. and I'm used to doing things myself when there is a problem even though I'm not very handy.

So I guess it comes down to how motivated you are to be married to your H. You can probably change the level of connection in your M, but it sounds like you need to cultivate some acceptance too, and learn to work around a signficant shortcoming of your H's.