I am the wife of a husband with ADD who talks incessantly. It doesn't matter sometimes if I am in the same room or not, he goes on and on about what's in his head all the time. Usually it is about the minutae of something he is doing, will do or has done, or something he knows a lot about or is about processing something that happened to him, making up what the other person's thoughts or motives were. He can be very negative, beginning many sentences with "what I hate is" or telling me all about why other people are wrong or clueless and he is right and understands everything so much better than they do.

Of course, he is very smart, and is like a walking encyclopedia, which can be really helpful, but sometimes, I'd just like to walk in the room in the morning and hear, "Hey, did you sleep well?" rather than, "The problem with this marine engine is that the parts are hard to find and if I buy this boat, I will have to factor in the cost of a new engine." It makes me feel so invisible, and like I am simply a vessel for what he wants said, with no regard for the fact that it is ME, a person with distinct and separate feelings and wishes and interests that just walked in the room.

I have said this exact thing to him about how I feel, and he turns it all around and gets defensive and says, "Okay I'll just shut up, you don't want to hear anything I have to say." That's a very aggressive thing to say, making my choices be to either pop up and say, "Why, no, honey, I don't want you to shut up I LOVE listening to you talk." or be the bad guy as if I really DID tell him to shut up. Neither of which I have done, I have, instead, tried to explain that it isn't that I don't want to hear anything, it's that I don't want to hear everything, that there is so much I can't attend to it all and don't know which parts are important, because he veers off into a tree of other subjects as he goes and doesn't get to the point until after he has tackled several other subjects by which time I am feeling so bogged down with information and impatience to hear the point that I just want to tune out.

Does anyone have any strategies that worked for them as the spouse, friend, person with ADD etc. to 1. be treated like a separate person instead of an extension of his mind, and 2. some pointers for him not to get so defensive. HELP! This causes so many arguments. Thanks!!!

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