“A Blue Season”
I’ve been fighting it for years, but maybe it’s time to accept relationship problems are just a fact of life as an adult with ADHD.
For over a decade, I’ve been searching for the conventional stability of marriage and family. But in the last few months, I’ve started to feel it’s a hopeless cause. Maybe, as an adult with ADHD I’m destined for constant movement – personally and professionally – instead of stasis.
After only one year, the husband decided getting married was a mistake. We are more dissimilar than Mars and Venus. We are oil and water. After spending a season trying to convince him otherwise, I am slowly, sadly starting to give up. We’ve fought for two-plus years. There have been good times, but many more bad ones. He doesn’t see our future together, with a home and family. He’s not interested in romance, sex, or anything much with me anymore – except maybe for bowling night. He is miserable and says he feels trapped in this marriage. I am out of energy to argue with.
I look longingly at “normal couples,” at my peers whose marriages seem built for the long haul. My girlfriends tell me the problem is my husband doesn’t really love me, and no longer wants to work with me. He has agreed – numerous times, in front of marriage counselors. My relationship is six feet under. Now what?
In a few months, I’ll turn the big 4-0, and I wonder if my life will ever change. I wish I could be more like my friends my age with a house, a happy husband, kids and family vacations. Instead, it feels like an uphill battle with no end to the climb in sight.
Maybe I should just embrace this life I never wanted or expected. Maybe I was always destined to be single, and move between jobs. Maybe I should just wear the reality of being an adult with ADHD proudly. Maybe I’m a spoon in a landscape of forks, and that’s just fine.
