I'm not sure. But the end of the road may be coming for my relationship.
Its not easy to find someone to talk to at this stage as most of friends have a tie to the other person. So this is my first airing.
This is a loooong post!
My partner has successfully gotten me to contemplate my actions and behaviours. So a lot of this post comes from me doing that now. Hopefully it's fair and self critical.
...
Things have been up and down for a long while. Probably more so than most relationships. We've always gotten through them but both of us have difficulties living with one another. As an additional piece she is sure she's adhd and autistic and I'm sure I'm adhd. I've read this is a hard match.
This self diagnosis is relatively new for her and me. And say what you like about those labels.. We both certainly show the classic signs. Since she's been self diagnosed things have definitely changed. She spends hours now watching youtubers videos on it. I haven't said anything negative about but I think it's not great being so fixated on it.
To cut a long story short she's been quite distant recently and to be honest I think our lives may well be going in different directions. I try not to speak for her. But my view is she's going through a "what do I want out of life?" stage.
She says she wants to move, that this area is too noisy etc but I think it's more. I'm sure it's more.
Me?
I have many faults. Most of these reflect in forgetfulness and selfishness. Like wanting to do what I want, forgetting things she's told me to not do/to do. I'll often talk to her at 9pm about serious stuff (like tonight) and she'll talk. But it stops her sleeping. And if she doesn't get 8-9 hours sleep she's basically dysfunctional and emotional. I don't know why I always do it at this time. And it's not malicious. But she thinks it is and I'm doing on purpose/being selfish. But it's very hard to get her to talk about important stuff. Tonight is the first time she's said "and don't give me you forget about it". She also says she forgets about things that she repeatedly does that we've talked about. So it's a shame this has come up like it has.
Here are the big factors I think are driving this.
Hobbies and my independence :
Mainly my hobbies have been more outdoorsy and hers have been more indoorsy (by force due to her conditions).
I'd actually say this is a big one. I'm nearly 40 and I feel time is ticking and I want to do my hobbies. I'd love her to come do more stuff but she can't. And there's always a risk if she does she will be in pain. I wish I liked the same things she does, but I really struggle to. Last weekend we did quite a lot. We went on a hike and I kept saying, we can get to the next place but I don't think we should as it's too hard for you. She'd ask me how far to the finish. I said "it's as far as we've walked.. Again from here but the terrain is really far I think we should go back now" .
She wanted to try and it was too much for her. This made everything worse. She said I wasn't clear enough with saying how far it was. I said I tried to say we should go back but you wanted to carry on. This sort of stuff gives me anxiety about doing things like this.
She has her own hobbies book club she goes to, but she's struggling with friends and drama there at the moment feeling excluded etc.
We do stuff together like DnD, board games etc too every week but I don't think this is enough.
I've worked through to manage this. As long as I get some "me" hobbies I'm happy (genuinely happy) to do stuff with her. But I'm not sure it's enough.
Our dog and what he represents.
We've clashed a lot over our dogs care. He has severe hip dysplasia. I'm more "let's go to vet" over a little thing and she is more "it'll be fine". He needs a lot of care and I fuss over him and worry about him much more (too much) while she is the opposite (too little). He's formed a strong bond with me. Getting him was her idea. And I told her we shouldn't, but I think her desire to have a dog was so strong, if I would have said "no" she'd have left there and then. Planning around him (holidays, days out, car journeys) is not easy.
Intamcy.
We are quite different in intamcy. For me it fixes things for her things need to be very ideal for this to occur. I need this, but I'm not even sure she does. It's a big one but I'll skip the details. As you can imagine, this mismatch is difficult.
Mental health.
We both suffer from this. Depression and anxiety runs deep in my family. And it's reared it's head a few times for me recently. And I feel it's now her turn.
We differ in this too. Handling of it, what works. Our responses toward each other. I feel more on top of mine than I have in a while. But mine was bad not long after her mum passed away. It was a really hard time and I felt horrible for what I put her through at that time. Because depression is so selfish. She dealt with that well. I've never seen her so strong. But now it feels like the rolea are reversed. But I'm not sure how to help as she's very closed off. Where as mine was worse but the causes are much simpler. 2 people with mental health issues is not easy to navigate.
Adhd vs autism.
One big clash is I like chaos and unstructured life. But she likes novelty but doesn't like chaos (apparently this is a big thing for autistic adhd) . Ill often change my mind about something internally. And as an autistic person she says this is horrendous for her.
Physical health
My partners physical heath is quite bad. And i mentioned it in hobbies. Closest she's got to a diagnosis is fibromyalgia. Basically she can't to anything much without a downstream impact. It's to the point where she uses voice-to-text at work!
She can only walk a mile or 2 without pain for days.
Sometimes she can't even life a bag of sugar. That's rare but it does happen.
She can't really drive an hour even in our automatic car without pain.
As someone who is quite physical, this is tough. And it leads to me doing basically anything that's physical around house.
Even walking the dog is basically 100 percent me. And his schedule is regimented. It's hard to explain the burden (mental and physical) this puts on me. Even carrying shopping is too much for her.
Small but big things.
We sleep in separate beds as she needs 9+ hours of silence and darkness, I only need 7. And I can't come in later as she'll wake up and not sleep. But I also can't be in bed on my phone for 2 hours, so it's just easier for both of us to sleep separately.
I have to do all the driving because she physically can't, she offers to drive. But my adhd brain forward thinks, knows this will hurt her physically, so I just say "no it's OK I'll do it" when there's probably a bit of annoyance of having to do It all. (13 hours last weekend).
We are both forgetful, and think each other isn't pulling our weight. the house is always messy and we both assume we just have to do stuff we shouldn't. We both feel we have a lot on our plate (but we don't really, we are just both disorganised and slow). Some jobs are shared. Washing clothes.. But some are allocated. Food is hers as she can do it physically, but she hates it and often she doesn't because she can't mentally or physically. Bins, dishwasher, garden, most of the organising (paying bills, taking dog to his appointments) are me.
Future
She says she wants to live in a van, or move. But I'm thinking it's deeper and she's just not happy with anything. Friends and her perpetual struggles with them. Purpose in life. Me. Basically everything.
I know it's not just me.. As she's always struggled with friends and purpose. She's vegan and works in an environmental charity.. Which pretty much shows what "purpose" means to her. Where as I'm more practical. I accept I do harm (ie flying) even though I care about the environment.
I don't want to move if that's not the answer to her issues. But I do want to leave this area. But as where we move would be a compromise. And if she then decides that's not not the solution.. or it is me... We are left in a horrible situation.
We both suggested trying a van. But the rate things are going I don't even know if that's going to happen as this is progressing fast.
Its my 40th very very soon and it's going to be grim. Not how I pictured it!
So yeah.. To me it feels like the beginning of the end. We've had really difficult spells before. But gotten through them. This does feel different. There's a coldness there that has never been there before.
I don't even know what to think. I absolutely do love her. There's no one else or anything like that. But we've struggled for so long. Particularly since our dog starting having issues. Right now I'm in self preservation mode. I'm sad but also trying to distract myself (ie this post) in case I facilitate it by pushing "arw you OK?" . So I'm trying to make my mind think of practical things.
So yeah. That's my dump at 2300! Thanks for trawling through it!
Relationships need fun, yes they have their ups and downs, but if there is no fun it's just existing for the sake of it.
Me and my wife have been up and down for a few years now, since having a child really
She suffers from anxiety and can be quite depressive, she's also very needy emotionally. Shes the organiser of the family. She's insistent I've ADD, I struggle to regulate emotions, I'm restless, struggle to concentrate, forgetful, poor time keeping. She may have a point, I've done many online tests all with the same results, but can't get to speak to a professional about it.
Anyway, we started drifting apart, we would get so worked up about each other, but we would always have days where we would have fun and we would remember why we were with each other in the first place.
Recently after a huge outburst by myself because a pizza went wrong, I blew up no real reason to it I was just an absolute twit for a really very minor reason. I suddenly had an appifany and felt like I had an external view of myself.
For the first time in along time I was willing to sit down and talk about feelings, it's a really stressful thing for me to do, I don't do emotions, but I done it and we started changing ourselves, we are more patient with each other, we appreciate each other more, I'm putting a lot of work in on myself trying to change how I approach things, she's changed how she interacts with me after looking online for help with add and it's made a world of difference. Likewise with her anxiety I've taken a different approach to things more in supporting her with her anxieties rather than prove her reasons are unfounded, she knows most if them make no sense, but she just needs support not to be made to feel like she's mental.
We do like a lot of the same things, but also have different interests, but we like spending time with each other
However if we didn't ultimately enjoy each other with those snippets of fun, we'd have to call it a day. With kids and mortgage I've no idea how it would work out, but we'd have had to do it, our un happiness was hurting our boy, I can't imagine how it would affect him if our relationship was like you've described yours.
We've now done 3 months of re-discovering each other, and it's been amazing, there's still times I'm an idiot, and she's unreasonable, but we are happy and understand each other.
