Me (f30) and my husband (m30) have been married for 3 years and together for 2 years prior to that. No kids involved. No infidelity or anything like that. Our marriage would be perfect if not for this issue.
He has a lot of positive qualities, I mean there’s a reason why I fell in love and said yes to him.
Before I got married I had a lot of issues with anxiety and low level depression. It never affected my daily functioning or productivity but I was miserable inside and never let anyone know because I thought it would all go away if I kept my head down and “got on with life”. I never self medicated or used any substances. I used work to cope, I was a workaholic.
Two years ago (so like a year and a half into our marriage) things got particularly bad with my mental health. My anxiety and depression caught up to me and I crashed really hard. I began having really severe and horrible mood swings caused by the anxiety and ended up fighting with my husband for lots of stupid things.
We talked it out and I decided to seek psychiatric help. I began taking medication which helped tremendously with mood swings, me being super irritable, anxiety and the daily panic attacks I had developed. All of it went away within two months of me being on this medication. This happened last year and I was on low dose medication for only 6 months.
In place of fixing my issues, the medication caused other adverse effects that basically made me a walking vegetable. Let me just put it that way. It affected my memory, which was already bad, gave me severe cognitive impairments and caused me to become unable to problem solve taking multiple factors into account. Anything involving sequences or sequential reasoning became impossible. Even after stopping the medication, these effects persisted and it was only this past month that I found some supplements which have helped a lot. During these past months while trying to figure out what was going on with me, whether it was the medication or some other underlying issues, I got diagnosed with PCOS, ADHD and PMDD. I also got Covid last year and I actually believe that a lot of these symptoms were caused by that, and may not have been related to the medication. But I have no clue and have given up trying to understand what happened.
My husband has never stopped me from seeking medical treatment but he will get very impatient and angry with me if I try to talk to him about anything or if I want to try new medication. It seriously hurts as I am desperate to get better and will try anything that isn’t illegal. Hes against it because of what the first set of tablets seemed to do to me. I’ve never felt so emotionally unsupported from him before.
He knows I have memory problems. Holy fuck it’s so bad and he knows this. It’s just my short term memory. Especially now that I don’t have any anxiety to keep the thoughts on repeat inside my head. He’ll constantly talk to me about things that I have no memory of. Often I don’t even recall having a conversation with him. He’ll say “Don’t you remember? I told you this! I gave you this!” he’ll insist on asking me if I remember a situation. No I fucking don’t, no matter how many times I tell him I don’t remember he still asks. I feel like he’s doing it on purpose at this point.
I can’t discuss my other symptoms that are bothering me. He always has a strong opinion that is completely different to my experience. Like I know in my head how I feel. If I don’t agree with him, it’s a problem. He’s not a doctor or even in the medical field.
He has this need to always be right about everything. Always. Most times I actually do not mind it, but now he wants to be “right” about what’s going on with me IN MY MIND and often he’s so off the mark.
If I describe symptoms to him he’ll say, oh no its not so bad. He keeps asking me when will I return to “100% myself”. I’ve tried to tell him that he only knew me when I was running on stress and anxiety, and now that that’s all gone and I have no intention of bringing it back, the answer is “never”. I can never go back to being the old me and I have to find new ways to cope. So nope, never.
He’s so condescending about what I’ve been going through. I was telling him about something I’d read in relation to my experience and he said “OK doctor” in a really mean way and laughed. It was triggering for me because this is exactly what my dad would say to my mom when she had health problems and he’s a narcissist, he was emotionally abusive to her in other ways too and they got divorced.
Before anyone says I’ve been talking about this “too much” with him, no I’m not. For the most part our lives are normal, 90% of the time we have other conversations. The times when we talk about this are when he asks me or expects me to do something I am just physically incapable of doing. I try to educate him and let him know that I am INCAPABLE. Incapable to the point of a mental disability and I’m just trying to give myself time to recover. He won’t even try to understand, won’t ask me questions to clarify, won’t try to read anything online, won’t talk to our doctor to try to learn more about what I’ve been going through.
Also, the covid brain fog is different from adhd. I don’t know if there’s anyone here who can relate. I can trace the adhd back many years and it honestly isn’t that bad for me. Just that my memory has always been shit and I’m trying to navigate around that. I don’t believe I need medication for adhd. But the Covid brain fog? It’s almost like I had a stroke and woke up from a coma to find that half my brain was either removed or completely replaced by cotton wool. It should be classified as a literal disability.
Caregiver burnout is a thing and I’m sorry I put him through that, but that doesn’t seem like his main problem. His problem seems like he wants to be right about my personal experience and he’s “hurt” when I won’t acknowledge it. So what about me, the person actually going through this shit?
I don’t know what would happen if I got an actual physical sickness, I’m scared. Feel like leaving.
7 comments
> The times when we talk about this are when he asks me or expects me to do something I am just physically incapable of doing.
Like what?
I’m so sorry. I think that you probably should try counseling if you can get it. It might save your marriage and it might clarify that it needs to end, but you won’t be in limbo anymore.
About your physical symptoms, you probably need to see a neurologist if you haven’t already. Also just to mention that brain fog is one of the primary symptoms of gluten intolerance and it is known to start happening in response to a trauma. You might want to keep a food diary and stop eating gluten for a week or so. Just eat plain unbreaded meat, vegetables and fruit. It’s worth a try in my opinion. ( Gluten free 13 years due to brain fog).
Good luck. I hope you feel better and can work things out.
Do you continue to make an effort to do things, even if they are difficult for you, or do you just sit around and say “I can’t”? If it’s the latter…I can absolutely understand his frustration. No one wants to be with someone who refuses to do anything difficult and uses “I can’t” as an excuse. The only way anything is going to get better is to keep trying and not give up.
Everyone forgets things sometimes but, if you are aware this is an issue for you, you need to come up with methods to remember. Take notes and carry a notebook if you have to. Use visual cues. Use tactile cues like a rubber band around your wrist. Hang up a white board in a place you see it all the time and write down every thing you need to remember and erase it as you do it. Something. You can’t keep using your issues as an excuse.
What have you done to get a diagnosis of what is happening? Are you in routine therapy?
I think you focus too much on how this impacts you and you really show no real empathy for the impact this has on him.
Are you in therapy? Because I feel like that was step 1 and you like skipped right over it. If you aren’t in therapy you are still in the mindset that you don’t want to deal with your psychological issues..
Also HE has to live with the side effects too, not just you. He’s not supposed to be 100% tolerant of all your side effects and not have his own feelings about them. He’s allowed to get frustrated.
Also understand it’s not your husbands job to be your therapist. He doesn’t want to listen to your problems all day or be your singular source of support. Another reason why you need therapy as well as other support systems outside of him.
I don’t like how it’s all about you and he just has to deal. Nope, he’s allowed to be frustrated, he’s allowed to not like the side effects of the meds you are on, he’s allowed to feel exhausted with dealing with the issue, and he’s allowed to put up boundaries.
It sounds like to me the medication you are on, is making you a hard spouse to live with. And it sounds like it’s creating more issues to make you depressed.
The issue I see in this, is a lot of self pitty, a lot of blaming your past, a lot of saying this was caused by meds but then you also saying you’ve dealt with it your whole life, and you say you can’t do a simple task like cook or clean. I just see a lot of excuses and not a whole lot of information about how you are building coping mechanisms and actually trying to create a reality for yourself where you can do things.
I see you very much playing into this and validating your position rather than trying to resolve it. I get his frustration. He’s looking at a future where he’s got a child he has to care for from now till he dies. He doesn’t have a wife. You don’t seem to care at all about that.
I have adhd (and a pile of other crap) and memory is terrible.
Me and my husband both have to work on meeting halfway
He doesn’t judge, yell, or get upset at me when I mess things up.
I do what I can on my end to help myself. That means sticky notes, lists, phone reminders, etc. I spent a lot of time watching adhd life hacks and gathered up ideas that would work for my life.
My kids also have neurodivergencies and we try not to dwell on “incapable” but more needing to do things our way.
I’m never going to be capable of doing things the way other people can but that doesn’t mean I can’t do them, it means I have to figure out a way to do them that works for me.
Hi OP, based on your comments about everything, I don’t think you would be wise to divorce now. It just seems that there is so much going in your life currently that you might not see everything clearly.
Also, I read your comments and I would suggest the following:
– you said that if you were to leave alone, you would be able to afford a cook/cleaner to help you every so often. Well, do it now. Your husband is probably overwhelmed and tired of being responsible for everything so that should help;
– Try to minimize the « health » talk with him. It probably makes you feel better but I’m ready to bet that it stresses out your husband. It’s really hard to be the main outlet for this type of emotions constantly (not saying though that it’s your fault);
– Talk to your husband and come up with some technics. Maybe he can write everything important for you on a note pad, maybe you can record your conversations and listen to them later… bottom line, find a strategy and stick to it;
– Start memory exercises. You can find these online or maybe find an organization that helps people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, dementia. Obviously, you don’t have any of these diseases but the common effect of those is memory loss and the exercises can be really helpful. Just do them daily;
– Again, based on my experience with someone who has memory problems, sticking to a routine is very helpful. Also, walking and being outside helps;
– Try to uphold some kind of « normalcy » in your household. I’m not saying to pretend or hide your struggles but it will do a lot of good to both, you and your husband, if your day to day life doesn’t revolve around your condition;
– Encourage your husband to do stuff he likes ( gym, seeing friends, going out). It sucks if you can’t participate but it will really help him;
Wow! To me this is not enough to end a marriage over. Please get yourself a good counselor and get some help as to how to deal with the emotional end of your illnesses.
I know I get migraines and if I complain a lot about it then my Husband does not want to hear it everyday. This is guys. Your Husband probably walks on egg shells around you not know what you are going through day after day or he does not understand.
Please get some help for yourself to deal with how to relate to your Husband emotionally.