My husband is very stupid

[Anonymous]

empty suit sending paychecks in
slob around the house
pushover parent to kids
cutting corners on everything
can't remember what to do, how, or when
no common sense

yeah, sounds like a real winner.

in the olden days, good ol' Stay at Home Mom / housemaid would have masked all these juvenile shortcomings.
Not annnyyymooooorrre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He is also lazy.

I think the nice way to put this would be something like “exhibits deficits in executive functioning” and is “inattentive,” but the truth is that he is a stupid and lazy man. In decisions big and small, he doesn’t have any ideas, asks me questions like “what should we do?” as if I have a manual, and shuts down easily. When crises hit, I am both the idea person and the doer. I can’t entrust tasks to him because the simplest job is an opportunity to shirk, forget, or make some idiotic mistake I couldn’t even imagine was possible.

Before we had a child and all sorts of difficulties hit, his deficits were well hidden. He was slow to do basic things, but there was not nearly as much to do. And I am a very energetic, take-charge person who naturally assumes responsibility. Now, however, there is simply too much for me to take on, no matter how much energy I have. I work 60-80 hour weeks, while he works no more than 40. Yet, I have to do most things.

He can’t be trusted with our child’s appointments because when he goes, he checks out and forgets to tell the doctor important information and then forgets what the doctor told him. He can’t be trusted with our child’s medication because it is a controlled substance with a precise dose and he likes to pour “roughly” enough. He forgets to feed her when I’m not home. He can’t even grocery shop.

It has gotten to the point at which I struggle to talk to him with respect, which makes him even more nervous and helpless. I have never heard of sheer stupidity as a ground for divorce, but that is where I am.

OP, I have seen husbands from top colleges act the same way. What you are talking about is lack of common sense and lack of initiative. It could be said about lots of men. Don't think that your husband lacks brains because he acts this way, that is not the problem. Just so you are aware.

OMG, whoever wrote the top above post is living the nightmare that is my life with two kids and manchild booksmart, educated husband. I am waiting for a terrible disaster to strike like when he didn't drain the toddler's bathtub and she walked back into it hours later. He can't remember jack - not before doing it, while doing it, or checkign after doing it. It's horrible. He needs a simple simple life of just himself.

This is at a MINIMUM ADHD inattentive. then layer on lazy, stupid, lack of common sense, misogynist, etc.

You pick him, had the wedding, spend most likely his money and the kids. Maybe it’s not him but you. I know let’s just say that the disaster that is your life is your fault and not because of a misogynist. God you sound like a drug addicted.

There we go. Stage 2 of ADHD Inattentive: Blame others for your mistakes, Get angry at person who pointed out your shortcomings.

Then sit back and let them fix all your mistakes. Every. Single. Day. Until they get sick of you, sick of going backwards all the time, sick of your constant excuses, sick of your constant unreliability and serve you divorce papers.

You both will be better off. ADHD boy can't handled a life of multi-tasking and any Wife can't suffer through Manchild setbacks for decades and decades. Plus kids won't see all the forgetting and arguing and Space Cadet Dad ignoring them. Win/win/win.

[Anonymous]

WHen you look at his siblings and father and see the same big problems, then you get really scared.

Then 2nd grade comes and your children get diagnosed too.

Now you have a whole multi-generational life of ADHD Inattentive hell on earth to deal with. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

The suggestions in this thread are killing what little hope I have. They all boil down to re-raising this man-child and sending him to therapy/treatment while I continue to slave, in the hopes he may be remotely useful one day. And that is even assuming I can convince him he needs help. All of this is a huge ask and not feasible in our current lives.

I know the “right” thing to say here is that I am going to spend what little free time I have helping him get better, but I can’t do this. I cannot parent this helpless adult. I have carried him for almost a decade now and am out of patience and love. I am angry and tired and wish I had never met him. It is simply not fair to ask women (who would ask this of a man?) to take on so much.

I have about 5 years to go until DD is old enough to take care of herself in a shared custody scenario. In the meantime, I am ready to give up on him and cheat to get by.

NP. It doesn’t get easier when the kids get older. I’m sorry to say that I speak from experience. Yes, when DD was a baby, XDH left her alone on our bed and she rolled off and got a concussion that required a trip to the doctor. Even with grocery lists, XDH often left a bag or two in the grocery store/in the cart after paying for them.

But when your kids are older, their schedules get much more complicated with sports and after-school things, and with getting homework done. Somebody has to make sure they get homework done, and that will be you. Getting homework done will be harder ina shared custody arrangement. When your kids are in high school, your DH may be threatened by them, as mine was, and try to undermine them. (XDH refused to help pay for DD’s Ivy, bought DS a sports car instead, and constantly told DS not to bother studying, that 9-5 jobs are for losers, and so on. XDH left when DS had one more year of high school and tried to lure DS to stay with him via the sports car and promising that they would be like roommates instead of parent-child relationship—but guess what, DS chose to spend his entire senior year with me and told me recently he thinks XDH “didn’t care enough” to help him get into college. I’m still trying to roll all that back, with some success I’m happy to say. DS is now in college and has a summer job only because I pushed.)

I took the view that I had to stay in the marriage until the kids were in college. I feared the psychological damage XDH could do to them as teens as much as the physical risk when they were young.

Many marriages involving ADHD devolve into unhappy parent-child-type relationships. There are books to help mitigate this because, I know, it sucks. But first your DH has to get a diagnosis and you both have to acknowledge it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone normal would be frustrated with what OP describes.

Her situation is worse than single parenting. She has a completely worthless adult thwarting the household and endangering the child.

The people who think this situation is anything except very unfortunate have a horse in this race (i.e., just like OP’s husband or misogynists).

OP, you have only one life. Don’t let this asshole steal it from you. Live life as a single mother for now, but get out the second your child is able to take care of herself when with your irresponsible STBX.

+100. Many marriages involving an ADHD spouse have a very angry second spouse. It doesn’t matter whether the ADHD is the husband or wife—the other spouse is often mad. There are only so many missed child medications and mess-ups a person can tolerate without becoming angry. I gave up on expecting him to remember kid things or my birthday long, long ago and I hired a house cleaner etc. I actually took the view that he couldn’t help certain things and that if something was important to me (like cooking for guests) then I should do it, not him. I would have settled for things like him putting the milk back in the refrigerator. He couldn’t even do that reliably. Those of you who think OP is unreasonably angry just have no clue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He is also lazy.

I think the nice way to put this would be something like “exhibits deficits in executive functioning” and is “inattentive,” but the truth is that he is a stupid and lazy man. In decisions big and small, he doesn’t have any ideas, asks me questions like “what should we do?” as if I have a manual, and shuts down easily. When crises hit, I am both the idea person and the doer. I can’t entrust tasks to him because the simplest job is an opportunity to shirk, forget, or make some idiotic mistake I couldn’t even imagine was possible.

Before we had a child and all sorts of difficulties hit, his deficits were well hidden. He was slow to do basic things, but there was not nearly as much to do. And I am a very energetic, take-charge person who naturally assumes responsibility. Now, however, there is simply too much for me to take on, no matter how much energy I have. I work 60-80 hour weeks, while he works no more than 40. Yet, I have to do most things.

He can’t be trusted with our child’s appointments because when he goes, he checks out and forgets to tell the doctor important information and then forgets what the doctor told him. He can’t be trusted with our child’s medication because it is a controlled substance with a precise dose and he likes to pour “roughly” enough. He forgets to feed her when I’m not home. He can’t even grocery shop.

It has gotten to the point at which I struggle to talk to him with respect, which makes him even more nervous and helpless. I have never heard of sheer stupidity as a ground for divorce, but that is where I am.

OP, I have seen husbands from top colleges act the same way. What you are talking about is lack of common sense and lack of initiative. It could be said about lots of men. Don't think that your husband lacks brains because he acts this way, that is not the problem. Just so you are aware.

OMG, whoever wrote the top above post is living the nightmare that is my life with two kids and manchild booksmart, educated husband. I am waiting for a terrible disaster to strike like when he didn't drain the toddler's bathtub and she walked back into it hours later. He can't remember jack - not before doing it, while doing it, or checkign after doing it. It's horrible. He needs a simple simple life of just himself.

This is at a MINIMUM ADHD inattentive. then layer on lazy, stupid, lack of common sense, misogynist, etc.

You pick him, had the wedding, spend most likely his money and the kids. Maybe it’s not him but you. I know let’s just say that the disaster that is your life is your fault and not because of a misogynist. God you sound like a drug addicted.

There we go. Stage 2 of ADHD Inattentive: Blame others for your mistakes, Get angry at person who pointed out your shortcomings.

Then sit back and let them fix all your mistakes. Every. Single. Day. Until they get sick of you, sick of going backwards all the time, sick of your constant excuses, sick of your constant unreliability and serve you divorce papers.

You both will be better off. ADHD boy can't handled a life of multi-tasking and any Wife can't suffer through Manchild setbacks for decades and decades. Plus kids won't see all the forgetting and arguing and Space Cadet Dad ignoring them. Win/win/win.

Walking around eggshells over his defensiveness was bad. Trust me, many of us learned early on that it does no good to dwell on mishaps.

Likely ADHD runs in the family. In XDH’s case, the ADHD mom was overwhelmed and never taught things like work ethic. XDH never learned to parent from his parents

The worst, though, was the kids thinking XDH with ADHD didn’t care about them. Seriously, DS has volunteered (because I try not to drag the kids into it) that he regrets not having a male role model and that he thinks his pushover dad simply didn’t care enough to parent him. I end up trying to reframe this stuff all the time. I’m not sure that a shared custody arrangement would have made this easier, though, in fact parenting teens in a shared custody arrangement could have been even harder. We gave teen DS a choice and he chose to live with me, so that problem went away for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did you marry him?

Because ADHD impacts multi-tasking, and frequently people get married before getting promoted to upper management, before having kids to pile on more responsibilities, before being homeowners, before having to care for elderly parents, all at the same time. And when life becomes a little complicated, this is when people with ADHD start not being able to cope. A young single person with no responsibilities expect to hold down one simple job will rarely exhibit any symptoms.

This. Plus, families of the affected often pick up their slack before marriage, but dump it all on the new spouse after the honeymoon. That’s what happened to me. My in-laws stopped paying credit card bills and checking overdrafts that I never knew my ex had. His mom stopped calling him to remind about appointments and deadlines. I wish it had been grounds for an annulment under fraud.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:empty suit sending paychecks in
slob around the house
pushover parent to kids
cutting corners on everything
can't remember what to do, how, or when
no common sense

yeah, sounds like a real winner.

in the olden days, good ol' Stay at Home Mom / housemaid would have masked all these juvenile shortcomings.
Not annnyyymooooorrre.

This is sadly true. However, my ex needed me to work because he kept getting fired. Or he would quit because he felt some kind of way about constructive criticism from a supervisor or colleague. We would have been hungry, homeless, and without health insurance much of our five year marriage if I had not been steadily employed.

[Anonymous]

This thread makes me sad. My son is ADHD inattentive and I can see him one day needing a mommy-wife. I"m doing everything I can to make him a functioning adult but it's extremely hard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why did you marry him?

Because ADHD impacts multi-tasking, and frequently people get married before getting promoted to upper management, before having kids to pile on more responsibilities, before being homeowners, before having to care for elderly parents, all at the same time. And when life becomes a little complicated, this is when people with ADHD start not being able to cope. A young single person with no responsibilities expect to hold down one simple job will rarely exhibit any symptoms.

This. Plus, families of the affected often pick up their slack before marriage, but dump it all on the new spouse after the honeymoon. That’s what happened to me. My in-laws stopped paying credit card bills and checking overdrafts that I never knew my ex had. His mom stopped calling him to remind about appointments and deadlines. I wish it had been grounds for an annulment under fraud.

+1. Also, some of us were married before the partner was diagnosed. It’s often the stress of having kids that brings problems to light.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me sad. My son is ADHD inattentive and I can see him one day needing a mommy-wife. I"m doing everything I can to make him a functioning adult but it's extremely hard.

Don’t give up, you’re doing great work. Giving your son a solid work ethic will probably help enormously. My ex-MIL had bad ADHD and was never able to communicate a work ethic or expectations to any of her 3 kids. A work ethic, and being conscientious, can help even the most disabled person try their hardest. Seeing effort goes a really way with a spouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do the man a favor and let him go. He will blossom once he has his freedom back and does not have to endure your taunting ridicule. Set him free!!!

NP here. I was engaged to a similar person. I helped him through college both financially and with his daily academics. Once out of college I had to do everything and he messed up the slightest task I asked him to do. Even then I was patient with him because his family loved me and treated me nicely. His dad even told me that I was too good and too generous for such a selfish person. At the time I could not understand why a dad would talk as such about his son. Three weeks prior to the wedding we found out had had cheated on me and gotten someone else pregnant. Instead if apologizing he started telling everyone that throughout our 7 years together he felt emasculated and felt like he could never measure up to me. Years later I realized he had just used me and when it was time for him to contribute, he acted like a dummy because he did not want to contribute. OP, leave him.

Sure. You married a guy whom you had to help with his "daily academics" and his finances and then somehow dismissed it when his own father told you that you are too good for him and still married him after finding out that he got someone else pregnant three weeks before your wedding. Sounds totally believable.

Either you are an exaggerating martyr or a complete fool. I'm not sure which.

She never said she married him, she said she was engaged. Who is the complete fool now?

[Anonymous]

This happened to me (I have not read the whole thread). I managed until DC was in elementary school. I have 90% custody and take care of all the real parenting. I do have concerns if there were ever a medical emergency and try to be in the vicinity during their parenting time. The counselor told me he was impaired (I'm not being specific on purpose) and would never improve. She asked if I could treat it like a special needs situation. I could not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This thread makes me sad. My son is ADHD inattentive and I can see him one day needing a mommy-wife. I"m doing everything I can to make him a functioning adult but it's extremely hard.

adhd meds plus occasional executive functioning coaching should do wonders.

teach him to be kind, know how to apologize not argue/get overtly defensive, and find/do organizational and time mgmt systems that work for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This happened to me (I have not read the whole thread). I managed until DC was in elementary school. I have 90% custody and take care of all the real parenting. I do have concerns if there were ever a medical emergency and try to be in the vicinity during their parenting time. The counselor told me he was impaired (I'm not being specific on purpose) and would never improve. She asked if I could treat it like a special needs situation. I could not.

I totally understand.