I read in a book that spouses of ADDers are more likely to have emotional or sexual affairs.

My wife was in the begining stages of an emotional affair.
It was discovered, we had a very tough month, and are now more in love then ever. (thank goodness)

Durring that month I realised that my (non-diagnosed) Inattentive-type ADD caused me to take her for granted and not give her much attention nor communication.

What do you folks think about the subject of this thread?

I'm curious, what it the title of the book that you read it in.

I can see where it might be more likely especially in partners of ADDults who are not managing their AD/HD.

A lot of time ADDults don't realize how their behaviors affect those around them. It's got to be pretty hard for those who are close to us...

I dont think any particular couple are more or less likley to have that problem really.
Having said that i know for a fact my DH has another love, HIS CAR.

Also i am not sure whether i would count emotional support from another person as "an affair". It certainly wouldnt upsetme to find my husband getting emotional support from another woman.

I just looked on Amazon, and I am 99% sure it was in "A. D. D. and Romance: Finding Fulfillment in Love, Sex, & Relationships"

I know that now that I realize what I was doing, I have been making sure to try to counteract the tendancy.

In my case, the support from a male freind was followed by a "Steven, I am not sure if I want to be married anymore."

Statistics are quoted by therapists citing that ADHD in all its forms are correlated with higher rates of extramarital affairs. Does that lop over onto spouses of?

I haven't heard.

I think it is interesting (in a potentially sad way) how common such thing are regardless, ... what to say?

I am truely amazed at times how many people can disregard marriage vows and commitments.

We do live in a "me, me, me" world though, don't we.

I think I could get "holier than thou" pretty easily, but I have my short comings.

I stay away from flirting, now that I am married, because though the whole point of flirting is a tacit agreement to make sure it goes nowhere, playing with fire is how to get burned. I am not perfectly confident of my own ability to back off in the heat of the moment, so I don't go there. It has a price. I pay it.

But...

I'm not kind, patient and understanding when I'd like to be.

Real harm comes of being rude. It may not be impressive like murder, but it is real.

Affairs seem to me to be seeking the right thing in the wrong place. Perhaps there are as many reasons for affairs as there are individuals in them.

We disregard our responsibilities to ourselves, our children, our spouses, and our neighbors, at every level, too much.

I feel your pain dealing with this, but as you have indicated that you confronted it and worked things out, it sounds like it was transformed into a valuable asset.

I would not want to contribute to resurrecting it as a wedge and pain.

Personal (past) experience implies that ADD will increase the likelihood of an affair in the relationship...

In my case, the support from a male freind was followed by a "Steven, I am not sure if I want to be married anymore."
This is almost the same thing that happened to me.

Steve,

Did your wife say "were just friends"?

Did your wife say "I don't even know you anymore"?

Did you feel uncomfortable with the relationship?

Did she still continue to communicate with friend, even though you expressed how you felt?

Did you go into an anxiety fill state of depression?

Did you have troubles sleeping?

Did you become hypervigilant and obsessed with the details of their relationship?

Did you snoop?

Did you lose a bunch of weight?

A book I found that helped me understand what was happening was "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass.

Hope you catch this reply.

- Tim

I think all of the above.
I had never even heard of an emotional affair before this happened.

My girlfriend of 8 plus years has emotional affairs with GAY MEN, don't see any problems with this, the more she talks to GAY MEN, the less she talks with me which is always a plus.

T-Bass

This isn't what it looks like at all.

Kay and I are having a difficult time (no, not with each other) trying to communicate the more esoteric pieces of the puzzle we're unraveling with our research. The bits associated with this thread are the toughest.

Basically, you have to throw out everything you think, have learned, and have read about it. Also, and in particular, you have to scrap everything that seems natural to you, regardless of how deeply rooted it seems.

Then you can start over, looking at what your impulses are and how you instantiate them. Everyone has natural, hardwired impulses, but we all make choices. None of the commonly accepted basic instincts truly drive or control us directly.

Instead, we "see" the hardwired possibilities, the things that would have directly dictated our behavior a hundred thousand years or so ago. They're more like a menu, and we choose the behavior we're going to exhibit as naturally impulsive.

We don't really see this process very clearly, in ourselves or others, mainly because our ideas about what is possible are set so strongly by the reality we’re given during our childhood.

It's further complicated by mechanisms that apparently exist to hide from our own awareness the fact that we make contradictory choices at different times, each seeming at the moment perfectly natural and justified.

But who doesn't recognize that? This is one of those 'only two kinds of people' deals, those that admit it and those that don't. Male desperation stems in part from the fact that females do make choices, and we can see our ace in the hole turning into ashes. They don't have to do what we want them to, and if they find out, we're toast.

That's not really a balanced view, because there's another option. But it is a change in the rules, and so it seems unfair by comparison to the way the game is supposed to be played. Of course, the way we know what the rules are supposed to be is exactly the process we've been describing, looking at a menu of 'natural' behaviors and choosing which ones to instantiate as our own.

The ability to appeal to naturalness is a powerful mojo, one that has so far helped minimize general recognition that we aren't actually helpless, driven to act by our nature. It seems likely that having to make these choices was introduced as a consequence of the original speciation event that gave rise to modern humans, which was strongly associated with the development of complex abstract linguistic abilities.

But the end seems to be nigh; we're beginning to 'see' through the smokescreen set up around it, and you can judge by the shrillness of the propaganda machines that support it how close we are to breaking out. (Just listen closely to one of those Girls Gone Wild or Enzyte ads to hear a great example. What are they selling, exactly?)

The only problem is going to be recognizing what we're looking at when we finally break out. Kay and I managed to pierce the veil surrounding these behaviors years ago, so we’re used to seeing what people are trying to do and how they go about it. And truthfully, it's both endearing and embarrassing, simultaneously sweet, innocent and darkly threatening.

For females, seeing the game as it's played every day everywhere can be a frightening experience, because one set of natural behaviors never strays far from its rapacious roots. And for all of us, it's a big complex picture to suddenly have to figure out; it can seem much simpler to fall back on the way things have always been done, despite the increasing lack of success.

We're all new to this, and we're all in it together. The authors of all of those books don't know any more than any one of us does. And all the statistics are useless, partly because nobody knows what questions to ask, and partly because we're busy messing with the process and skewing the results something awful.

Every word we can say about the experiences described in this thread has yet to be invented. An appropriate and entirely new vocabulary has to be forged sometime, and there's no time like the present, as they say.

If we have any cojones at all, we'll throw out everything said so far and begin to invent new ways to describe what we're feeling and thinking. And we should start by leaving all the negative stuff out as a matter of principle.

So: this is our first shot at it. Now, how about the rest of you?

--Tom and Kay

Here's some more:

When we said we’re used to seeing what people are trying to do and how they go about it, the behavior that's both endearing and embarrassing, simultaneously sweet, innocent and darkly threatening, we certainly meant that we are people, too.

The items on the menu are not going to go away. For the foreseeable future, every male is going to have to learn to live with the knowledge that he is (in part) rapacious by nature, and has tools to allow him to easily embrace that nature as essentially correct.

Every male is also by nature a nurturing father and devoted, caring spouse, about as far from the idea of rape as you can get. But note that in most social groups rapacious behaviors are considered strongly masculine, while nurturing behaviors are seen as feminine. (You're either a Man, or you're Whipped. Yowzah!)

Females have their own burden of inappropriate (or no longer appropriate) instinctive behaviors to live with, and they may prove to be more difficult to accept than any comparable male-macho related stuff.

The problem is perhaps best presented as a question: if we make choices, why do guys get away with acting as if women were still driven by wild impulses, helpless to resist their primitive nature?

The only possible answer is that for tens of thousands of years, females have been voluntarily choosing to act as if they weren't able to control their behavior. If we’re going to 'see' this stuff in a true light, every woman is going to have to find a way to deal with her new vision of her own history without falling prey to denial or self-destructing.

In their favor, they've been crippled in every way we can manage. Every woman has intimate knowledge of what it feels like to be conned, and they're all going to have to face that truth as well, another part of the whole painful picture.

And oddly enough, this is a key piece of the puzzle for men, because understanding how hard that is for women bumps our view of the process up to a whole different level. It's like the question isn't whether they're going to do what we want, but whether they'll survive seeing how screwed up life has been for the last hundred thousand years.

It's impossible to not see it as unfair, in a way that swamps the sense of unfairness that males tend to have because the rules have changed. You can see the game has been rigged against women from the beginning, and any guy that's not a complete monster will lose his heart for it instantly.

That recognition is just as difficult for men as its counterpart is for women, and so it goes, on and on. When we describe how we've acted, what we’ve experienced in dealing with each other and ourselves in intimate relationships, we’re talking about a process that sits on top of these rocky foundations.

And of course, that's exactly why things seem rocky from time to time. (Like, whenever we care to look closely at them.) The truth is, Kay and I were probably as close as any couple that ever lived, but we didn't really get close until we began to deal with these issues routinely.

We didn't have a clue what we were missing, and there's still not any good vocabulary to describe it. Now we consider the way we relate to each other to be a sort of minimum standard of ordinary human closeness, and there are beginning to be a few others out there (mainly in these forums, so that much is related to AD/HD) that see it that way, too.

When we listen to what people say about their problems, we see it in an almost mechanical way, like we had a sort of map of how the terrain should look. In a sense the difficulties seem trivial, because we can see clearly how that goes there, and that should go there, and the whole thing most often just seems sad.

Or maybe we're seeing it the way a competent mechanical engineer looks at something like the Golden Gate bridge, the flow of the forces through the structure as obvious as the flow of the traffic it bears.

Watching an engineer look at a bridge, it's easy to think s/he's missing the romantic quality of the experience. But it just ain't so; what the engineer sees only adds to the experience, and that’s the way this stuff works for us, too.

We wouldn't trade it for the world, and the coolest bit is that we can see that everyone is on the verge of doing the same thing. Transition's always rough, though, and this one can be a bear.

Anyone else?

In the context of what we've posted so far, affairs and cheating are simply behaviors related to impulses that have a specific purpose, ensuring maximum diversity in the gene pool.

From a practical experiential view those impulses feel like this: it seems to make sense to act in a certain way, pursue this potential opportunity with this person, or respond to someone suggesting that opportunity exists and is reasonable.

Nobody has ever been fooled by these thoughts. (Not in recent history, anyway.) Deny it if you want, but the truth is everyone knows it's a dumb idea to jump in bed with the neighbor, before, during and after the act. We still do it. The point is, we don't have to.

The bigger point is that there are perfectly good reasons that we haven't recognized that we don't have to. Once we all get over the shock and find words to talk about it, we'll be able to simply stop. It's worth the effort to look hard at yourself and realize that you really always did make conscious choices about these behaviors, and almost all of them were mistakes.

Like I said, jumping into bed with the neighbor is a dumb idea. If we didn't know that, soap operas wouldn't exist. Or maybe they would exist, be invented on a Monday, and we'd learn it was a dumb idea by Tuesday afternoon. Doh!

And it really is all for some trivial species-level reason, one that has no personal impact at all. It also isn't any longer necessary, if our research is correct; the issues addressed by genetic diversity have moved to new arenas.

The behavior is still on the menu, though, and it is periodically going to seem like a good idea to at least try to 'connect' with the neighbor (or whatever target of opportunity shows up on your radar).

How we deal with that is changing, and so we've invented the idea of 'emotional affairs'. (See? New words.) In as much as they represent behavior associated with the underlying (bogus) purpose, they are just as bad as any full blown sexual affair.

Here's some dialog from the 1999 movie Sugar Town to chew on:

[Kate] Did you f*** her?
[Carl] No, but I did kiss her.
[Kate] You b******! Why'd you have to kiss her?
[Carl] But I didn't do anything! All I did was kiss her!
[Kate] Kissing's worse!
[Carl] Worse? How's it worse?
[Kate] It's more intimate!


If film is art (at least in spirit), and art exists to extend the common model, what is this art trying to address? Once our common models are stretched and extended, aren't we supposed to be able to find words to express how, compared to the physical act of sex, misplaced intimacy is a far deeper form of betrayal, perhaps the only true form of betrayal?

As in the whole idea of 'emotional affairs', which really represents both our increasing awareness of the inappropriate nature of our impulse to behave in ways that betray existing relationships, and also the inevitability of the impulse to do so.

And the problem we see in this is simple: any expression of the impulse is incorrect. All it does is legitimize the impulse and the associated behaviors. Get over it, give it up, and stop doing (or accepting) dumb things. Geeze. The impulse is there to make us cheat. Any expression of it is by definition cheating.

The only winning move is not to play. But you've got to know the game just as well to not play it as to play it well.

Maybe when we’re done, we can publish the first real rulebook.

Hi,

Forgetting children, what is the point of a permanent and strong relationship?

Many of the urges that have been described are primitive urges that are related to ensuring the survival of one's genetic material ... but the next step on from this, is that a couple of children on .. one might search out another partner and start again .. and then again.

Modern man's need to retain a strong relationship seems to fly contrary to primitive man's urge to procreate. Is this modern imperative generated by society's need to maintain order? Perhaps I can wrap all of my other questions (and maybe the one above also) into one question - Suppose a man was in a stong but childless relationship with a woman, and another in state of complete abstinence from relationships with any other person - How would your models of the impact of these 2 different states be reflected on the individual?

Or is it that a strong relationship, childless or not, or with a woman or man provides the same benefits - whereas, the betrayal of the intimacy of whichever relationship one might happen to be involved in, shifts the balance into the red.

Not so great on this subject - only had one girlfriend and one wife .. and they're both the same woman :-)

My own view on this subject is that we're all searching for something - and that the easy way out is to pay our two cents and to queue up for a quick and easy hedonistic trip - but that these don't particularly lead anywhere .. in particular .. and that in the case of cheating - take us backwards.

A strong relationship, I think, leads to a convergence between the 2 individuals' modes of thinking and can facilitate progress in one's own (and one's partner's) motion towards that thing that we're searching for.

Deviation from this path, merely throws up the trivialities of life that're described in soap operas, and that block our progress.

I'd describe much of what we do as being time-fillers, or worse .. and that cheating is just one of those pursuits that falls into the 'worse' category - that just get in the way of life - rather than fulfill it.

For me, then, the question changes to - basic questions about the point of life .. with issues like cheating, the pursuit of power, greed .. 'the usual suspects' .. all falling into the same diversionary category.

If we drive to the base of an 'emotional' affair - which I think is one in which there is limited physical contact, then presumably that which is being strived for is less related to the biological response to contact, and which is more cerebral in nature. Taking this line of thinking on a stage, presumably the individual is searching for someone to 'extend their common model', ie to reveal aspects of themselves - that they need to have exposed - ie 'using' the other to achieve something that they're not achieving either by themselves, or in their existing relationship.
Isn't this just a recapitulation of my former statement, ie that 'we're all searching for something' ?probably the same thing? and that if this is the case, and my other observation that a strong close relationship built on years of nurturing, helps this search .. then that which is sought by cheating in an emotional affair - is wildly confounded by this approach.

SB.

This is a very good discussion. It is interesting to hear other's ideas.

I think most of the extended discussion has analyzed the "nature" or "animal" side of relationships and how we, as animals, have viewed mating and or pairing-up throughout history. I think we should now look at "morals". Something that developes as a race becomes more civilized. Rules and norms get developed. Also "religion" comes into play.

When two people decide to make a commitment to each other, it can be based on the ability to receive some kind of benefit. For example, exclusivity both physically or emotionally. Maybe they seek benefits for survival. For example, health insurance or shelter. I am not saying that someone should eliminate all relationships. This is not healthy. People need to grow. I am saying people should respect the boundaries of the relationship.

I define an EA as the following :

Any extra relationship, based mainly on secrecy, that detracts from the primary relationship, while destroying trust and reducing intimatcy.

Here are some key items that may be used to determine if a relationship is crossing the line. My wife could answer "Yes" to all but #11. I asked her how she would feel if the tables were turned and I was doing #1 - #11 and she agreed, but she still continued to do #1 - #10. It was a very unpleasant 8 months.

Is Your On-Line Friendship Too Friendly?

1. Do you find yourself coming to bed later at night because you are chatting on-line?

2. Do you ever exit a screen because you do not want a family member to see what you are reading or writing to a chat room member?

3. Have you ever lied to your spouse about your personal Internet activities?

4. Would you feel uncomfortable sharing your Internet correspondence with your spouse?

5. Have you ever set up a separate e-mail account or credit card to carry on a personal correspondence with an individual on-line?

6. Has your Internet correspondence had a negative effect on your work or household tasks?

7. Have you ever lied in response to a question from your spouse about your e-mail correspondence?

8. Have you ever exchanged photos of yourself with a secret e-mail correspondent?

9. Since beginning a secret e-mail correspondence, have you experienced either a loss or an unusual increase in sexual desire with your spouse?

10. Have you made arrangements to talk secretly on the phone with your e-mail friend?

11. Have you made arrangements to meet with your secret e-mail friend?

Hi,

Perhaps if we could identify what we gain from a strong relationship - we might be less prone to throwing them away?

I don't think that the answer is one or all of the most commonly quoted ie of companionship, avoidance of loneliness or adherence to 'rules'.

I also wonder whether physical pleasure is dissociating from "'pair-bonding' pleasure" as physical pleasure becomes easier to achieve through the ever more increasingly sophisticated approaches that technology seems to offer.
Might a complete dissociation reveal the nature of what we gain through each?

SB.

…Forgetting children, what is the point of a permanent and strong relationship?
But can we really do that?

We may have misled a bit in the interest of clarity; selection is a powerful process, leading to powerful forces.

It should be obvious even in a modern social context that any mechanism that increases the probability that an individual's genetic material will survive to play the next round will select in the absence of competing mechanisms.

Exactly how much our opinions on the subject don't matter has to be appreciated. When we're talking about selection we can start by taking ourselves out of the equation, every time.

(Don't worry: we always get slotted back in later on. We do affect the process, just as evolutionary psychologists suspect. But good old fashioned statistical grind-'em-up spit-'em-out selection always gets first whack.)


Many of the urges that have been described are primitive urges that are related to ensuring the survival of one's genetic material ... but the next step on from this, is that a couple of children on .. one might search out another partner and start again .. and then again…
It appears that this is the case in at least two or three higher primates, including humans.

There's a pattern: two different strategies for mating develop, one that drives long term relationships and one that drives "affairs".

The long term one is based on some form of hierarchical social status, with the goal of pairing with an available mate with the highest possible position in the status hierarchy.

"Affairs" appear to be based on brief, purely serendipitous quasi-random pairings. We don't care about status. Really. The emotional roller coaster that most people associate with having an affair is a carefully crafted illusion. As we'll show in a moment, if we paid attention to the usual emotional rewards associated with the status hierarchy, it would pervert the purpose of the affair.

All known examples of hierarchical social status structures are based on probability of reproductive success. What than means is you can pick any characteristic (like pretty or rich) and find an association with higher likelihood of successful reproduction.

That's association; it's not a causal relationship. Being pretty is only an indicator of other underlying physical success factors, excepting the obvious one: conferring pretty genes on your daughter increases her status, and also her likelihood of successfully mating.

Next generation links are more iffy, given that there are other factors at work as well, but over time the statistics prevail despite the fact that we don't really care about succeeding generations in the same way.

Pretty selected simultaneously with the other more subtle physical characteristics that play a role in reproductive success. Why and how are a bit complicated, but the point is this: anything that contributes to status is an indicator of the relative probability of reproductive success.

So now we’re set up: play along as we watch the status driven process, high matched to high, middle to middle, low to low. Calculate the probabilities, multiply everything out, and do it again. And again, and again, and so on. Inevitably high status genes concentrate to the detriment of lower status genes, narrowing the gene pool.

But genetic diversity selects through an interesting set of abnormal processes, and given enough time and generations the propensity to behavior that contributes to diversity should therefore also select. And that is why we have quasi-random affairs: to ensure genetic diversity.

The implications are staggering, not the least of which is a mechanism to produce the aforementioned illusion of emotional and physical satisfaction associated with an affair.

By all objective measures sexual behavior associated with affairs is singularly unsuccessful; identical behavior in the context of a long term relationship is considered unacceptable, and left unaddressed it leads to significant problems. The disparity couldn't be more extreme.

And yet, the common idea about the experience is exactly the opposite; everyone is familiar with the stereotype of affairs as all heat and no substance. While the latter is certainly true (and forcing the appearance of substance creates a whole different class of problems), the former just as certainly is not.

But the perception before, during and after more closely matches the stereotype, and that raises some very interesting questions. What could account for such a bizarre (and almost universal) misjudgment, especially considering that virtually everyone is aware of the reality of the situation? And if we discover a mechanism at the heart of it somehow hidden from our awareness, shouldn't we wonder what else might be in there working unrecognized?


Modern man's need to retain a strong relationship seems to fly contrary to primitive man's urge to procreate.
Bingo. But I hope the above discussion shows that the reasons we retain a version of the primitive behavior are more subtle and complex than just the urge to have a good time. Those days are truly gone, perhaps several hundred thousand years ago or more.


Is this modern imperative generated by society's need to maintain order?
Nope, it's still about procreation. But our needs changed drastically when we developed complex abstract linguistic abilities. Which, not coincidentally, was the defining event that gave rise to our species.


Perhaps I can wrap all of my other questions (and maybe the one above also) into one question - Suppose (one) man was in a strong but childless relationship with a woman, and another in state of complete abstinence from relationships with any other person - How would your models of the impact of these 2 different states be reflected on the individual?
Truthfully, they both probably experience the same vague pressures, which they probably relate to in a far more general way than their individual situations might seem to dictate.

We tend to look at the experiential reality of our impulses as an obvious element of the human condition. It's as if we come 'pre-accustomed' to the results of tens or hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of selection.

Which in a very real sense, we do. Whatever it is in us that has selected, it's bound to feel like it fits so closely that it's impossible to discriminate between the bits that are us and the stuff of our genetic heritage.

So it can be a tricky business trying to simply 'look' at the various bits and pieces of ourselves that are a result of selection and see them as such. In fact, looking at what has selected is difficult to explain without first putting your head into "selection space" and getting the feel for how it works.

Learning to do that is lots of fun, but not for here and now. Suffice it to say that those vague pressures we feel mediate complex behaviors, many of which are related to long term mating, including social behaviors far exceeding the actual reproductive process.

One set of these behaviors is peculiar to humans, the extremely long secondary nurturing period that lasts for ten to twelve years (or longer in some cultures). This is such a widely and implicitly accepted human social behavior that a basic education is considered a Constitutional right in the United States and most other progressive democracies.

But it is also considered basic to totalitarian societies, although perhaps more as an imperative. The defining characteristic is the unquestioning universal acceptance of the idea that we must educate our children in some way.

And it also seems perfectly natural that the level of education reflects the level of development of the culture that supports it. Small, relatively primitive social groups provide only minimal education, enough to function in the simple cultural context.

In more complex cultures the educational process is intensified and formalized, leading to our present complex social institutions. Many of these exist without the formal declarations one would normally expect. It comes as a surprise to most people that in the United States the right to a basic education is not explicitly established by any Constitutional principle.

Yet the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the idea that such a right is both obvious and suitably addressed by the Federal courts. So once again we have an interesting question: where exactly in our cultural development did the obvious need to provide a basic education become so obvious?


…Or is it that a strong relationship, childless or not, or with a woman or man provides the same benefits - whereas, the betrayal of the intimacy of whichever relationship one might happen to be involved in, shifts the balance into the red…
Not exactly the same. But betrayal is betrayal, no matter how it's expressed.

Not so great on this subject - only had one girlfriend and one wife .. and they're both the same woman :-)
Now, Dang! that's what I mean. How could you get this so wrong? You obviously are great at this, at least so far.

If nothing else ever comes of our work, Kay and I are determined to provide an understanding of how everyone can do what you're doing, why it's right, and how to keep it from going wrong.

So far, we have a framework that allows us to talk to each other about it. For most everybody else, I think it must come out as a sort of clicking sound…


My own view on this subject is that we're all searching for something…
Oh, yeah – of course that's true. But what, exactly? And how did you come to that conclusion? Isn't this obvious in the same way as the right to a basic education?

And how does that obvious perception get into our conscious thoughts without us seeing it coming? Doesn't this seem similar to the mechanism that warps how we perceive an affair, if we're foolish enough to fall prey to one?

And what else is under there, waiting to spring into play at full force?

Maybe the answer to that is the something we're all searching for…


…and that the easy way out is to pay our two cents and to queue up for a quick and easy hedonistic trip - but that these don't particularly lead anywhere .. in particular .. and that in the case of cheating - take us backwards…
It's an easy way out, alright, but it doesn't have any answers. It's only a way out of asking the questions, and that's down on a whole different level.

Really, when it comes to this, it all degenerates into an argument about whether we should be searching for something at all, and if we do, whether it implies that those who don't are somehow inferior, and whether we shouldn't be allowed to search because it makes them feel bad about themselves, and on and on and on…

Why bother? It's a loser's game; the only winning move is not to play. And whether you do or you don't, you've still got questions, and answers to search for.

Life's an adventure. Everyone should go out looking for their own Holy Grail, or what's it for?

(BTW, that argument is the fundamental interface between Normals and ADDers. Did you recognize it?)


A strong relationship, I think, leads to a convergence between the 2 individuals' modes of thinking and can facilitate progress in one's own (and one's partner's) motion towards that thing that we're searching for…
SO! Been listening at the window, Bub?

Kay and I were discussing exactly this idea, in more formal terms, about a week ago, sitting next to each other in bed naked.

(And that's a test, the test, really. That last word instantly changes every guy's take on what we're talking about. And every woman's, too, but usually in different and sometimes exquisitely subtle ways.)

(There is no passing grade, and you can't drop the course; it's too late in the semester. We've all already agreed to join the club and be human.)

(All anyone can do is deny that we can push buttons so easily by dropping the word naked into a perfectly legitimate context.)

(And denial doesn't keep it from happening. The only winning move is not to play, but the catch is, you have to know the game to know the winning move.)

(And thus the problem: How do you get to know the game if you don't play it? And if you play it, especially if you're male, don't you want to play it well?)

(So back to the point…

which is the same point in the parens, whether we like it or not.

Kay and I didn't like it, and for a long time we simply rose above it. But that was a mistake; it was one of several noble ideas that interfered with what SB's describing, which is the thing that let us really get close, even though we had been almost impenetrably close from the start.

Eventually our work led us to look the problem right in the eye, and the quiet little firestorm that ignited took us completely by surprise. The whole question of how one little word can derail such a non-sexual discussion leads to one smarmy discovery after another.

And there's nowhere to hide from the fact that we are not actually certain what the heck is going on, even when we feel sure that we are certain and can clearly see all the issues.

Nobody ever jumped into bed with the neighbor without being certain about what they were feeling, even if they were certain that they felt uncertain about doing it. No kidding.

What can we do? The answer is, we do what SB's describing. It's not something that's selected yet, in the same way as the mechanisms that can warp our perspective without seeming to change anything.

So we can use it to see around the warp, and there's no way to wake up in the wrong bed without wanting to. And of course, no way to want to, either.

The formal version of what Kay and I were discussing in bed that night (it's OK now, we put our jammies on) involves the exact details of how two minds can converge on the same complex model of reality, if the people that own them are very close and can avoid falling prey to 'diversions'.

Such a convergence is only possible if the model can be of arbitrary dimension and encodes metalevels, which happens to be exactly the way we ADDers organize our brains.

The obvious romantic aspects are (of course) of considerable importance; they connect all the way back to the underlying issues that brought us here, the impulses related to procreation. But there are benefits that aren't obvious, and won't ever be from an ordinary view.

One is the ability to transcend the pitfalls of having to live with a million years worth of bad ideas about sex, basically our argument in favor of doing it in the first place. But that's just a teaser, really; the good stuff is in what the converged model gets us, something beyond what any single model can achieve: access to an absolute, unambiguous universe.

In the end, that's the search, what SB and all of us are searching for, although perhaps expressed in different terms. Regardless, they're all fundamentally the same: we want to understand ourselves, and our context.

The drive to scratch that curious itch is as old and as obvious as any part of the human condition. It's what leads us to invent religion, and to reach out to others; we believe that it's as close to a divine purpose as we're ever likely to get.

And that should be plenty close for anyone, regardless of their beliefs or cultural background. It's easy to make the argument that we're being driven to find mates and form relationships that allow us to rise above the venal purpose of mating, to find a path that leads us for the first time out of our internal world into the full glorious light of the Universe itself.

Is that mystical enough for everyone? We can take it the other way if you'd rather, to a strictly formal scientific definition of the whole mess. But it only leads back to the same kind of thing, a different expression, but the same nonetheless.

And thanks goodness for that. It wouldn't be worth a d*** if it came out somewhere else. We'd have to start all over.


Deviation from this path, merely throws up the trivialities of life that (a)re described in soap operas, and that block our progress…
And doesn't that sound trivial, after that little walk we just took?


For me, then, the question changes to - basic questions about the point of life...
Yup, just what we think. You have been eavesdropping, haven't you?


If we drive to the base of an 'emotional' affair - which I think is one in which there is limited physical contact, then presumably that which is being strived for is less related to the biological response to contact, and which is more cerebral in nature. Taking this line of thinking on a stage, presumably the individual is searching for someone to 'extend their common model', ie to reveal aspects of themselves - that they need to have exposed - ie 'using' the other to achieve something that they're not achieving either by themselves, or in their existing relationship…
Nope, cheating is cheating. Think about it: the warped perspective renders any revelation useless. The only way to get there is through the front door, with all of your faculties intact and everything in tune.

And it reveals more than aspects of yourself, as we said. It reveals aspects of each other, which allows a limited kind of 'relative absolute' knowledge, and ultimately, aspects of the true nature of nature itself, in all of its absolute glory.

(Naked glory, of course…)

…Isn't this just a recapitulation of my former statement, ie that 'we're all searching for something' ?probably the same thing? and that if this is the case, and my other observation that a strong close relationship built on years of nurturing, helps this search…
Exactly. Actually, it is the search.


…then that which is sought by cheating in an emotional affair - is wildly confounded by this approach.

SB.
Yup, that's the carrot: you protect your nurturing relationship with a tool that builds and expands it, and in turn it becomes more nurturing.

And aren't you making our point (from above) for us? The only path that works allows an absolute gauge of what you're experiencing despite the warped perspective that selection has provided to allow us to trick ourselves into doing dumb stuff.

What you want is over there, not here in the neighbor's bed. So off you go, and it's cheating itself that's wildly confounded.

We just can't bring ourselves to accept that anyone cheating actually has the noble purpose you propose, but we can go through the exercise, to show that it comes out the same: you can't get there from here.

And BTW: wasn't it a brilliant idea to start the whole journey with sex? Geeze…

--Tom and Kay

* * * *

For anyone interested, the reason we humans nurture our young for such an extended period is the need to impart a detailed copy of the common model of reality we all inhabit and the impulses and behaviors that maintain it and ensure it remains converged with everyone else's.

This isn't the same convergence SB mentions; it's actually the thing that we’re escaping, an illusory reality that is easily maintained without forming any close relationship with another person. In a very real and literal sense, our ordinary illusion of reality is the world normals inhabit, which our AD/HD enhanced models gives us a means to escape.

The common reality model is the heart of our complex abstract linguistic abilities. The impulses and behaviors that maintain it and ensure convergence have an unfortunate side effect: human conflict.

Yup, it's true: we literally go to war over words. It's more complicated than that makes it sound, but there really isn't any doubt about the connection to language.

Woof! :-)

SB.

I dont think any particular couple are more or less likley to have that problem really.
Having said that i know for a fact my DH has another love, HIS CAR.

Also i am not sure whether i would count emotional support from another person as "an affair". It certainly wouldnt upsetme to find my husband getting emotional support from another woman.

I somewhat have to disagree with you,for me that is ......

My husband went to other women for support. Meeting them behind my back, talking to them on the phone without me knowing about it. IM-ing all hours of the day and night. Leaving me alone while he got "support" from these women.

It left me feeling lonely, I didn't trust him, it hurt..... it felt just as if he was having an afair......

A book I found that helped me understand what was happening was "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass.

Ummmmm,Hmmmm well, I just might have to check that book out myself...

Thanks

... it felt just as if he was having an affair......
He was;

he couldn't help it, but he didn't have to do it;

you couldn't help him, or yourself;

neither of you could have done anything about it,

but,

both of you might have done something about it.


It depends entirely on how you both agree to treat it. You, your husband, all of us make choices that define the behaviors we feel compelled by. Once the choices are made, it feels just like we never had any choice at all.

You both can change direction any time you want, if you're willing to look hard enough at it and can be stubborn enough (a fine ADDer trait, for sure). But it is like pulling yourselves out of mud two feet deep; it keeps sucking you back, and it's easy to just give up. Especially when you can see nobody else is trying, or cares.

And it requires two people, committed to each other. At least one of them probably has to have AD/HD for it to work. And you have to not care what the past looks like, 'cause when you strip us humans down, we can be pretty ugly.

Go deeper, though, and we're downright pretty. And we can fly.

To put a perspective on it, if you don't do anything you'll be just like everyone else, not really such a big deal, eh? According to most studies, being willing to address issues is the skill most highly correlated with the survival of relationships.

So: if you're here talking about it, the chances are very much in your favor. That's even if your husband isn't talking right now; you're relieving stresses that might have contributed to a breakdown, so things are getting better right now, just because you're here.

But we are all capable of so much more that we're just beginning to learn about.

Is it the betrayal of intimacy which defines whether one has cheated? And is intimacy the attempt to shape the reality model of the person with which you are with towards convergence with one's own (or development of both to convergence); I return to this idea further down.

Does the physical part of a relationship as defined as a primitive behaviour, represent only a very small part (in terms of overlap) with the modern mating strategy - in that although the primitive is subsumed within the modern ie regardless of your drivers, procreation is important and must be done the same way -- the need to long-term pair-bond is actually fulfilling a need that is really quite different, and in fact nothing to do with its close but distant neighbour.

Since the development of the modern (and complex abstract linguistic abilities) roughly accompanies the development of our in-built need to pair bond - Is it possible that there is a shared purpose underlying these 2 occurrences, or perhaps that the higher purpose underlying communication can help to be revealed through successful long-term pair-bonding?

I could go on, but in order not to, I'll cut to my real question and that is - the development of our ability to communicate stuff is more remarkable (to me anyways) than our evolution from lower organisms. In fact, I try but fail to understand how we could develop such a remarkable ability - it's kinda' leftfield from a purely evolutionary perspective. Do we require an independent and open-minded individual who has complete knowledge of everything that we are, and us them, in order to shape and reshape our models until a single model of reality can be formed representing the one single true model of reality, sweeping aside illusions, delusions and pretensions?

The need for 'open-minded' being of particular importance to prevent shared delusional events.

It sort of makes sense that our ability to communicate, being as it is, such a big deal, was not developed so that we could ask our best friend whether they fancy chicken or turkey for dinner --- and that if this is so, and that there is a higher importance to communication, that the development of the need to engage in long-term pair-bonding became part of our programming in order to help us achieve that higher function.

I guess the higher function that I'd like to believe that communication, conscious awareness .. and friends including mating behaviour .. are taking us towards, is the path to whatever drives spirituality -- but I kinda' feel this is so, and strangely feel this with a remarkable degree of certainty .. but I'm not soooo clear on why I feel this way .. exactly.

SB.

Woof! :-)

SB.
Woof yerself. The two of you are the ones doing it; you should give yourselves a nice pat on the back.

We're just muddlin' along and making commentary…

'cause when you strip us humans down, we can be pretty ugly. I think that it is our fear that is ugly; our fear obscures our innate beauty. We are so afraid to take off, right now and fly; to soar, to revel in our inner wonder and grace and to expose our deepest secrets. We, as feeling human beings are then open to an abandonment which in my opinion is the greatest destroyer of all: the ahnihilation our very spirit.
and so
And we can fly.we should fly, we must fly or else we never really find our truth.

I think that the inability to see a series of truths that're staring us right in the face, is what makes mankind ugly.
The emperor is naked - and there's no chance of mankind achieving what it really needs to, unless we can see that, and stop ourselves discussing the sophisticated paisley pattern of his pyjamas.

There's stuff that matters and stuff that so doesn't - and the stuff that so doesn't, so does, in our World at present.

It occurs to me that some essential truth pops out, and then before you know it, mankind has weaved an industry around it, revels in that industry and loses the essential point that underlies it.

So, plucking my first thought out of the air, to illustrate this point - ...OK- sport.
Sport seems to be more about forming barriers between supporters of 2 teams, being watched rather than participated in, and worrying about the presence or absence of a star in one's favoured team - instead of the participation and competition, not against others, but instead against oneself.
The message in sport at the moment seems to be some definition of success - where I'd prefer sport to have 'personal betterment' as the central message .. where personal betterment isn't necessarily anything about improving one's performance ability.


SB.

stop ourselves discussing the sophisticated paisley pattern of his pyjamas.

to take the time to see what is under or beyond that paisley pattern, it seems to me, is our task. Instead it is easier and/or we choose to prattle on about the nature of it's color and design...and at what cost.

What is the deeper meaning in our lives. Who are we, really? I don't know because there is just too much talk about theory and ideas. yet the real source of our humanity is right there in our hearts.

And this, I believe, is the center of our fear. When we are really honest, vulnerable to the point that we/I introduce ourselves/myself to another, I run the serious risk of being abandoned.... and here is the paradox. To know me I must share myself in an intimate way. This is a much too perilous path to follow, so I retreat into my own silent, self-lies; I protect myself from an abandonment which I am absolutely creating. and you will never know me because I will never know me.

and I would run...wouldn't you?

and that's what I've been doing all my life. . .



Thank You Deeperblue.

and that's what I've been doing all my life. . .



Thank You Deeperblue.

oh...chainsmoker, do not thank me. Take credit for understanding your secret message...the one that you walk with each and every day. Sometimes, it comes up to the surface, waiting for you to head it's words. We are all reminded.

I think that maybe I understand the fear. I am, right now, at this time in my life, sitting in my own abandonment angst.

And it hurts and it tells me to hide. and you state so beautifully and simply that is what we all do: we protect our secret. But I bet your story isnt even bad. (I mean to say that you are a good person with a painful story?)

but why, then, do we constantly hide? Don't we know that there are so many past/current and future relationships to be jeopardized?

Forget about cheating on another when we are really cheating ourselves (and without sounding like a narcisstic bore :o ) and we are after all the most important. When we can learn to put I first it is easier to put YOU first. And the WE is created, preserved and sustained.

I can only value you, when I can stand here and say I count, I am valuable and I am good.

It all follows.

Is it the betrayal of intimacy which defines whether one has cheated? …
This is an amazingly detailed, dense and accurate couple of paragraphs. You're homing in on some of the exact same ideas that Kay and I have been developing for so long.

In fact, your recent questions and statements have been clarifying some things for us when we read them, so I guess it's not really our stuff anymore.


Sport seems to be more about forming barriers between supporters of 2 teams…
Right on the money, and directly related to your previous post.

We've been preparing a reply, but time is tight until Saturday. I'm afraid it's already long and detailed, and we'll try to trim it before we post. Look for it early AM.

Thanks to everyone for the ride…

So, might it be that the set of modern impulses replace the need for our primitive instinctual behaviour.

And so when an essential driver of modern behaviour comes along, primitive behaviour superimposes its ugly head, to create useless layers which eventually serve to obscure that essential truth.
So - for instance, in having affairs - long-term pair-bonding becomes disrupted by the primitive instinct to seek physical relationships with others. In sport, personal betterment becomes obscured by the primitive urge to recreate some form of hierarchical structure.

And so at the base of all of these modern institutions is an essential truth, which mankind strives towards, but through our evolutionary heritage, perverts into something else, something quite different.

In much the same way, mankind perverts spirituality into religion - and education with hierarchy ... which once again, with time, seem to replace their essential truths with layers of nonsense - that are then mistakenly believed to be the point, or the curve of the paisley pattern on the Emperor's clothes.

And could it be, that when we have primitive urges - we know what we're having -- but when we feel driven by a modern urge - we're not able to encapsulate it in thought, perhaps because of the limitations that're imposed upon ourselves by language, and so we push them to one side, and just take the easy way out, of latching on to one of our primitive urges - which lead us to some feeling of satisfaction - but which aren't satisfying in the least, in comparison with the satisfaction of the 'modern' urge that we're hiding from and thus attempting to repress.
And so would this in part be a reiteration of your theory on our need to escape the confines of language and to invent some other way to tap into our important drivers.

SB.

.

My wife was in the begining stages of an emotional affair.
It was discovered, we had a very tough month, and are now more in love then ever. (thank goodness)

Durring that month I realised that my (non-diagnosed) Inattentive-type ADD caused me to take her for granted and not give her much attention nor communication.


Hi Steve,
You can now see that your undiagnosed, untreated ADD was the main problem that had your wife seeking an emotional relationship elsewhere. I guess it does not matter if this happens, but what I really am interested in knowing is if you have now sought a real diagnosis and treatment? Along with that are you now willing to step up and help your wife with whatever drove her to emotional support elsewhere?

As the spouse of a pwADD, I can certainly see why this can happen. In the beginning of your relationship, I am willing to bet that you showed her a whole different side of you. You were hyperfocused on her and so you did all the right things and made her feel like you really loved her, cared about her and would do anything for her.

After the newness of the relationship wore off, you focused on other things and forgot about her. Even the simple little romantic gestures that were present in the beginning.

We are human beings. We have wants, needs, desires just like you do. We don't want to be seen as a fixture in the home,, the one who takes care of everything. We have feelings and they need to be recognized!!!

If you are inattentive, like my husband, do you lay around all the time on your days off work while there are particular projects that should really be attended to? Do you say you are tired and need to rest all the time? Are things done on your time schedule regardless of what anyone else wants or needs?

I could go on and on. But, the most improtant thing is your willingness to get a diagnosis and treatment plus your willingness to WORK at finding ways to compensate for your ADD and become a real partner to your wife once again. Your wife should also be educated on ADD and she too needs to realize some compensation needs to happen on her part too. It will be hard as she is probably very angry and hurt too after years of living like she was.

How long have you been married. Do you have children?

Steve,

After I posted this, I realized you have been around here a while and your question was probably hypothetical. I hope by the length of time you have been diagnosed your life is much better now.

Maybe you can post for us how things improved for you after diagnosis and treatment.

But in answer to your question, I am not sure about the statistics, but I can see why it would happen.

I dont have the patience to read these long posts! my personal experience with friends is that yes, affairs would fall under the thrillseeking and impulse part of ADD.

I dont have the patience to read these long posts! my personal experience with friends is that yes, affairs would fall under the thrillseeking and impulse part of ADD.
We sympathize with that, alright. We're some of the biggest offenders.

But these issues are deep and difficult; I doubt anyone posting here has anything but the best intentions, even though some of us feel stung by the harsh views sometimes suggested.

What would it take to help you understand in one short sentence that the labels "thrill seeking' and 'impulsive' are flawed? Or that we should stop thinking in these terms because they're holding back our understanding of the true nature of AD/HD and these relationship issues?

It's not easy…


Hi Steve,
You can now see that your undiagnosed, untreated ADD was the main problem that had your wife seeking an emotional relationship elsewhere. I guess it does not matter if this happens, but what I really am interested in knowing is if you have now sought a real diagnosis and treatment? Along with that are you now willing to step up and help your wife with whatever drove her to emotional support elsewhere? …
Ouch!

The point is, that's just not anything like the truth about these situations. It pains us to see that sense of what's going on settle in and take hold.

We have never seen a single convincing case of a person being driven by a situation to seek emotional support from another person. We all come with a grab bag of pre-established reasons to seek emotional support from others, and some of the reasons are bogus in the extreme.

But every time we look hard at an example, underneath we find the same exact reasons for acting that the person came into the relationship with. The idea that the situation was the driver (thus passing the responsibility to the other person involved) never turns out to be valid.

There just isn't any fair way to characterize it as being driven. It's just as legitimate to say that the person driven wasn't able to meet the person they were supposedly driven by in an honest emotional place.

In that sense, you could characterize it as abandonment by a person that wasn't ready or able to meet their emotional obligations.

And that is just as incorrect and unfair. But note none of this has anything to do with AD/HD, other than ADDers have as many peculiar ways of dealing with emotional situations as normals do.


…But in answer to your question, I am not sure about the statistics, but I can see why it would happen.
You might be able to see why, but it still doesn't happen. Drop the idea and try to understand why it seems that way to you, and things will quickly get much happier, we promise.

This is just the same old discrimination against someone different, wrapped in the idea that we can identify 'AD/HD character traits' and blame something unfortunate on them. The same kind of thinking led to the need for suffrage and equal rights, in a nation founded on the idea that we’re all created equal.

It is so easy to point a finger at anything that sticks out, without figuring out why it seems to stick out in the first place. Any ADDer is going to react differently in some ways than a normal, but difference is by definition differential. (Duh!)

It takes a whole other kind of fact to establish absolutes. Until then, all you can say is things are different. There isn't any right or wrong side; debate is useless, counterproductive, and ultimately damaging to all of us, simply because it perpetuates an unfair and incorrect stereotype.

ADDers aren't any different than normals when it comes to our goals for a relationship. Suggesting otherwise makes it sound like we're hurting people intentionally.

* * * *

SB, we'll get back to your last posts shortly…