Feedback Needed for my Evaluation of an ADD-man's Behaviour

[Lunacie]

Originally Posted by crossroads

>

Can ADD explain this, or is it again so selfish and ruthless, that I have to consider narcissism as a better explanation?

Originally Posted by ginniebean

I suspect good old fashioned cowardice. That's how I'd call it, and regardless of what subheading you put this under it's a deal killer.

I agree with ginniebean, cowardice is a much more sensible explanation than narcissism.

If you really thought so poorly of this person, why are you still looking for someone to tell you that he was the scum of the earth and he should come begging for your forgiveness? Let It go, for heaven's sake. Move on.

[mADD mike]

What I find interesting is that this MUST have been a disorder on HIS part, because otherwise who wouldn't want to live with a person that wants them to change who they are? It couldn't be her fault for nagging and pushing him to be someone he wasn't. She couldn't have just wanted a person so bad in her life that she failed to see the signs of who he really was, he must have suddenly changed when they got together in person. She is her "ideal self", therefore he must be a disordered mess of a person, because he didn't see things as the ideal like she does.

Well said Lunacie. It is not very attractive when a person gets up on their high horse and proceeds to tell their partner how they do everything wrong, because if there is a problem, it must be the other person, right. It can't be you, lol.

It is so much easier to point out the straw in another person's eye while ignoring the rafter in our own.

In the end, we only have one side of this story. It is OBVIOUS that he likely had some problems, and so does she. He is responsible for his, and she is responsible for hers. He's gone, she's left, and she's sitting here analyzing him to make herself feel better. Doesn't exactly seem "ideal".

[FrazzleDazzle]

Crossroads, when a relationship ends, and we don't understand what exactly happened, in striving to understand, we learn about others, but mostly about ourselves. Since your SO is now out of the picture, and he left you and yourself having refused further evaluation of his issues, you are truly just left with you. I kind of understand what you are doing today, and know that others get frustrated with the stuckness some of us obsessives can get in figuring things out. I know what you are going through, the need for knowledge and understanding, the need to analyze it, find justice in it. Just be careful of your motives for doing so remain healthy and positive and geared towards your own inner enlightenment. It was hard for me to just drop the subject for me when it came to this guy, as well.

When that guy left me (he had been a friend of mine since high school too), I was not only devastated, but, in order to make sense of something quite intangible, I went to seek knowledge on why guys do this. Is this normal? Was he quirky? Did he have deep underlying issues? Was he suffering some strange disorder?? Was he simply unable to provide what he so desperately wanted to give me? I think I could try to pin down all sorts of labels and diagnoses on him, but what good would it do to change the situation? Nothing....

No matter what I learned, I could not justify anything about why he left through my own eyes, though I know he loved me and offered me the moon and the stars, for some reason, they became out of reach, and I learned to be at peace with that and respect that of him, though I can never share that with him. There was no justice, other than what I was able to fragment together what may have been going through his mind at the time due to outside circumstances, to learn more about men and their neurological innate differences from women, and take that information with me into my own life and dealings with other men, either in relationships, in the workplace, or family members. I encourage you to do the same, in your own time, when you are ready.

I just wanted to let you know I understood.

I also found this link here on this forum I though might help you at some point on detaching with love. I hope you find it helpful.

http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16248

[CptNemo]

I read this.
I read it all...well....all posts that were 500 words or less.
Those,I skimmed over.

I must be selfish,because I'm only thinking about *my* feelings right now.
Narcissistic,too,it would appear.

Does the reason he left you *have* to be ADHD related?
You seem to think so,like a need to have this bad experience validated by something beyond your influence.
Sure,he seems to have a couple of ADHD traits.
Even more of his traits/actions *could* be explained by ADHD,but just as easily by other disorders,such as:
1)He's a guy
2) He's not perfect, and has more than his share of flaws that can't be attributed to a few disorders,like many people.
3) He wasn't raised to appreciate the finer points of manners.
4) He just really wasn't happy where he was at,and felt no need to bother with the superlatives.

In the countless hours that I have been reading on this forum,I have never felt so trivialized by such condescension.

You did nothing wrong.
It was out of your control.
Not even Sarkozy could have changed him.

[FrazzleDazzle]

Gah, I meant to add at the end of my last chapter up there, that although I would like to romanticize the whole ordeal I had with this guy on why he could not stay due to issues on his own end, I also leave open the possibility in my heart that he left simply because I may have had stinky breath.

[crossroads]

mADDmike:
What button of you did I press? Your hostility matches the one of my SO so perfectly, whenever I wanted to talk about issues. You seem to be his kin, maybe he has whispered your post 77 into your ears.

To the others: I will keep up with all your nice postings as much as I can.

[crossroads]

FrazzleDazzle, thanks for the link to the Detachment thread.

When I started detachment about half a year ago, it was the beginning of the end, because it was the beginning of estrangement.
Until then, I had not doubt, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life together, and all I wanted was to reduce the daily pain including my underlying chronic resentment for unresolved issues.

The incident about the slyly bought plain ticket as told in posting 72 was to me such an unresolved issue. Obviously we had a deep implicit dissent about how to move on from such incidents.
When I flew over to be with him again about two months later, he had chosen the less unpleasant alternative, that he would rather be with me in foreign country than be alone in his own. In his mind, he had moved forward, made some progress, all was well, we could leave it behind and forget about it.
But I was deeply hurt, and I had spent some weeks in agony. In my own perception, it had been abasement, humiliation, indignity, mortification. The disrespect of not discussing his wish to leave first, the shock of the betrayal, the disrespect of me just being the less of two evils and not a positive choice, were open wounds.
There were more similar incidents, I described just one as an example. Each left me with some emotional wounds.
Those wounds did not heal, as long as he felt entitled to be forgiven by doing nothing more than indicating his willingness to continue with me, as long as he forgave himself based upon his own excuses without considering the emotional damage upon me.
He felt entitled to unearned forgiveness, while I felt that he owed me justice and liability to earn forgiveness.
With justice I mean that he had to fully acknowledge rationally and consciously, that disrespect and betrayal were not acceptible based on shared values. He had full knowledge of my values and expectations concerning a relationship, before we met, and he had agreed upon. Therefore justice means that he evaluates his own behaviour in comparison with what he had accpeted.
With liability I mean that he needed not only verbally accept responsibility for my emotional wounds, as what means justice, but in addition feels the obligation to make amends by all efforts needed to undo the damage, to heal my wounds. Such amends would have been any strife and struggle on his side, to be unselfish, to do caring things for me no by projecting his own needs upon me, but by asking for my real needs and by having enough respect to believe me that they existed and were real.

I wanted to forgive him, but he refused to earn it. There was never justice nor liability. The harder I tried to explain this, the more he blocked. He understood as much as that I subjectively felt deeply hurt, but somehow he seemed to consider this as my own defect to be so affected and not in anyway related to what he had been doing.
When I started to tell him, that I cannot marry someone who hurts me as he does, he attempted to appease me with outward compliance. He verbally took responsibility for his weaknesses, but there was neither justice nor liability. When that did not make me feel forgiveness, as it was so phoney, he took it to a more dramatic stage. He actually kneeled on the floor crying, begging me to marry him and to let bygone be bygone. He was like a beggar, who begs for food while refusing to earn his living. I felt repulsion from that scene. It was such a cheap drama. He tried everything except earning my emotional forgiveness with justice and liability.
I start to suspect that this is narcissistic and not ADD.

At that point I started detachment by withdrawing in spending less time together, avoiding pain by not attempting to talk in vain to get my needs met. It just served him the same purpose, avoiding pain. Thus our life as a couple drifted to a life under the same roof until he decided that there were no more benefits for him, while I had withdrawn to signal to him, that the situation had become unbearable.

Detachment is dangreous, when there are unresolved pending issues.

[Lunacie]

Originally Posted by crossroads

mADDmike:
What button of you did I press? Your hostility matches the one of my SO so perfectly, whenever I wanted to talk about issues. You seem to be his kin, maybe he has whispered your post 77 into your ears.

To the others: I will keep up with all your nice postings as much as I can.

I felt just as hostile as mADDmike seems to be, but I tried to keep it civil so I wouldn't get banned. Again, you'd rather point out the splinter in another's eye while ignoring the log in your own eye.

You basically came in here and asked us if all the flaws you saw in the man were caused by ADHD, not realizing that it would insult all of us who have ADHD. It seem you wonder if having this disorder causes it's sufferers (including us) to have terrible manners, and to not care whether those manners offend others and embarrass those we're with.

We know that having ADHD causes us to have certain issues, and we laugh and cry with each other over the problems they have caused us. We do the best we can, but we cannot change our physical natures anymore than someone who is short can grow six inches because their lover wants them to be taller. As much as we'd love to please our lovers, some things we cannot change ... and I know I got tired of hearing someone who said he loved me beotch because I couldn't change. I'm sure he thought I wouldn't change but he was wrong.

I have a granddaughter who has been diagnosed with Autism, and she has done a lot of things over the years that drive me bonkers, but I simply have to accept who she is and love her for who she is. That has made her much more willing to learn how to handle her issues in a better way than all the disapproval and attempts to correct her ever could have. If someone sets the bar so high that we cannot reach it, we stop trying and no improvement is ever made.

You have very high standards, and there's nothing wrong with that, but not everyone is going to meet those qualifications, and it's just as silly to blame them for that as to blame someone for being too short.

[crossroads]

You basically came in here and asked us if all the flaws you saw in the man were caused by ADHD, not realizing that it would insult all of us who have ADHD.

NO, there is NO insult in asking questions with the purpose of learning. I did not ask questions for the purpose to find prejudices confirmed.

I quote myself:

... resume, what I have learned so far from both threads:

ADD does not impede people to reflect, who they are and how they want to be. ADD does not impede people to have values and to agree upon values. When people with ADD have trouble, it is to act in accordance with values and agreement, and they do get aware of this discrepancy.

While my SO was very ADD in his impatience, impulses and outburst of anger, and in his dysfunctional communication style, his resistance to any conscious agreement on values as a guidance seems to have reasons, that are not ADD. I suspect narcissism.

Does that sound like an insult?

[Lunacie]

Originally Posted by crossroads

NO, there is NO insult in asking questions with the purpose of learning. I did not ask questions for the purpose to find prejudices confirmed.

I quote myself:



Does that sound like an insult?

Really? It seemed to me like you wanted to have your prejudices confirmed.

While my SO was very ADD in his impatience, impulses and outburst of anger, and in his dysfunctional communication style, his resistance to any conscious agreement on values as a guidance seems to have reasons, that are not ADD. I suspect narcissism.

It also sounds like you were trying to get him to agree to your values, not find a compromise you could both live with. If that's how it actually went, then I don't call that narcissism. I call it refusal to be subjugated.

It's possible I'm reading things into your situation based on my own past experiences, but it seems I'm not the only one coming away with this impression.

[crossroads]

It also sounds like you were trying to get him to agree to your values, not find a compromise you could both live with.

He agreed on some basic common values, like basing all decision upon agreement, BEFORE we even considered to meet. I had explicitly told him my concept of a relationship, it was very clearly stated in my profile on the dating site. When I contacted him, he had the liberty to read my profile and tell me, that he disagrees with my concept and my values, and good luck to me.
He had the opportunity to negotiate for compromises, before deciding to meet, before getting involved.
But to first accept shared values and get involved, and afterwards behave in violation of what he had accepted and demand a compromise is not correct and not fair.

[mADD mike]

Originally Posted by crossroads

mADDmike:
What button of you did I press? Your hostility matches the one of my SO so perfectly, whenever I wanted to talk about issues. You seem to be his kin, maybe he has whispered your post 77 into your ears.

To the others: I will keep up with all your nice postings as much as I can.

You wrote a 50,000,000 word post outlining every detail of a man that you disgusted or took issue with, but my posts have hostility? Lol. Perhaps you aren't as good at reading people as you think. You mistake sarcasm for hostility. At least I got you to notice my post, and perhaps you would learn something from it if you weren't so busy trying to point out the mistakes of everyone but yourself.

Oh, and we can't be kin, because I actually have impeccable table manners when warranted, and would have ran like the wind if a person tried to control me as you did him. You seem to think that he suddenly changed when you got together in person, and I wonder if he may have actually thought the same. Perhaps that's why he eventually left. What if he was actually doing the same to you, hoping that you would meet his hopes and dreams, and when he found out that wasn't going to happen, his "ideal self" told him to run.

You see, it could have very well been working the other way. He could have been doing the same with you that you were doing with him. Relationships are about meeting in the middle on some things. You were too busy trying to force him to see things exactly as you see him, as your verbiage would indicate in your posts. You hoped that he would come to his senses and see things like you did, since you are of course, the "ideal" that he could only hope to achieve.

Ignore my posts as you see fit. Some people in life hope to have their ears tickled, to hear what they want to hear, in this case that your guy has problems that this can all be blamed on so that you have little to no culpability and can feel better without grieving emotionally the loss of someone you cared about. That in itself isn't healthy, nor "ideal". Living in a world where you can convince yourself to ignore human emotion is not living in an "ideal" world. Pain is part of life. You need to feel it at times. It makes you appreciate the good times that much more.

So, trick yourself into believe whatever you wish, and ignore reality. That's all I've tried to bring to this thread. I haven't been here to attack you, merely to point out that there is a balance, that it takes TWO to make a relationship work, and when it breaks down in some way, there is usually some fault to be had on BOTH sides.

I can also speak to what you describe because at one point in my own life, I was you, though not to the extreme, but if I had not been awakened to my senses and made it to your age, I very possibly could have hit the extremes that you exemplify. I was down the road to arrogance, to thinking I was the standard by which others needed to be measured, to a friendless, wifeless existence devoid of true happiness or emotion altogether, as intellectual reasoning would have been my partner in life, protecting me from all of those bad and imperfect people out there. But, I got a dose of reality that hit me right between the eyes. Who would have thought that even I could have been imperfect, that I had flaws? Ludicrous! Then I got older and found that I could no longer hide my ADD, which of course I didn't even know I had, but my coping mechanisms were no longer strong enough to hide it, and I had to admit that I had a problem. You have glaring problems as well. You can address them and feel the pain of human emotion that you are so desperately trying to squelch with intellectualism, and be a "whole" person, which seems more ideal, or you can keep blaming everyone else, reasoning on things that reasoning may not always apply to accurately, and ignoring the hole in your own life that is left by such thinking.

I hope you can turn this thing around and find true happiness. But you have to come down off that high horse and feel the pain of walking through this life on the same level as everyone else, the intellectual and those that can't tie their own shoes, the rich and the poor, those that love everyone and those with a chip on their shoulders, etc. Find BALANCE between your intellect and emotions, between the way you look at yourself and the way you look at others, between the qualities that you try to display, etc., and you'll find much greater happiness than by judging others against yourself as though you were some sort of "ideal", which I can tell you with confidence that you are clearly not.

[CptNemo]

Originally Posted by crossroads

I am taking a deep breath and I try for a moment to resume, what I have learned so far from both threads:

ADD does not impede people to reflect, who they are and how they want to be. ADD does not impede people to have values and to agree upon values. When people with ADD have trouble, it is to act in accordance with values and agreement, and they do get aware of this discrepancy.

Doctors have been trying to understand this for over 50 years,and they still can't generalize it in such a simplistic fashion.
Are you really that interested in what makes us tick?
There is a member (KMiller) who will gladly provide you with enough documentation for you to get another Masters.
Are you planning on trying to find another partner with ADHD?

I think you can save a lot of time and grief by not doing that. Maybe put it on your list of things to watch out for,for your next connection.

While my SO was very ADD in his impatience, impulses and outburst of anger, and in his dysfunctional communication style, his resistance to any conscious agreement on values as a guidance seems to have reasons, that are not ADD. I suspect narcissism.

Yes,those are some negative traits associated with ADHD.
They are also associated with more common reasons.
Maybe there's an easier answer.

He had full knowledge of my values and expectations concerning a relationship, before we met, and he had agreed upon. Therefore justice means that he evaluates his own behaviour in comparison with what he had accpeted.
With liability I mean that he needed not only verbally accept responsibility for my emotional wounds, as what means justice, but in addition feels the obligation to make amends by all efforts needed to undo the damage, to heal my wounds. Such amends would have been any strife and struggle on his side, to be unselfish, to do caring things for me no by projecting his own needs upon me, but by asking for my real needs and by having enough respect to believe me that they existed and were real.

You mentioned on the quote previous to this one,that you felt his actions were so unscrupulous,that not even ADHD could take the blame,so therefore it must be narcissism.
I can't seem to recall the efforts or compromises that you made for him,but I do see some trends and statements that do apply.Frankly I get shivers when I read that last quote.
Here is an excerpt on the definition of narcissism from wiki:
"denoting vanity, conceit, egotism or simple selfishness. Applied to a social group, it is sometimes used to denote elitism or an indifference to the plight of others."

Is it remotely possible that you might fit one of these denotations?

To me, it was betrayal and outrageous, both times. He just owed it to me to talk about such a decision before doing it.

Am I oversensitive, overreacting? Is someone in a committed relationship entitled to do such things by impulse, without even consulting the other?

Can ADD explain this, or is it again so selfish and ruthless, that I have to consider narcissism as a better explanation?

Well,we are selfish and ruthless (don't worry...questions seeking the path of enlightenment cannot by definition be considered offensive,and this of course includes the hideous traits you mentioned above),but I do humbly suggest that a different reason is the culprit.
Based on the definition,I would also be inclined to rule out narcissism.

This is indeed a tough cookie to crack.
But why put yourself through all this turmoil?
Just stay away from ADHD men!
I have my own list of types of women who I'll never date again,and I have learned it by trial and error.
I seem to add to it everyday,but I am narrowing down my list!
Ginniebean alluded to possibly lowering her standards each year,so in a mere 20 years I might make the cut!

I hope you find the peace you're looking for.

[FrazzleDazzle]

"he felt entitled to be forgiven by doing nothing more than indicating his willingness to continue with me,"
"He felt entitled to unearned forgiveness, while I felt that he owed me justice and liability to earn forgiveness."
"I wanted to forgive him, but he refused to earn it."
"earning my emotional forgiveness with justice and liability."

Crossroads, forgiveness is something WE do, something that WE OFFER others, out of our own need for justice and our own inner peace. Forgiveness closes doors for us that cannot be otherwise closed and allows us to move past the painful circumstance, past things that we will never receive. It's nice when others ask it for us, but rarely is that the case, and is likely one of the reasons that people continue on with painful relationships way past their prime of usefulness. One attempts to continue to wait for blood from a turnip, rather than simply walking away, and forgiving the other and oneself.

"to do caring things for me not by projecting his own needs upon me, but by asking for my real needs and by having enough respect to believe me that they existed and were real."

Here, you are spot on, from HIS point of view from his shoes. He could well be on another forum somewhere saying these exact words towards you.......you cannot see that you were projecting your own needs upon him as well, not seeing that his own existed and were real. He needs freedom to be who he is and loved for who he is, faults and all, and you did not respect him, either. Obviously, he is still single for a reason, and his concepts of relation may be rather skewed and hampering his goals, but they exist, nonetheless for him........and, from what you write, he had no other needs but to change and have his inner self align with yours (which they don't), to provide things for you that he does not possess in order to make you happy and stick around. Those were probably not his needs at all.

To be very gentle, and try to drive the point home once more, you were trying to force this already-whole individual into a different mold for your own good and happiness and not truly, fully accepting him for who he is.

No one, even you, should give a poop that he laid it all out for you online before you met. ALL relationships change after a matter of months or so, despite our best efforts to be who we want to be in order to not be lonely; to be loveable. If we all put on our profiles that we will unconditionally love our partner minus a few character flaws, no one would write back. Perhaps you made the impression that YOU would and he felt that at last here is someone who will accept me for who I am and enjoy my company. I'm sure he had NO idea that he would be in for such a character-whipping. Don't you SEEEEEEEE?????? It does not matter one iota that his character may be flawed. You had no right to character-whip him. In the context of relationships, we accept those as they are, or walk away.

We are only responsible and capable of controlling our own characters and our responses and reactions to others.

Please read the link I gave you regarding detaching with love. It's not about the process of leaving or separating from someone. From his text: "she learnt how to get free of my destructive ways without losing sight of her love for me or her ability to care for herself."

[crossroads]

Forgiving needs to be earned.
Example: One of two sisters let the other use her car, but never without an agreement for every new instance. Some day, she knows, that her sister this time would not let her have the car. Without asking, slyly, she takes the car anyway, causes an accident and damages the car.
The culprit needs to do two things. She needs to acknowledge that taking the car was incorrect and betrayal, and she needs to make full amends by paying for the damage. Only then has she earned the forgiving by her sister.
With emotional damage, the liability is the same.