Hi, seeking some advice. I strongly suspect that my partner has ADD and/or ASD, yet he will not take my concerns seriously and keeps telling me that I'm making it all up. (because I've got nothing better to do?)
I'll preface this, as this is mostly going to be a negative post by, letting you know that he is academically intelligent, he has a professional job role, he's a loving father, he tries to be a good spouse and he accepts me for who I am, numerous faults n all.
We've been together for 3 years and have a daughter who is about to turn 1. We only moved in with each other a year ago. Prior to that, these issues must have slipped under my radar because I wasn't living with him (and I was apparently living in an ignorant bubble).
However since we have been living together, there are just so many (behavioural) things that I struggling to cope with. When we were dating, he was very attentive & caring, but since we moved in & had a baby, his head always seems to be in the clouds.
The most prominent issues are:
Inability concentrate/pay attention to what's going on around him.
Inability to organise (pretty much anything).
Carelessness and neglect of details.
Inability to prioritise things.
Inability to make and keep eye contact.
Always losing/misplacing things.
Doesn't listen and has to be told things ad nauseam.
Doesn't keep or follow through on promises.
Inability to multitask, even with simple/mindless tasks.
So socially awkward he doesn't even have one close friend.
He cannot start or maintain chit-chat with anybody outside of the internet.
When somebody does engage him in a conversation, he generally doesn't know when you're supposed to talk and when your supposed to listen.
He uses formal language, which weirds people out in casual settings (including me).
He's often not aware of what conversations or language is appropriate for his audience.
He can't read body language or gestures.
He often stands in places where he's blocking people from walking, yet is oblivious to this. I often have to move him out of peoples way in the supermarket and make apologies for him.
He's not very good speaking, he mumbles, talks under his breath and often can't be heard or understood. Check out clerks at the store always find him difficult to speak to, so I have to take over and make apologies for him so relieve the awkwardness from the situation.
Seems awkward in his own body, has bad posture, weird ticks, and paces a lot.
He has two daughters from a previous relationship, both early teens. One diagnosed with ASD, the other ADHD.
His ex thought he had ASD.
I could probably keep on, and the list would seem infinite. He's also kept some pretty big secrets from me in the past, and it's taken him a good year to get out of the habit of lying (if he really has). I don't know if this is or not related to ADD/ASD, but it's also negatively impacted our relationship.
His lack of social grace means I always feel burdened in social situations, because I'm also having to keep an eye on his interactions & make apologies for him.
He never seems to be grounded and seems to hardly ever be aware of his surroundings. Which means I'm always helping him find things in front of his face, I'm always the one to catch the hazard that our daughter may be walking into or putting into her mouth, because he never notices things like that, I have to keep an eye on the traffic when he's driving, his driving is pretty bad, he bumps into curbs/bollards, I have to point out green/red lights to him, I have to tell him to slow down in residential areas where kids could come round the corners, I'm always having to tell him to speed when his dawdling and holding up others. etc etc.
Around the house, he does take on his fair share of chores (mostly) for which I am grateful for, however the job is always only half done, or done wrong, to the extent that it's easier if I just do everything myself, because I only have to do it all again after he's half done it.
The main chore that I'd like him to do is to take the bins out, yet he forgets 50% of the time.
He's so atrociously bad at DIY that he's now banned from everything DIY related except heavy lifting. In every task that he's turned his hand to, he's done an objectively bad job and or damaged something in the process (he's now damaged most of our most precious goods). The most damage he caused was when he completely flooded the house by nailing through 4 water pipes (that he wasn't supposed to have been anywhere near in the first place). He had undone 3 months of my hardwork decorating the place. I'm pretty proficient at DIY & decorating myself and so we are both feeling pretty emasculated on his behalf.
Coincidentally, I'm also better at anything that involves hand-eye coordination and quick thinking, such as sports, activities, games & gaming. Time and time again, he comes in dragging behind me, just like when we are walking, he's always dragging behind me, despite his legs being a foot and a half longer than mine.
When we were dating, he was so thoughtful, he would turn up with awesome gifts that I didn't even know I wanted (but I did!), even little things like battery packs (I'd casually mentioned how rubbish my phone battery was, a week later he'd turn up with a power bank for me) and all sorts of nice things like that, without ever having been asked to.
But since I fell pregnant, I can't get him to do the things I have asked of him. For example, when I was pregnant, he'd always leave the shower head out of my reach. This was annoying and dangerous when I was heavily pregnant, yet no matter how often I politely asked him to not do that, it seemed to fly over his head.
His kids live quite far away, it costs a lot of money for him to visit them and pay for accommodation, so he doesn't see them as much as he'd like to in an ideal world, so I've been banging on at him for a year to get into a routine where he calls them at least once a week between visits. To this day he has been unable to do that, despite us having several arguments about it and me making it clear that I'm also judging his parenting capacity from a distance. He loves his daughters, but his social awkwardness and inability to take action, means he is neglecting some of his parental duties, and I don't like that. I've told him that it doesn't cost a penny to pick up the phone (well, outside of the contract costs - and he's paying for their phones), and he should be making the effort with his kids, not the other way around. Fallen of deaf ears, He makes promises, he doesn't keep them.
In three years I can count all the times he's called me for a chat on one hand. I made it known a long time ago that I don't really like that, I look at other couples who call each other, just for random stuff and I envy them. He can't even pick up a phone for the important stuff, let alone the small stuff. He promised he would make an effort to call me when he's out of town visiting his kids, he never does.
I pay the household bills out of my account, and I make sure I pay early or on time. I wasn't very organised in my younger years, but as a mom now, I like to keep on top of that stuff. He's in charge of his bills and credit agreements from his account, and yet he's manages to miss payments and not complete his admin, leading to further financial problems. I feel like I'm the only person doing the adulting here (apart from him going out to work).
More recently I've asked him to stop doing two things 1)Stop leaving all the lights on upstairs, one, fine. two, maybe, three - no. 2)Please stop putting the loo roll on the rail where only you can reach -we have to keep it out of the baby's reach to - but I'm not a fan of having to get up and hop to it with my trousers around my ankles.
Yet despite being asked about 14 times in the last two weeks, he immediately proceeds to do the exact same thing. Doh.
I came across information regarding ASD & ADD about 6 months ago. Since then I've done a lot of reading, and from my perspective, he seems to fit the bill for at least one or maybe both of these things. He denies it till he's blue in the face. He did go to the doctors and he come back and said they said he had a "serotonin deficiency", he's taking tablets as those with ADD would, yet he denies the possibility of having ADD.
I've listed also the reasons why I think he has ADD/ASD and he has an excuse or explanation for everyone of them, which often devolves down to "Just because I did this things once doesn't mean I have ADD", completely negating the fact, we're not talking about once, we are talking about all the time. He also says "I'll keep my promises from now on, so you see, I can't have ADD", completely negating the fact that he broke a promise that very day.
He has two kids diagnosed with these issues, but he says "They didn't get it from me"
I said your ex thought you had ASD (she did) and he says "Her opinion doesn't count".
He took the ASD test and scored two points below "strongly suggestive of ASD", if I take the test as though I was him (from my perspective) he comes out in the ASD category.
My friend was going through and the ASSQ questionnaire with her 5 years old son the other day, and I discovered that my partner seemed to tick most the boxes on her certified test. He denied this when I brought it up. He seems to deny reality all the time.
I don't know what to do, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when we decided to try and make a life together, I've never had to deal with anything like this before in any of my past relationships, and I certainly don't know how to proceed when he will not take my concerns seriously. He was supposed to taking counselling, I've been waiting 4 months for him to do that, but he hasn't yet.
By this point, I just feel gaslighted all the time, and I've turned into the nagging bi*ch from hell, as I have to be, otherwise nothing would ever get done. We both know that this dynamic is not good for us and is not sustainable. I wanted to make it work for our baby, but I don't know how I can deal with his denial.
Any ideas?