What's it like to be normal?

[BrokenArrowzzz]

Just that really. I always assumed I was normal, but in the past two years I've realised after seeing a post online about adult ADHD that I have it. Total text book ADHD - I tick all the boxes and am currently trying to get a diagnosis. I have been told my whole life that I've got so much potential, but I just need to apply myself, I need to try harder, etc. I've never really achieved much despite being very clever and creative. I'm just super awkward and have very low confidence, and don't know how to conduct myself in the workplace. I'm terrible at replying to emails and texts ever since having a second child, and have quite bad anxiety.

I have struggled to make and keep friends for most of my adult life. I thought I had friends as an adult, but I've realised they're mostly just acquaintances. I don't know how to act around people. I'm terrible at remembering faces and names, and the details about their lives that they tell me. I can have a conversation with the friends I have a great time when we're out, but it ends there. We don't keep in touch day to day, I don't know details about their everyday lives, their relationships with their husbands, etc. like most friends gossip about. I've never had anyone over for dinner, never been invited round to anyone's either. I am shy and introverted and don't have a lot of awareness about my surroundings. I thought I was closer friends than I actually was with one of my 'friends', but we have drifted apart over the years and now I only see her sporadically at the school gates, or during a group dinner with friends if we all go out. She's quite aloof with me and generally keeps chit chat to a minimum, but I know that she has other friends from our children's class over for dinner, and they even go for holidays with other families. I don't know where I go wrong. It gets me very down a lot of the time when I think about it (I also have RSD - rejection sensitivity disorder which is very common with ADHD).

Basically I'm just curious what it's like to be normal. How can I figure out what I'm doing wrong in life and with friendships? I'm married, but I'm not super touchy feely with my husband (partly because he yells at me quite badly for all of my ADHD faults, but refuses to acknowledge that my struggles are real, and just tells me to take responsibility for myself and stop being lazy). He says I'm emotionless (I'm not really). I'm a very sensitive person, but over the last few years I feel I've just got so overwhelmed with life I don't know how to conduct myself. Daily etiquette and conversation skills are often a struggle. The world seems so foreign to me now.

Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong and what puts people people off? I'm a good person. But I don't think others see that, and they just see me as a flake.

I’m not sure I can answer the normal bit generally, but i’d definitely consider your marriage. Your husband sounds horrible and abusive, it’s certainly not normal for a partner to yell at you and tell you you are emotionless.

Aside from the other stuff, you're in an abusive relationship and whatever you do you need to consider your options on that front. Please don't waste your life with someone who yells at you and belittles your issues. Decent people don't do that. He's a bully

Wow. Maybe I have adhd. I honestly could have written this post. Every word, except the bit about the husband. Don’t have one of those. Never managed to keep a relationship beyond 5 years.

I know it's not and he isn't very kind to me a lot of the time when he yells, but it's because he's so fed up with me being useless and not achieving anything or contributing to the house, or doing enough to help out with the kids so in all honesty I can understand why he gets so upset with my sometimes. He does a lot and is at his wits end with me because I don't change - because I can't change. And I hate it. I'm trying to figure out and understand what's normal

If someone is at their wits end because they need you to change, that doesn't excuse them for treating you disrespectfully. The right thing to do in his circumstances is the thing that respects him, respects you, and respects the kids: leave. There is no excuse for the way he treats you.

With regard to normal, who do you think gets to decide what normal is? Is it the people up the road who happily live in each others' pockets, send each other messages every 5 minutes, spend all their money on having a happy day each day, and eat a lot of ice cream, or is it the people up the road the other way, who are in touch whenever they need to be, like to put some money aside for a rainy day, and eat as healthily as they can?

There is no normal. Or, there are lots of 'normals'. Our responsibility, as adults, isn't to try to fit in with description of 'normal'. It's to find and maintain our own normal. What's normal for you won't be normal for someone else. Your responsibility to yourself is to find people to be around who are happy with your normality, not to fit in with someone else's normality.

Stop having your 'self' squashed by him. Get out, and allow you to be you. There are no rules. I'm not neurotypical either, and had to make this change. I went from having partners who didn't understand me, and got pissed off with me all the time, to my now lovely partner, who supports me and finds the things that were previously regarded as 'faults' to be either appealing or unconcerning. It's do-able, but only after you accept that you don't need to change, and that if someone thinks you should, then they need to go somewhere else.

You are normal. You have a shit husband, and you’re persevering too hard with friendships where you’ve outgrown each other. Neither of these will be due to or caused by ADHD, if that’s your eventual diagnosis. Your husband will be making your reactions to and behaviour in situations worse, and I suspect it’s very likely that if he was out of the picture, many of the “issues” you think you’re at fault for would disappear entirely, or you’d realise that you’re much better at coping with them or adjusting than you previously thought you were.

I also have ADHD but my life and relationships with others are night and day from yours. I have structures and strategies which I’ve learned over the years which I use to keep myself organised and focussed on life admin and at work: I’m a Company Secretary in financial services, it is basically my job to be incredibly organised, know exactly what needs to be done and when and and never drop a ball; I’m really good at my job but that wasn’t always the case and it was an excellent ADHD coach who taught me the things I use now. I have excellent friendships, because I long ago stopped making an effort with the friendships which weren’t bringing me much and started focusing on making new friendships which do. And I have a supportive partner who adores me and doesn’t cast blame when I make a mistake. When you have these things, you realise that your neurodiversity is conquerable.

When you have these things, you realise that your neurodiversity is conquerable

Love what you've said, @ComtesseDeSpair, all of it but this. Thinking it's something that needs to be conquered is part of the problem. Realising it can be embraced and appreciated is a better way to phrase it. Sounds like this is what you meant, really, anyway. Sorry if I'm being pedantic - just think it's important for OP not to be trying to conquer bits of herself.

Oh wow, would you mind telling me more about your ADHD coach? I have recently moved into a new role at work that will require me to be very organised and be on top of my emails, as well as have some fun creative aspects to it. I'm really struggling with keeping on top of my life right now. I think I'm going to have to ask my husband to help pay for a private diagnosis for me because I've been on the NHS waitlist for 2 years, and am no where near the top of it. But I know a diagnosis and medication won't just change my life overnight.

As for friendships, I think I'm so self conscious of what other people will think of me that I never really open up to friends. I don't tell them about the issues I'm having at home, or with work or my kids etc. I don't want them to judge me or think my life is so messed up so I keep everything very positive and high level. I'm worried that if I were to ever say anything to a friend about my mental health or ADHD or what I'm struggling with day to day they'd think badly of me or gossip to others about me to I admit I can sometimes keep them at arms length.

As for my husband, we've been together for over 20 years. He keeps saying I wasn't always like this, and he doesn't know what happened to me. Stress, family and kids and work and general life is what happened to me. I can't keep on top of it all and I'm so overwhelmed.

I know people say I'm making excuses for my husband, and I should leave him, but he's all I've ever known. He provides a good life for me and our family. I earn such a low wage despite having a bachelors degree and working for a large company, that I would be living on the breadline in a council house if I went out on my own and that worries the hell out of me.