I spent plenty of time while my husband was alive trying to make sense of certain behaviours in an effort to understand him and to try to improve our relationship, and the relationships he shared with other people. At times, ADHD explained so much, but other times I did wonder if it was OCPD. Various articles strongly pointed towards that personality trait as the explanation for certain rigidities.
Maybe he fitted fairly snuggly into both categories. We will never know since he never underwent any sort of assessment at all other than visiting my doctor at my request who told him at that initial appointment that he likely had ADHD.
Since our first grandson is now officially diagnosed with AuDHD it opened the door to question if that is actually what was going on. It makes me sad that I didn't know this then and maybe could have offered more support than I did to him.
I was with my daughter and her children yesterday and we both expressed our sorrow that my husband won't be here to support T. because they would have had a wonderful relationship together and they would have understood one another.
My husband, when we lived in the US, had a very dynamic job in a very loud and fast-moving environment. I often wondered how he could stand it, but I think it offered him the stimulus he wanted for his brain and his ability to hyperfocus meant that the loud environment wasn't a concern.
Socially, it was probably a lot of pressure, since he wasn't able to read the room, didn't realize when he had taken up all the space, and maybe he bombarded them with his opinions. I think that he had some allies in the company and his decision to move to another company where there were no true allies created the disaster than befell him. I think you have to appreciate what his brain had to offer at the same time as recognizing that his personality had rigidities that he couldn't actually help.
When we returned to Australia, he made some efforts to look for a job, but his inclination was to work for himself, and he did that for the rest of his life. I was fundamentally placid and accepting of his choices and that's very much the way he wanted me. We jogged along in this way until some of his choices were financially catastrophic and that's when I started to suggest that we couldn't just go on in the same way.
I didn't actually realize that change or transition was going to be as difficult as it proved to be, and I certainly didn't understand how the same mistake could be made repeatedly. There was something going on in his mind that I couldn't convince him to see was not serving him. I think the need for risk, for stimulation, was the ADHD and the inability to change his thinking was the Autism.
The main reason why I think people should be assessed is that they can come to understand why they do what they do. Shame stops people from getting answers, but we are doing much better at this as a society and it's really vital that loved ones come to understand what is going on.
Imagine if I knew decades ago what compelled him to do things. I would have denied him access to my investments for example, in a subtle way. I would have suggested that the ADHD was compelling him to take chances that were too risky, and whilst I would not have stopped him from his choices, I would not have allowed him to bet the bank on them.
I would have appreciated this brain type wanted a lot of things to be the same and that his need for a day to look the same was comforting to him. I would have put no pressure on him to think outside the square but if we both knew why he wanted sameness, we could have been kinder to one another around wanting different things and accommodating each other.
I actually did accommodate him - there was no other way - but I could have done so without resentment if I had understood that change was impossible.
I do actually feel softer towards the guy I dated several months ago now, pretty sure now that he was autistic also, but I still continue to feel that I deserve one shot at a relationship with a man who has a similar brain to me and where we can accommodate each other's needs without a lot of work. The research does indicate that it is best usually to stay within one's neurotype in romantic relationships at the same time as accommodations can be made to have a successful relationship with mixed neurotypes.
For us, the love was there in spades. It kept us together for decades and decades. I recently found in a notebook he kept, a letter to all of us written before his cancer diagnosis. He was awaiting a routine colonoscopy and decided to pen a letter to us in case he didn't make it. It expressed his deep heartfelt love for all of us, and he gave us advice - fundamentally to always persist in doing what was right and meaningful.
It was on the day I turned seventy when I found the letter and I sent a copy immediately to all the children. My eldest son who has struggled in his marriage told me later that day as we sat on a city veranda that several couples he knew with very young children were getting divorced and it was this message of persisting through struggle that had carried him through the dark days. Hours later we got word that his offer on a house in Sydney had been accepted and we both knew that it was the persistence over the past year or so, the determination to stick together through the roughest of patches, that meant we had found a way through to the future.
This is what I mean. It's not one thing or another but this joining of various traits that kept us loving my dear husband no matter what he did. He made some doozy of decisions, but he never stopped trying to do better in his own way and he never stopped loving us to the ends of his days. It has kept us whole and it has kept us together, utterly together forever.
