I’ve been with this person for 11 years. We met in college. Same course, same classes. Apparently he was trying to get my attention for a long time, and I was completely clueless of his intentions until some friends kinda pushed us together and it happened… we shared an apartment with another friend for our last college year and it was wonderful. He went home on weekends, I did the same until my mom moved to the Netherlands and I was sort of living alone, supposedly just until I finished college…
Well after that I moved to the Netherlands as well and was still in a relationship with this person. But I had nothing besides him to go back to my country. After some time we manage to go live together in his grandparents house, while we saved money for a house and got ourselves some savings. This was the plan. The time to buy the house happened and we chose together and all. The house ended up being only in his name because my work contract was not permanent and the bank said it would be more difficult with me in it. All good… I thought. We live in this house for 6 years now. I was always chaotic since he met me, no faking that, so, I leave a lot of stuff around… not on purpose, but every time he call me out for one of the “lost trinkets” he would make me feel horrible and argue that is super easy to just put it away and don’t leave things around, that I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t want to. I genuinely tried not to leave things all over the place. It made me feel guilty and ashamed about that trait that I couldn’t control.
Some friends told me that I definitely had ADHD and after a lot of search I could se so much of myself on all the struggles. I told him, seeking some opinion and some comfort because it was overwhelming thinking about having it and only knowing it when I was almost 30. I started to find many advices and strategies to improve myself and shared all of those with him. Things he wouldn’t care seeing or would say that I was using ADHD as a way to victimise myself and get an excuse.
I was only trying to find ways to make our life together easier and maybe get some support or ideas to help me overcome most of the struggles… but no… zero empathy always.
So, i seek a diagnosis to prove him I was not playing the victim or being lazy I just functioned differently. he laughed when I showed him the results and the my therapist report. More years went by and even with so much explaining and trying to get him on board or be more patient with my dysfunctional brain I only get shamed and thrown down, to feel miserable about my existence. I’m tired of being with someone who doesn’t have a single drop of care in his bone. First is always him, then maybe if he gets anything in return, the others, including myself.
Sorry for the long text, and it’s just a part of what it’s currently making a hurricane on my mind. I’m sad, I never felt so bad about myself and my self esteem is barely there. I want to get away from this so badly, but have nowhere to go, it makes me cry every single day.
Forgot to say that I improved a lot, I don’t leave so much stuff around and that’s a real challenge for me. But still it’s not enough and hardly acknowledged. And my improvements were based on fear of judgement which makes me feel worse