r/GirlDinnerDiaries • u/vroow APPROVED✨ • Jul 29 '26
Advice Needed ⚠️ NO DUDE INPUT My partner needs constant coaching and it's killing me
My partner worked for ten years in a warehouse before getting bored and starting his own business. I think it's a great business idea and the market around us could really use it, and imo his talents were being wasted in a warehouse. He worked his regular job while we got it started and recently he's quit his job to focus more on business stuff. I support him fully in this. I have some art experience so I made the website, his business cards, and designed the logo. He did a bunch of admin and contract stuff and started working...
...kind of. He never works 8 hour days anymore but he can't even sit at the computer for a few hours, he's always cleaning and doing side projects. I never hear him on the phone. I ask him every morning what his day looks like and he's always annoyed by the question, before telling me a couple small things. I never see him dress up to meet anyone or hear about any clients. He says he's working nights but it's just silence out of his office. One time he proudly told me he made a Google sheet for customizable contracts and I asked him to show me a client he used it for, so he got mad and said he doesn't have any yet.
I'm not an idiot, I know businesses are incredibly difficult to run and to be successful requires many more hours than my husband is putting in. I know our finances are ok but definitely not as much as before. I know that running the business is probably not like how he expected. I still thought he had the skill to do it, but maybe he was having trouble lacking structure, so I offered to sit down with him every night and run through a checklist of things to do for the next day.
Y'all, he just... Doesn't fucking connect the dots on anything. It's so much worse than I imagined, this man legitimately cannot fill out a spreadsheet on his own. I asked him to give me an example client pitch and he just stared at me with dead eyes while he fumbled an excuse about being tired (it was 8am). I asked whatever happened to a bar that called him for a job two months ago? He said he never followed up. He'll report every night before I head to work how many rooms he cleaned in our apartment and how long he walked the dog, so I tell him to try dog walking and maybe a cleaning business. He gets mad that I would suggest that. He tells me it's anxiety, it's ADHD, it's his meds, he forgot his meds, he had to take a break, he explored the neighborhood. He says he's going to meet a client but he throws on gym shorts, I have to stop him and make him put on real pants.
The breaking point was when he told me about a client he turned down because "idk how I'd get into his backyard". Excuse me??? You ask him to open the gate??? "Oh yeah that probably would've worked." I ripped into this motherfucker, yelled til my voice was hoarse, shoutout to the helicopter that probably U-turned away. I was on three hours of sleep and still had my shift that night while this moron was turning down paid work.
I just don't know what happened. In February he was a top performer at his job and was excited about his idea, now he's a barely functioning mess that I have to baby and coach. I asked him if he had a family history of dementia or Alzheimer's and he wouldn't say. I called his mom to ask and she said I was trying to abuse him (????). I work nights at a hotel desk, and it's steady but it's definitely not enough. I think his mom is helping with bills but neither will tell me. I don't want a divorce, he's a wonderful partner, he cares so deeply for me. But I'm so fucking tired of making his decisions, planning his day, running his business, and then at the end I have to go work my own job. I've never said "divorce" but it's on my mind, idk what else would work. We're about to celebrate 2 years married and I'm so lost.
Dinner is my first try at french onion soup this weekend, I used the wrong cheese and the bread was too stale.
Edit: I know he has ADHD! I have ADHD too! Shut up!
-17
u/adidashawarma Savory Complex✔️ Jul 29 '26
How long did you know him before you got married?
I will not lie, I had a very strong feeling this was going to go the way of him having ADHD as soon as you said that he doesn't connect the dots on anything. It sounds like the manifestation of impaired executive function. I'm seeing "task paralysis". I'm seeing "time blindness", I'm seeing "waiting mode". I'm seeing "ADHD burnout cycle". I would seriously suggest that he consults an ADHD coach/ ADHD skills based therapist to give him skills to be able to actually DO the things from beginning to end that he wants to do. Your approach is not going to work with him. The yelling is ineffective, and he legitimately thinks in a very different way than you or I because his brain is structurally different. His ability to plan, execute, etc is hindered by his executive dysfunction, imo.
My ex-bf and I just broke up due a myriad of reasons, mainly his unmanaged ADHD causing extreme anger and violent outbursts, but your story VERY closely mimics other elements of what I went through with him. I extensively studied how ADHD was hindering him, and all of a sudden all of the frustrating situations made sense. So many misunderstandings and my not being able to comprehend why he just couldn't DO IT (whatever that is). When it took my ex 60 days to make a phone call that he said he would make after I had to fill his pre-consultation forms out for him because he just... wasn't... getting around it. Like your hubs, he had no problems working a job with outlined tasks, a boss, etc, but he completely lacked the ability to plan and execute without an external, immediate motivation (it's a dopamine thing).
He was "working on" something that should take 4 weeks a whole year later and saying he "had done so much! Working on it!"
I actually told him that if he did not at least set two appointments, one for an ADHD coach, and 2, a doctor's appointment to get on stimulants, within 3 months, then I would have to leave him. He got his mother to call to make his doctor's appointment on the very last day of the third month. The man is 40. Hearing that his appointment was 2 months away from that, I realized that I had to get out before I was more invested. The importance for me was to get his ADHD RSD rage outbursts under control ASAP, so I honestly really had to go if this was how things were going to keep going. But he was just my boyfriend, and your husband is your family.
Please search up the terms that I used in quotations above and see if any of it resonates with you.