Of course, your answer might be: \u201cI\u2019d happily spend the money on his therapy \u2014 if it were working.\u201d And this brings us to the issue of progress. For you, progress would be a \u201cchange to his behavior,\u201d yet you also say he has deficits in attention which lead to the very behaviors you understandably find so frustrating. (Attention-deficit disorder without hyperactivity is now diagnosed as A.D.H.D., inattentive type.)<\/p>\n
Some people with A.D.H.D. respond well to medication, and if he hasn\u2019t already consulted with a psychiatrist, exploring this possibility might be a limit you can set. But if it turns out that medication isn\u2019t indicated \u2014 he\u2019s tried it before with no benefit, or he can\u2019t tolerate the side effects and medical risks at his age \u2014 then you might consider that the therapy is still helpful, not for mitigating his A.D.H.D. symptoms (which are lifelong), but for aiding in his ability to cope with them.<\/p>\n
Recall that you left a relationship when your fianc\u00e9 remarked, \u201cHow long will you be in therapy?\u201d Your calling his therapy \u201csuperfluous emotional support\u201d sounds like an echo of that. Your own therapeutic goals might have been growth, insight and tangible change, but what if he\u2019s getting something else, such as emotional regulation, anxiety reduction, structure or a place to talk about important aspects of his life (aging, death, experiences he\u2019d like to make peace with) in the safety and privacy of a therapeutic relationship? He might refuse to discuss his therapy with you precisely because he anticipates that you\u2019ll tell him whatever he\u2019s doing in there is \u201csuperfluous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as you found his previous therapist helpful for your goals, you might get curious about how his therapy has been helpful. Imagine, too, what his emotional state would be like had he not been in therapy. Notably, once he took a short break, he felt the need to resume, so he must find some benefit. And if you can appreciate even very small changes (such as his pivot to submitting the insurance claims), you might see his situation in a more expansive way that sits somewhere between \u201cno change\u201d and \u201csignificant change.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of this, of course, lessens your exhaustion with taking on a majority of the household management. For that, could you hire an inexpensive bookkeeper or assistant to free up some of your time and energy? Often I\u2019ll see couples where one person is messy and the other neat, and when I suggest hiring a cleaning service they can afford, the neat person sometimes says, \u201cBut if my partner would just clean up, we wouldn\u2019t need to!\u201d True, I might say, but you didn\u2019t marry someone neat. This is the partner you have. So you can get angry every day, or you can do something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of course, your answer might be: \u201cI\u2019d happily spend the money on his therapy \u2014 if it were…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":843844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[36],"tags":[162698,84138,222235,210,517,309949,309952,309950,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-843843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-anxiety-and-stress","tag-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder","tag-habits-and-routines-behavior","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-health-and-disorders","tag-psychology-and-psychologists","tag-therapy-and-rehabilitation","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116691968436453122","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}