Dear Prudence,
I have been with my husband for almost 20 years. Back in 2011 I told him that I thought he might have adult ADHD, but he’s never seriously considered the possibility. Since then he has had many moments of inattention: forgetting food on the stove, not buying what’s on a grocery list, boiling all of the water out of teapots. In the summer of 2016, he backed into my car after parking it there himself. The repairs cost $3,000. I told him he should see someone before another person gets seriously hurt.
Then he left my dog in his car and the dog suffocated. My last memory of the dog who helped our family get through a rough seven years is seeing him in rigor mortis. My husband called me in a panic. I was hysterical, but I had to keep it together because he needed me to help him figure out how to take the dog to the animal hospital.
And I cannot forgive my husband. I thought something really bad would happen, and it finally did. I warned him so many times. I warned him when he let my toddler play with a drill and he almost drilled through his femoral artery. He went to a therapist who, in his words, “didn’t think there was anything wrong with him.” I still think there is. (He just backed into my car again.) I have asked him to move out repeatedly, and he politely refuses. He says he doesn’t want to leave. Am I justified feeling exhausted by all of this? Am I wrong to just want to walk away from him?
—Tired