ADHD and Emotional Withdrawal

[Moonhart44]

Have you ever hung out with a bunch people, was having a blast, and then, almost mid sentence, u turn off and ur done? ur energy is gone in an instnat?

 

[All-Rounder]

I think i have both autism and adhd, yet i have the opposite issue. I tend to make my partners my only interests, and become hostile towards the world and that ends up unhealthy for me, codependent.

 

[All-Rounder]

Is anyone else selective mute? If I get to a point where I can feel an emotion and identify it, and get to another point where I have the confidence to express it, my words often fail me. I can have all the best intentions but a block happens involuntarily. I can neither speak nor write / text when I'm in that state. It's part of my emotional withdrawal.

My bf can feel a wider range of emotions that I can. Say his list is A - T. For each of those emotions there are also levels of subtlety and intensity depending on the situation, and he's emotionally literate enough to communicate all of those feelings. My bandwidth is perhaps A - F, with each feeling having a fairly static presentation. I have a smaller selection of emotions available at the best of times, and at the worst of times I can't even express those because of mutism.

He expects the normal progression of a relationship where emotions progress on a continuum or advance and evolve over time. I'm capable of the basics such as "I like you", and "I love you", or "I'm enjoying this", but then I run out of steam. If things could stay just as they are that would be great, but he wants to explore new emotions and set goals, which would involve living together or getting married. I can't do those emotions so I can't and won't make those promises.

It's very frustrating. Then I feel inadequate, and I withdraw.

funny how much I can relate to your partner, despite the spectrum thing. I dated multiple people on the spectrum and all of them ended up pulling away after the 'honeymoon phase' , but that seems to be the norm for me even with nts. Some of them eventually said that they were just doing it for me, but it seemed to me that they were more involved in affection.

Nowadays I don't want marriage, because I don't know when some person will change or cheat. It would be nice but the state makes it too risky besides the fact that people are unreliable by nature. I wouldn't rush if I was you, it seems some of your and your partners needs are opposing. I know how hard it can be to work with these.

I can't speak for him but what Id really want to hear you say if I was him is that your emotions indeed grew deeper and you love him more and you also feel the bond grow stronger as time goes by as you see you can rely on him more. If you don't feel this way I would feel betrayed/onesided. In that case the resolve would be for me to equal the balance and withdraw my efforts and involvement to match yours. Without equality and mirroring of emotions I would harm myself and automatically you the more I would give. [What this does for you is create intimacy and attraction, and create a sense of fairness for him.] This exercise is super hard for me to do, because of my interest in the person. I never managed to get it right. This also caused significant inability for me to implement consequences to my boundaries being broken.

'sometimes we can take by giving, and give by taking'

 

[Alexej]

I'm a bit different from @Aspychata , in that I don't usually know what I am feeling until a while after. It's not instant at all, it's not a wave washing over me, I would often feel confused, and if in an interaction, want to withdraw and take time out. I would know what I was feeling mostly a day or two later, after thinking and resting and doing other stuff unrelated.

That's me - very well put @Thinx