A
male
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:About a year ago a woman moved into the flat above mine. She is 34 and I am 48. The street we live on was not particularly quiet or particularly noisy - somewhere inbetween. There is a small metal scrap yard three doors down and there is noise from that between 8.30 and 5pm weekdays and 8.30 and 1pm on Saturdays. The back gardens are small and whilst I have a private, walled garden, there is often noise from neighbours' kids etc. It's not in the roughest of areas - the surrounding area is nice - but this particular street is 'rough', particularly on the side with the scrap-yard. People routinely fly-tip lots - I mean lots - of rubbish on the street. With that said, I never had any problems with neighbours and would say "Hi" to some of them. People generally kept themselves to themselves.The woman upstairs who moved in friendly and pleasant to everyone, but her moving in coincided with a guy who is in his early fifties moving back to his Mum's house across the street. He seems to have mental health issues - she doesn't have a doorbell, so he regularly plays a very loud flute kind of instrument outside the shared front door / outside my window - I live on the ground floor. As well as this, he often yells up to her, or they chat loudly outside my window. He is always hanging around in the street. He often goes into her flat and they smoke cannabis together and play music. Sometimes it's really loud as there's no sound insulation between the flats.As well as this, my ex-partner has been sleeping on my sofa for nearly 2 years now; she was planning a move but this became impossible due to the lockdown. We are not together as a couple - we're not intimate - but I was hoping to get back together with her and recently bought a house nearby to move into. The house is very old and needs everything done - it has no central heating and needs a new kitchen, bathroom, completely decorated etc.but is in good condition in the sense that there are no structural issues. I'm not a very wealthy guy but I have been working on the house to try to get it ready. In a bit of a twist, the person who bought my flat is the woman upstairs (with her mother helping); she wanted a whole house and seems to like the area. She has given us three months to do up the new house and stay in the flat which she now owns, whilst I do that work. My ex-partner suffers from chronic fatigue and IBS and has had a very difficult life. She works extremely hard and is high achieving, but has had a very difficult original family life. When we were together, I was an idiot. I didn't treat her well and we were arguing all the time. This badly affected her daughter who grew up with us arguing. My ex is now trying to repair this relationship and I am hoping my ex's daughter can forgive me. Ideally I want to move on together, but my ex keeps saying she can't take anymore.Partly the issue we discovered is I have ADHD and we didn't know this before; it means she feels like a 'parent' in the relationship.Now the guy on the street is effectively 'stalking' her, he is out there almost every time she goes out. This really gets to her when, for example, she is trying to exercise for her health and just wants to be left alone to go for a walk or a short run. The noise of his flute playing is very stressful and because she's sleepingon the sofa in the front room, she is often woken by him shouting late at night, or by noise from upstairs.She was upset that, on New Year's Eve, we had to go and stay overnight in the new house, which is currently literally like a building site and still smells really bad (in that old house way). This was because the woman upstairs kind of insisted that she was going to have a party and that it would get loud and go into the small hours. We later learned it went on until 6am. She was considerate enough to tell us, but she was also very aware that my ex-partner was not well at the time and was having a rally difficult time generally - not sleeping well, worried sick about her daughter. who has just recently had a baby and that they all caught Covid just after Xmas. We slept on blow up beds. She had a bad night's sleep and now she says she realises she just doesn't feel protected by me and never did. She did try to find a hotel weeks before - I offered to pay for a hotel but then couldn't as I didn't have enough money - and she did ask her best friend if she could stay with her, but her house was full on that night, so she had nowhere to go. In the past, she often used to say that she never felt safe with me because I did not establish boundaries, particularly with other people. I was drinking all the time and tended to be a people pleaser, but would take out all of my aggression on her. She had nowhere to go as she was ill and really struggling at that time. She said I lacked empathy and it was only because of her awful family life earlier on that she was able to tolerate my behaviour at all at the time, but that she shouldn't have done.Now, she is upset with the woman upstairs. She was hoping to be friends with her but realised she doesn't want to be friends with someone who is selfish enough to cause another person distress and loss of pleasure, just because they want their own pleasure to come first. She's also really upset with me, saying I should have at least created a boundary such as a time limit for the party ending, rather than making her stay in a building site on New Year's Eve. The problem is the guy outside can turn nasty - he did once before when I asked him to stop the noise, and he has been in prison before. Also, with the woman upstairs now owning my flat, I didn't feel I could really say anything. I did subsequently say to her that it is very inconvenient for us. What is your opinion please? What should I have done? I think because I'm trying to make a nice home for us, my ex should get over it and focus on the future. She says. she feels 'beyond' it and it's not about her forgiving me but about incompatibility, wrong choices on her part, my ADHD and this meaning she never feels protected. She can't see a way forward because I'm so bad at planning and protecting her and working as a team with her. She also bitterly regrets exposing her daughter to our arguments and my aggression and doesn't want to risk hurting her again.
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Fancy yourself as an agony aunt? Add your answer to this question! A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (13 January 2022): I would say the best and the obvious way to get out of this situation is to complete the renovation of the new house and move to it ASAP.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (12 January 2022): I’m sorry if I’m oversimplifying, but getting a diagnosis is NOT a solution. You need to work on yourself.
I’m married to a man who has had a problem with moods and anger and is not resilient to stressors. He needs physical activity, (whenever he can) he does what he feels comfortable doing (regardless of the priorities), he is convinced that most people are a-holes and that him losing his stuff is not his responsibility and hates his office job but looking for another is something he feels he cannot do.
He’s been diagnosed with ADHD 7 years ago. He tried meds. Worked great for two months, then stopped but left pretty bad consequences. He has never found a therapist that would help him learn how to live with ADHD. And I have been picking up the slack for the past 20 years, first as his gf and then as his wife. That’s the brutal truth.
And here’s another one. Me being with him is absolutely my responsibility, since it’s a consequence of who I am, not a source of all the misery in my life. I was taught at an early age that I need to take care of others and I’ve never learned to take care of myself. So, naturally I have a very high tolerance for needy people. I need(ed) that dynamics in my life.
Your current (outside) difficulties are not important no matter how hard they are. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. You need to learn how to manage your ADHD. The trouble is, people who suffer from it learn certain tactics for survival that can be highly unpleasant for their partners. Avoidance tactics. Procrastination. Emotional blackmail. Manipulation. Lying. Aggression. And sometimes there are other issues, like depression, social anxiety and/ or other types of anxiety…
I don’t know what your partner’s expectations are from you. But you first need to be able to take care of yourself! Your partner sounds needy. Life is hard, but she left you and then stayed for 2 YEARS?! I mean wtf?! It sounds as if she hadn’t really work on her own life even before she decided to leave you. I find these mixed signals really strange. It sounds as if she’s blaming you for everything. Newsflash: she accepted that “parent” role herself NOT because she was mother Theresa.
Take care of yourself. Manage your ADHD. Learn to set healthy boundaries.
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