What About Me? Wednesday: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

For many, many years, my motto has been "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." But it didn't start out that way. I was an uptight child, the one that was always like Stop, you guys! You're gonna get in trouble! And as a teenager, I was leery of anything teenagers found interesting. I changed dramatically in college; I knew that if I ever wanted to grow as a person I needed to be open to new ideas and experiences. I stopped resisting the influence of people around me. And I started saying If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

When I met Jen, it didn't take me long to figure out that she marched to the beat of her own drum. And even though by then I had grown into an easygoing and flexible adult - doing a lot more joining than beating - I found myself resisting Jen's way of doing things. In fact, I still struggle with it, and that's where the What About Me? advice comes in.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. When your ADDer hatches another harebrained scheme, just go along with it. When they insist on going to Wal-Mart at 3:00 in the morning for string, put on your pants and get in the car. You will get a lot less gray hairs by joining them.

Once you've mastered going along with it, it's actually very good for your sanity to start enjoying it. Remind yourself often that life would be boring without your ADDer. Whenever I see a married couple on TV complaining about being "stuck in a rut," I have no idea what that's like. With Jen around, life never gets stale. She is always finding new things for us to do, always moving on to the next big thing.

So my self-care advice for this week is to join your ADDer in their crazy exploits, instead of trying to beat them.

 

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Comments

[Attentive]

I agree. With any relationship it pays to "pick your fights".

As for the 3:00am activities; well lets just say I'm a lucky guy who's had some interesting "wake up calls" by an amorous ADD'er ;)

[Jean]

Yeah, I have to say that my husband's wacky ways have really softened me up a bit; It's nice to allow yourself some rule-bending! And it's much more exhausting to fight it.