u/Long-Jacket-4341

Maybe “easy” isn’t the right word, and I know so much of it is also to do with the fact that, no matter how challenging or time consuming the task may be, I’m not gonna feel any reward or accomplishment from it either way lmao.

Like honestly, there is little difference in the amount of pleasure or reward I feel from idk… completing a 10k run compared to finally going for a wee when I’ve been holding it in tbh, it’s still just “meh” but that’s our lot as people with adhd I guess.

But I’ve been thinking for years as well, one of the other reasons I struggle to “just do” a task is in case it’s too easy, or I know it’s gonna be too easy.

My latest example - my room is a fuuuuucking tip right now, like abysmal and bad bad bad kinda messy.

When I was a kid, I’d hyperfocus on tidying, it was like “my thing” when I was about 4/5/6 lmao where if I started putting my toys away, I’d be there 5 hours later with everything lined up and organised, pencils in my pencil box fitted and delicately arranged in a rainbow spiral with each side with the manufacturers stamp facing up, and be on my stomach picking every loose fibre of the carpet up ahahaha.

I’ve been planning on moving my room around and tidying/cleaning it, but a huge obstacle in doing it is because I know that I’ll hyperfocus, and it’ll take me no time because I’ll be like an opposite taz (the Tasmanian devil obvs) and whip around my room in fast forward and what’ll eeem like a monumental task to some people will in fact, be insanely easy and quick.

Which also leads to my second point that I’m like, savouring it for something to do. I know that as soon as I’ve sorted my room, I’ll be back to staring at a wall being somehow even less stimulated than before and I’ll start to wallow.

Having unclosed loops at least gives me something to think about, and I dread to think what happens when I close that loop.

But it’s like that with so many other things as well, like at jobs I’ll sit around on my arse because I’d rather do the waiting, then do the actual work in like a hour and then fuck off home than do the task and then spend the rest of the time waiting if that makes sense?

“Omg I’d love to read this book/play this new game etc” okay but what happens when you start doing it, hyperfocus and binge it out in one go and then what? In two days (or w/e) you’ll be right back here again with nothing to fucking do :L

But then if I actually try and fill my time and complete multiple things, it’ll be that process with all of them and afterwards I’ll crash and burn out and then not only will I be fucked for days, I’ll be stuck in the prison of my under stimulated mind, which is worse.

Like, idk the “stress” of thinking “I have to do x, y and z” is somehow more palatable than the purgatory of “…….. okay what now?” That comes after :/

Hellooo,

Been on UC for a couple of months whilst searching for work.

I’ve managed to score a 0-hour part-time gig in a local cafe owned by a couple. I was in another 0-hour part-time position at a restaurant until May whereby there was no job security - I’d have one week where I would be scheduled to work 33 hours over 3 days, and then the next week I’d only be given 8 hours etc. (I used to be a marketing manager lol, the market is utter dogshit in my area, hence why the only positions are fucking 0-hour hospitality work).

This new cafe position should be slightly better than the restaurant as the person I’m replacing would work 25 hours minimum per week, and I’ve been told there’s scope to do more, so the job seems to hold a bit more security and regularity.

I had a trial shift last week and have been added to the WhatsApp group where the owner posts the schedule. I have my first proper shift this coming Thursday.

Because it’s locally run and seems to function more… casually (I was paid in cash for my trial shift haha), I haven’t heard hide nor hair about a contract yet. The cafe is in a university town so the majority of the staff are part-time students and there’s a high turnover/seems to be a more temporary working place due to university holidays and the like.

As I haven’t signed a contract, do I still report the change of circumstances to UC as normal? My assumption is that I’ll put the date of my first shift-proper as my starting date, but will the fact that I haven’t signed a contract be turned around on me by DWP?

As the title says, my partner of 10 years broke up with me two weeks ago as he realised he “had unresolved feelings” for a coworker who he’s only known for a year. We are currently long-distance (4hrs, and we haven’t always been long-distance btw lol).

Naturally, I was devastated. This was indeed the “friend” he had who I “didn’t need to worry about”.

You can skip to the end for my question now but I’m just going to add some context in case y’all have been in a similar situation or can offer any advice into how he’s thinking:

Our relationship has been rocky - we were 19 when we met, both had wounds that hadn’t healed, and we have had a couple of breaks in the relationship before.

He has been struggling for a long long time, since before we met, with unresolved problems from him childhood and I think for the past year or so it got to a point where he can’t ignore them any more.

We’ve both grown a lot together and apart and I genuinely think that if we were strangers who met the versions of each other we currently are now, we would still be into each other and also develop a relationship that was utterly unbreakable.

He says he doesn’t think he feels things the same as other people and since our break up he has been in therapy to try and finally heal from his past.

One of his reasons for the split was because it hurts him how supportive and caring I am towards him and he has felt an immense guilt towards me for feeling like he can’t reciprocate that, and the guilt he feels with me is overwhelming, especially since he wants to see what things would be like with this coworker (thanks 🙄).

During the break-up phone convo, he assured me we’d discuss the break-up in more depth, partially cause I was in shock and I knew I wasn’t doing myself justice or saying what I wanted to say and partially for logistics of the split. He did say I’m someone he will always want in his life but he wasn’t sure to what capacity (aka no blocking, no animosity). When I’ve had doubts/called a break in the past I’ve also said the same thing so I get it - 10 years is a long time and a lot of intertwined support that you can’t get from anyone else, I love his family and will always need to know that he’s okay, and we’ll always want the best and to know the other’s happy etc.

Since he broke up with me, we had a couple of message exchanges checking in, I wished him luck for his first therapy appointment. I’ve kind of been in two minds, half of me picturing that he’s been off living his best life with this new coworker and doesn’t give a shit about me or what I’m doing, and half of me is picturing that realistically he’s likely struggling almost as much as I am and having moments of being like “I’m free I love life” and moments of “wtf have I done oh shit”.

That was until the night before last. He messaged me saying he really wants to talk to me, he’s terrified that he’s made the biggest mistake of his life and ruined it forever, that he wants to see me “if but he hopes it’s a when” to discuss it, and essentially saying that he’s finally ready to address his issues and that he’s been seeing me in everything he does and wants to open his entire heart and mind to me and regrets being too scared to reveal them to himself and thus me by extension but wants to properly tell me everything I am to him etc etc etc.

I’ve been a mess since the break-up, it’s a grief I’ve never experienced before and my mind changes every second but of course for these two weeks I’ve wanted nothing more than for him to say those things to me, whilst also trying to adjust and process everything. I’ve been doing a lot of random crying in the supermarket, booked a once in a lifetime trip, and have been insanely up and down which I think is to be expected from such a colossal blow (he was my first relationship so it’s my first break up lmao).

During our last convo where he said all those things, I think I did well at remaining measured. I explained that I have been all over the place and will need time to let my thoughts, wants, grief, emotions settle into a more definable place and until that happened I didn’t want to discuss anything in full because I know whatever I would say to him atm would be my emotion of the moment as opposed to how I actually feel in a considered way and I don’t want to leap into anything because everything is so chaotic and that would only lead to regret no matter what I would say.

He was clearly having a really hard day so I tried to not comfort him like I always do, but reassure him that he’s going through a tumultuous time right now but I have full faith that somewhere somehow he’ll find the answers (to which he said he’s scared I was the answer right in front of him that he was too blindsided to see all this time) and that I believed in him.

We did also both say we’d always love each other and reiterated that we’d always be there for one another, but I essentially said “let’s put any serious convo on ice for the moment” because the wound is so fresh it’s still bleeding and I could see he was clearly having a horrible night.

I didn’t want to reply earnestly accepting everything although shit, I wanted to. I didn’t want to get my hopes up and agree to a reconciliation and say “let’s forget this ever happened and go back to how things were”, because this time around that can never happen.

I want to focus on the next step at hand and meet him properly whilst we both also focus on ourselves and accepting who we both are now as opposed to who we both were.

I do want to rebuild a new relationship, whether that ends up being a lifelong friendship of respect, or whether that is a romantic relationship I’m not sure yet, but I think we both evolved and grew into who we are now over the past decade, yet our mistake was operating the relationship as though we were still the people we used to be.

I realised a few days ago that it’s almost as though our relationship is an entirely separate entity from what we both mean to each other. Like the relationship needs to be torched because it’s so unrecognisable to both of us.

My opinions/feelings towards him are a complete 180 from my opinions/feelings towards the relationship and I think he feels the same way, that how our relationship has been and the cycles it’s perpetuated is an obstacle to our actual relationship and love to each other if that makes sense? It’s become both our enemy and our weapons, it’s both the defence and offence. Like we’re both on the same side fighting our relationship together yet also that means we’re fighting who we have been.

I have and do feel an immense amount of love and security with him as a person, but I’ve never felt secure with our relationship, and it’s a very delicate and confusing thing to address.

Simultaneously it’s as though we both need to work through this together as well as individually, but we’d both need to be willing to really start from scratch and not get sucked into the familiarity of our old patterns :/

That’s why I’m asking for advice I guess, I felt so so hopeful and happy during that last conversation and felt so at peace after yet was also telling myself “you feel good but you can’t trust this feeling because if you do things will only ever go back to how they were before” and now I’m like oh shit, what if he now really regrets talking to me and is laughing at his silly moment of weakness and it was all false hope…

I’ve found a new sense of complete self protection through this, and it’s different than before because this protection is a nurturing form of protection and not defensive, so I guess there’s that. He is avoidant but I know his issues are not something I can solve for him.

Anyway, now I’ve got that bucket of context out of the way, what I actually need advice on is I’m trying to be considerate of both our feelings, but I also don’t want to push him away and make him think I have no interest in a reconciliation of sorts, but I also feel like he’s the one who fucked this up so he’s the one who can reach out to me. I want him to respect me but I also need him to lead a bit because this was his decision.

I don’t want to come across as needy, I don’t want to come across as cold, I don’t want him to think that I’m okay about this, I don’t want him to think I’m not okay about this.

I don’t want him to feel embarrassed or regretful about reaching out in the way he did, because he shouldn’t and reading how… idk, how full of heart he was for me and how earnest he was really made me think that somewhere there’s a place for us to finally live our love to its full potential instead of disrespecting the love we have for each other by the joke of how our old relationship was.

But I don’t want to look like a silly fool by reaching out to him to see how his therapy was and to check that he’s okay after the other night.

How would you guys feel if you were in his position, would a check in message make you think “ew in the cold light of day she just looks pathetic by reaching out”, or would it make you think “okay she doesn’t think I’m an idiot and there is genuine potential for us to grow together from this”?

Please help 😭