Adult ADHD & Relationships (Part 3): Five Strategies for Change

I was diagnosed as a child but my parents didn’t feel it was important to tell me I have ADHD. As an adult I have to be retested and it’s hard. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. I’m in therapy for PTSD which is also very common with ADHD people. Most of my life I was diagnosed of having general anxiety disorder and depression but those medications mad me get way worse to the point of psychosis. It was awful. I’m glad it’s come into light about my childhood diagnosis and now makes more sense to why I’ve always felt so different, so weird and why medications given didn’t work. Not broken, just different.

thank you for your work!! this will one day save lives, save families...once people realize that adhd is real.

I have driven to church alone for the last 10 years because my wife is never on time. Usually 10-15 minutes late. It's embarrassing to me as it's disruptive and not respectful to others. Even when I do all the help with the kids so there is no excuse to be late she is still late. She gets upset at me because I choose to drive by myself to be on time. Not sure what to do. I'd rather not go at all than be late because it ruins the moment for me and I become really nervous about it. I also find myself becoming resentful because she forgets everything I ever ask of her and I feel she does not care. But I believe she may have ADHD. The house stays spotless when she is away on trips but when she comes home, disaster and disorganization pursue and she handles this by telling me it's because I do more when she's not there so that's why it stays clean and if I helped more when she was there, there wouldn't be such a mess. That just doesn't make sense to me. I do a lot of the cooking and cleaning and am very organized but if she cooks, the whole place is a mess and it stays out with food on the counters until the next morning. I feel like I'm the parent and have to walk on eggshells all the time. I used to always do the clean-up myself but I'm at the point to where it's not helping her address the issue to I leave it for her to figure out. Plus I work 12-13 hours a day so I'm exhausted anyway. She has hardly a hair dresser to go to because they've all gotten mad at her for never being on time and rescheduling so often. I have to apologize often for her tardiness and missing appointments. The kids become upset at her often too for not following through on doctor's appointments and other things that affect them. it's a tough situation. She angers easily and is easily provoked so it's better to shut up and just deal with it and try to keep peace within myself. She things I'm selfish because I got a new car and don't like to share it. That's because she's prone to accidents and messes up the vehicles. I keep mine spotless while hers is so messy I don't even like to go in it. I do clean it up for her quite often just to be kind. She can never complete a task and I try to make friendly recommendations to make a list and to not allow herself do do anything else until that task is completed. But it does not happen. She is very easily distracted. A phone call, a child asking for help, remembering something else she should have done. I've hurt myself many times on the vacuum cleaner and other things being left in the middle of walkways. She is prone to accidents too. She cuts and burns herself all of the time. She gets extremely angry and impatient if visitors are coming and then rushes to get the house to look perfect yelling at other family members as she does this. It gets everyone worked up and stressed out. Her side of the vanity in the bathroom is typically a mess and covered with stuff while my side is always clean and organized. Until she moves over to it and messes it up to which provokes me and then it's an argument. It's been a very difficult situation to say the least for all of these years. She has admitted to me various times that she believes she has ADHD or ADD but she is so anti-drug doctor that she won't consider getting medication and treatment. It's a sad and difficult situation for all the family members, including her. I really wish she would do it first for herself and second for the rest of the family. i know her life (and all of ours) could be so much better and peaceful because of it. And now she just received some property as an inheritance and despite me and countless others providing her sound advice on what to do, she can't decide and it's going to lose value quickly.

All of these things about relationships assume that anyone watching who has ADHD is currently in a relationship. What about the people like me who have given up on ever having a close relationship again in their life. What I would like to see is how the hell can you start a new relationship. And there is always the question in the mind of an introvert, " What ever for"? Living happily with my three dogs.

I wish you could read the points as well.

I absolutely love this! The best things I’ve saw concerning the topic adhd! So much compassion for both sides.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us, and for all the passion and compassion you have for people with ADHD.

Funny not funny my husband called an ADHD clinic and the doc. Spent 20 min with him via telephone. Then gave my husband the choice as to what he wanted to take and that’s it. No follow-up no therapist referral no strategies.

Great informational overview. Is there a place for resources like support groups for partners with partners who have adhd?

So much accurate information in such little time, thank you 💖

Pills for everyone!

exceptionally helpful, thank you so much

This lady seemed really smart and nice andwanting to help those in need! But I think she was literally very scared and her mouth went dry much too often and the lot of noise she made muchak muchak muchak... didn't allow me too focus as much as I would have liked. She should drink more water and overcome stage fright so that more people may benefit from her intelligence, knowledge , experience and passion to help others!🙂

TORONTO!!

Just curious if over abundance of “ things “ is normal adhd trait . My wife constantly packs drawers with stuff , can’t have one wooden spoon or spatula you need 7 of each random crammed into a drawer making use of any annoying , can’t have one set of bowls or plates have to have completely random dishes packed into cabinets most of which make little sense to have not do any match . Same thing with clothes she never puts clothes away because imo her drawers are so crammed and the 90% of closet I gave up to her is still not enough space for clothes she hasn’t worn in years , so it’s stressful for her I think .My wife has brought this up more and more as she has seen adhd trait information and videos , as well my sons specialist in a short visit with my wife was nicely implying she sees “ it “ from my wife . My son was speech delayed and has adhd .

My fiance knows he has add/adhd and asperger's but is refusing to get add/adhd centric help. I feel like I am at a loss. I love him and I just feel so drained. I feel like I have to be the responsible one. I feel more like a parent than a fiancee. I just wish he would get help. He also said that mental illness runs in his family too.

I have autism and bpd and my partner has adhd and depression and it sucks! He is poor and we both have tons of truama and are black. Treatment thats informed is hard to find. I’m over regulated and ridged and he can’t regulate himself !

This has all blown my mind but also made me super sad. My marriage ended a few years ago, without really getting off the ground. My ex was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, I found out after we had broken up. Never treated. I just couldn’t figure out why everything was so hard for us. In my son and daughter being diagnosed, I have only just learnt about the impact on adult relationships. All of these issues were there in our marriage. In the end he left and has blamed me since. I have sent the link to him. I would give it another go if he’d get treated.

Me wetarted- Me have ADD!.
A small percentage of the population processes information more effectively than y'all and cause you can't keep up you label us as "defected". What am I having a challenge with? Communicating and sharing the planet with lesser evolved organisms who can only process one thing at a time and can't grasp self-evident dynamics of life and relationships-even when we sit you down and explain it ad nauseaum... you CAN''T understand. And now I'm casing my partners issues.... just stop it. "its not like I asked" to be in a relationship with a neanderthal.

My husband was diagnosed in his early 20’s in college, I didn’t know this until recently. Many topics / examples were quite relatable.

This is SO hugely helpful... Hopefully life-changing. My hypertension is SO out of control, my spine is LITERALLY helixing: when I do headstands, I can FEEL the muscle tissue on my head distributing the tension in a spiral. When my Atlas vertebrate twists out, it's so, SO difficult to transfer the tension back out...
(My chiropractor pointed out this comes almost always hand-in-hand with AD/HD, and it Dr. Dominick D' Anna says- it ALWAYS shifts to the RIGHT 🤯)

This is been so enlightening. I have been struggling to find what is happening in the patterns. This helps my heart

I even mention clutter, my head gets taken off. 🤷🏽‍♀️😂

All well and good but I was on almost 200 mg of sertraline before I finally left my ADHD husband of 15 years. I was constantly under stress. He had lost multiple jobs. He had three different degrees because he thought another degree would make him finally be able to find his ““ niche. The stress and the toll it takes on the partner is really bad when the ADHD partner does not want to get help other than taking Adderall. No behavior modifications no help around the house. His whole goal was to become a physician and then have several nurse practitioners do all of his work for him and all he had to do was sit and talk to patients as a child and adolescent psychiatrist. He failed out of everything. They tried to kick him out of medical school they tried to kick him out of his residency and they tried to kick him out of his fellowship. He used his ADHD card as a disability to enable him to get through the program and then turned around and did malpractice or several patients. Not good especially when the person does not want to take accountability I knew that if I did not get out he was going to be a big liability for me.

Oh yes they care they work against their best interest but they argue with you they don’t want to take accountability most of the time and they want to blame shift

Yeah it’s oppositional all right and it’s very tiresome it’s a never ending vicious cycle

“Farm out what you can“ yeah that was a slogan that my ex-husband lived by he took no responsibility for anything at all except sleeping eating watching TV. The housework was mine taking care of the bills was mine taken care of the yardwork was mine taking care of his day today livelihood and organization was mine. He used to kid around saying to his friends that I was his ““ frontal lobe“. Funny not funny

Yes the roller coaster is me, I can mask my adhd however I work super hard to prove myself and then I burn out. I turn resentful because I try to handle everything for everyone else but myself. I suck at being a parent sometimes. Today I had a doctor's appointment and have been finally diagnosed and tomorrow I start meds. After depression and anxiety and taking meds for that. It wasn't working. I knew something else had to be off with my brain. I am born from a drug addicted mother. So I assume she had some unresolved problems of her own. She passed at 45. Am 33 and am working really hard to get my life on track. I have 3 kids and have been married for 10 years. My kids deserve a healthy mom that is able to always show up for them. My husband also deserves a wife who doesn't find the smallest things and make them huge, am very lucky to have him. As there has been many times I have been difficult to handle. Am looking forward to this next month to see how I adjust and how medication is going to help me thrive and be who I need to be for myself.

I have adhd. And I don’t know really anything about this. I was diagnosed as a child I’m in my 30s now. My mother never took what was going on with me seriously. So I’m trying to learn about this now. Cuz I know something is wrong with me. More then I thought. I found what this woman was saying very interesting but I’m sorry I can’t stand the smacking. It’s driving me nuts.

not everyone with ADHD need meds..... there are behavioral strategies that can be very helpful

Im with my partner for nearly 5yrs, I’m done. I have lost my hair and have severe CPTSD. He doesn’t care to understand my disorder as I have been researching and trying to understand his. I’m done, I’m 30yrs old and this is not what I want from life any more. I will never date someone with ADHD ever again. I’m adoras to really find out just how much damage that has been done to me.

And what do you do when adhd spouse denies, deflects, and blames everyone and everything except his adhd? Then they refuse medications and all treatments? What other options are out there except divorce? I've done years and years of therapy. He may or may not show up. He may or may not open up. He's yelled at me in therapy and then immediately shut down and wouldn't talk. There's no helping someone who doesn't want to be helped no matter how much I listen to videos or read about adhd. He has to want to change.

You don’t need medications or anything like that really but rather you need God and you need to work on healing and sealing the gut. Look into the GAPS diet gut and psychology syndrome is a great book for this. So many other resources to tap into before jumping into medications. My husband was diagnosed as a child and now in his 30’s he does better when he avoids gluten and any kind of processed foods and conventional dairy. I make home made yogurts and sourdough and fermented vegetables. That’s how you overcome illness it all starts in the gut. Look into the gut brain axis. There’s so many things you have to consider here. Cutting out sugar grains and certain starches can do wonders for people with adhd!

My advice if you find yourself with an adhd partner? Run.

I hate going to sleep, it’s the most boring thing ever until 3 days of this then I need to sleep 14 hours after spending 2 days totally tired at work.

There is a lot wrong with this talk, namely in the attitude and overall light it paints the adhd person and the certainty she speaks with. Theres a lot of over generalizing in this speech, but is to be expected with anything in psychology

To be fair I'm prone to starting serious conversations late at night but it's not to sleep better lol.

This almost made me cry, just got into a hug confrontation with my wife last night, about some of these subjects ( im the one with adhd). The fact that i might not even be able to see how I'm messing up our marriage is now one of my biggest fears

This is from a very neurotypical viewpoint and assumes that neurotypical is the correct way to be. There are other ways to look at things.

my husband has adhd but doesn't want to do anything to help himself

"That's going to depend on how it's delivered." There was no right way to deliver even tiny feedback to my ex w ADHD. He responded defensively to everything I said and would escalate it and escalate it until I was sobbing on the floor while he screamed that I was abusive to him for what I said. The one year he forgot my birthday, and as it became evening I said very, very, very lightheartedly and I made sure there was not an iota of blame or anger in my voice, "I had an ok birthday, do you want to make it better by getting dinner?"


He acted as if I hurled a nuclear bomb at him and I ended up needing medical attention... He never took responsibility and when asked to he would say he shouldn't have to because he has adhd. I could never bring up the fact that he said hurtful things to me, I could use all the "I statements" in the world, but if even a glance from me could be perceived as an attack, he would launch all of his missles at once.

I tried so darn hard to avoid the eggshells and not critize or complain about something unless it was a big deal. I stopped asking him to do chores because I wasn't in the mood to be told I'm a stupid (slur). I wouldn't he forgot my bday every year after that year and he actually told me to never mention I have a bday again because it would be "holding it over his head" that time he physically harmed me. So I stopped having a birthday because it was "unfair criticism" of him to... Have a birthday.

And every adhd therapist / specialist / support group all told me, "yeah, just stop having a bday. What's more important, your partners happiness or your bday? Not having a bday is a small tiny accommodation you can make to help your partner w ADHD."

I stopped being a person, because any time I mentioned in the most meek and submissive voice that I had a need, he took it defensively. I could say "I am hungry" and he would yell "are you saying I'm a bad person?"

But continually I was told, heard, read, etc, that if I just made myself a tiny bit smaller, his ADHD would stop being triggered and he would be calmer. I was the issue. I was the problem. And his rage, irritability, and defensiveness were valid, warranted, justified.

Pop

is there a pdf of the lecture slideshow?

Interesting material but, oh my gosh, I wish that someone would give this poor woman a glass of water! Her constant lip smacking and swallowing is extremely distractive for any public speaker. I try to listen but this behavior pulls me away.

I have been married to my wife for over sixty four years. It was not until two years ago when our adult daughter was diagnosed with ADHD that I became aware that my wife has had this disorder throughout our entire marriage.

After reading extensively about it and having many discussions with both her psychologist and psychiatrist including prescribed drug after drug after drug, the condition just goes on and on. I have come close to leaving her several times when I realized how detrimental this condition has been for both of us.

Yes, you can talk and talk but do not expect a long lasting miraculous change. It is a matter of how the brain of an ADHD patient is hard-wired. You might as well ask a zebra to change the appearance of its stripes.

Commit to a lifetime of dealing with the issue or agree to part company.

I, for one, would never blame a non-ADHD marriage partner for escaping this life-long condition so long as they have tried alternatives.

When your spouse has ADHD, you both suffer from ADHD!

Super informative and helpful… but one thing made me wanna crawl out of my skin, fly over there and hand this poor lady a glass of water.

At what point do these symptoms become functionally indistinguishable from abuse. Unpredictability, denial, sensitivity to criticism, rage, provokation. You're asked to have a higher tolerance for these things, even if you're not expected to tolerate their worst forms. But where's the line? At what point does the psychological harm of being tolerant outweigh the duty to accommodate? How do you avoid that line getting pushed further and further. How do you distinguish between genuine effort and weaponised incompetence? How do you distinguish between a disabled person trying their best and a disabled person using their disability as an excuse to chronically avoid accountability?

There are ways to distinguish I think, and it probably involves having rock solid internal boundaries.

My ex was adhd and a toxic borderline abusive man. The line between the two didnt exist. It took me a decade to figure out how to leave. Took me a decade to learn to turn my damn empathy off.

I dont know how we talk about it without worsening the stigma around adhd. But I feel like we do need to talk about it. "Adhd rage" gave me results on how to manage your own temper, but no results on the effects adhd rage can have on partners, and how to protect yourself. Im out now but I still want something to help me process it all. These videos are pretty good in that they do touch on the damage that can be done. But I wanna talk about when its bad. When its abuse. When its time to leave. When their chronic lack of accountability becomes a barrier you cant and shouldn't just ignore.

And how to handle it all when youre chronically the one responsible for managing this. Because how can you self advocate when you have the steering wheel for someone else's car, and you don't want to abuse that power you didn't ask for

I’m worried both my husband and I have ADHD. I always joke that ive had it but i have learned loads of skills to stay functional. But now with 3 kids i’m realizing im alone in the parenting journey. Our therapist wants my husband to get tested which he is going to do so. But i think i need to get tested too. I am so angry and i feel like i have to control the world to get through the day with 3 kids. The days are tough and i feel like my husband thinks we dont exist when we are outta sight.