Partners with ADHD

I just have to accept that he doesn't always remember things and I have an excellent memory so have to prompt him to do things often.

Is it frustrating? Yes. Do I get overloaded from time to time? Yes. But my husband is a wonderful man and father in every other way and I wouldn't be without him.

My DH has diagnosed adhd as does my DS17.

at weekends we will ask each other what we are doing- what needs doing? I’ll vacuum the living room and you grout the sink, etc. Often including the teenagers… no nagging needed there as were both doing something alongside each other. I totally get the ‘body doubling’ thing as I find it difficult to get started on something sometimes and a bit of company helps.

self knowledge is essential to cope as a family with ADHD though. He needs to learn about his own limits and how to set up the day so you can get stuff done. For instance how long can you concentrate, do you need a ‘reward’ to work towards (does the football start at 3pm? Let’s get this done before then), do you need to eat properly before starting a project? And so on.

if he genuinely thinks he has ADHD consider paying privately for diagnosis. He may want to try medication? My DS takes meds every day but my DH has lots of coping mechanisms and takes meds for concentration at times and if he has important meetings or events - or if he knows he has to be patient in a busy environment like a long train journey.

I love my DH very much and he's an amazing man, who has ASD and ADHD. It varies which one I find more of a struggle. The ASD burnout and anxiety is horrible to see and I'm so upset for him in the bad periods. But I think the ADHD affects our daily lives more.

Basically, he uses all the executive functioning energy he's got on his work - which he loves, is good at, is very full on and pays most of our bills. So home just slides. We just about keep on top of the day to day but we could never get a project done on top of it. I've accepted that we just have to pay for DIY help at least while the kids are small.

Could you DH have jobs that are a single task at regular intervals? My husband does the dishes and kitchen surfaces after dinner (not perfect but functional and I do a big clean once a week). He also does the bins (one thing, once a week, I think he has a phone reminder). Or we do stuff together. For non regular stuff, sometimes I have to wait for him to get massively enthused about something - I asked him to speak to a financial advisor for about six months, and suddenly had meetings all lined upand now he obsessively checks the ISAs...

I've found the text requests/lists are much better than spoken ones to get stuff done. DHs auditory processing isn't his strongest, especially when tired or stressed. Also mutually agreeing that we will both do X thing on X evening. And giving up my fantasy of an uncluttered home where everything has a place.

But it also helps that my DH acknowledges that I do a lot to ensure the day to day gets done, and has done a lot of reading to try to understand himself better and come up with strategies to help rather than just shrugging it off with "I can't help it." For my part, I try to keep in mind that he's not doing this deliberately and that ADHD comes with a lot of shame - which I already see in our young son who is probably the same mix.

He might not be referred. In my health authority they people can only be referred for ADHD and autism diagnoses if they at risk of serious harm to themselves or others, at risk of being unable to get life-saving medical treatment, or if there is an imminent risk of family court decisions being determined on diagnosis.

"Self-diagnosed" doesn't mean that somebody saw a couple of tiktoks and couldn't be arsed taking it any further. Having said that, seeing a couple of tiktoks and not taking it any further is pretty much textbook ADHD behaviour.

I know a lot of people who have ADHD and work. They may be late for meetings and lose things, but if they are passionate about their jobs, they can hyperfocus.

Apologies for the generalisation.

Every woman I know with ADHD has a million tricks and systems and phone reminders and apps etc that she uses to manage her ADHD and still be a productive person who runs a house and sorts all the complex things children need to thrive.

Every man I know with ADHD is like 'merp. 🤷‍♂️ I have ADHD.' and expects the nearest woman to manage his life for him.

OP, is your DH on the internet looking for coping strategies for his ADHD?

When my eldest was studying at school and university he listened to music. He still does headphones on. Luckily he's self employed so no-one to object.

He hired a guy with the same issue who was beaten down in his previous job seven years of being misunderstood. You should see him now from a timid young man who couldn't engage with clients he's flying. From not getting a girlfriend he's now engaged to be married.

I will say though that I have diagnosed inattentive adhd and there isn't a single system that I have tried that has ever helped me. It's possible if he truly does have ADHD that there isn't a system that will help him too.

I would cut him a lot of slack if he actually got a diagnosis but I don't think self diagnosing yourself with something then insisting everyone else acts like you have that thing and it excuses you from doing things is ok.

He needs to go and get a diagnosis and then you take it from there. Especially because there are treatments for ADHD that could help your situation that he should be willing to try due to the impact on your household.

I had something of a break down earlier this year as the years of dealing with dh's (and our children) adhd have taken such a toll on me. Answers involving me doing yet more work just make me despair, but I don't know what the alternative is. Other than leaving.
Any support I access is always for the person with adhd, not for those worn down by supporting them.

The poster doesn't have to stay in the marriage if her partner won't try to make life even a little bit easier for her.

I'm not wallowing in self pity at all, but if you say something stupid, you're going to get sarcasm back.

I've given the op plenty of advice on how she might restructure household tasks with her husband with his disability in mind. The insight I've tried to give into adhd is for her benefit, not yours. I'm not interested in defending myself against ignorant people.

What has helped is to getting him to read books I think he will enjoy. He's a slow reader but will get through a book these days. I believe reading is calming for the mind reducing the chaos in his head which is like a pinball machine.

I've provided the envelope and stamps. He puts it on the hall table to remember to post it. A week later I post it.

I'm no angel either. Somehow we rub along. It's easier than it was when I met him. Then there was no understanding of ADHD, DYSLEXIA, etc. my husband is also dyslexic. Now I know why . It was a lightbulb moment. He's always looking for the next dopamine hit. Has to socialise daily whereas I'm comfortable in my own company.

I think what you are missing here as you wallow in your self-pity is 1) it isn’t special to not want to wash up and 2)the impact it has on others.

This is a thread about partners of people with ADHD. And what I’ve noticed is that people with ADHD are pretty keen to talk about how it affects them. But not talk about how it affects other around them. They are the lucky ones! The ones who get to do the washing up because ADHDs can’t! Lucky them getting to wash up while you scroll on your phone or half do some critical task or just leave the room because it is all too much.

I'm so, so sorry that me describing how my disability affects me is annoying to you.

The steps thing - I had to post a very important letter, and yet it took me over a week - because there were so many steps to it, find the thing, find an envelope, write the address, buy a stamp, take it to post box. All of those felt like giant things that took immense effort to complete. And I know that sounds ridiculous.

I think people think it’s laziness - it’s actually often overwhelm, it all is too much, and I never know where to start.

I am lone parent - so I have to do it, but that doesn’t mean that lots of things don’t get done. I have a to do list on my phone of things I need to do around my house that haven’t happened.

for those that say well you cope in other parts of your life - not always! My work load at work is hanging by a thread, my finances are not in a great state, and my self care is terrible. From the outside you would never know these things - it just looks like I don’t do the dishes, or keep up to date with my washing.

I feel do you. I’m two ex marriages down- I probably was never easy to live with.

Unless you're ND you really can't understand how it feels - as a NT person, you see something that needs doing, you do it. But for me, i have to cajole, trick, bargain with my brain to do it. Promise myself rewards, create a false deadlines, try and convince myself there's some dopamine in the task. That's really hard to do when the task is washing up. Sometimes i just have to wait it out. It's so distressing to me that i can't just be "normal".

Honestly, this annoys me. How do you know what neurotypical people think? We don’t want to do the washing up either. And we have to make ourselves do it too. And it’s not great for us either.

You see with this tip run - that’s where I would have drawn the line. Get the car loaded - sure that’s a big job that feels huge before you start and so he might get stuck. But I would say going to the tip and the car wash - stand firm next time - you’ve helped start him off on his task and now he can do it by himself.

having adhd is not an excuse to not do anything. Sure I like a high dopamine task but I also know the boring mundane shit needs to be done too and I respect my DH enough to realise that I have to do that stuff too. So I do routinely forget to sort out the car insurance, I need multiple reminders (that I set myself), it’s boring and I hate trawling through different sites but I do it anyway. Because someone has to and I can’t just choose to do all the fun rewarding bits and leave everything else to my husband

It's interesting because my DH gets very angry and bitter about being called lazy when he was young "I'm not lazy, I have ADHD!"

It is entirely possible to have ADHD and also be lazy and selfish.

I read a very honest post in here a while ago from someone who said when she was first diagnosed she used it as a cop-out for everything "I'm sick, I have this problem, I can't possibly do anything, you must all help me because I can't help it" She got through it and found her coping methods and I believe manages it relatively well now.

This self-pity phase is where we are in my house right now and I'm so fucking tired of listening to it.

Isn’t this just laziness?!
the exact same things happen in our house and none of us have ADHD.

Oh my god

That's me - I hearbyou x

A lot of the jobs you are expecting him to do are "man jobs" which men generally like to take on because they are not regular drudgery, but something that just has to be done on an occasional basis. But I find regular drudgery far, far easier to get done than those one-off tasks - I actually really care about putting up pictures in my house, but have managed to put up one in 15 years, and have a stack of frames in my dining room.

Part of the problem for me is that a simple task (eg tidy the living room) actually has a lot of steps to it, and my brain doesn't internalise those steps and learn how to do it through repetition. I couldn't tidy or clean until someone taught the explicit small steps (step 1, pick up all the dirty dishes and put them in the kitchen, step 2 pick up any dirty laundry and put it in the basket etc).

Now, I am actually just about competent at organising a household, but it took me years of work to get to that stage, breaking down tasks into small lists of activities, working out the timings, learning how to develop an effective routine. I work from a list and a schedule every time.

For those bigger, occasional jobs? I'm not there yet. I'm currently working on doing one small thing every weekend at the time towards meeting a long-term goal. This week, it will be repairing some headphones and dying a stained garment.

I find that the trouble with stuff like hanging pictures and fixing things is that there are lots of little tiny stages that need to be done before you do the actual thing, and those can seem insurmountable - looking up instructions on how to do the thing, getting all the equipment, preparing the surfaces, measuring things, checking your measurements are accurate, checking that they are accurate again because your poor working memory means that often write measurements down wrong, getting distracted by the person who came up to chat while you were doing the thing and having to start the process over again from the start...

It's absolutely possible to do those things, but it is genuinely very difficult and very exhausting, and even more so if you are doing it for someone else rather than out of intrinsic motivation.

The fun, exciting, stimulating ones. Not taking out the bins, or emptying the dishwasher (my personal bugbear) or sorting out car insurance. Those get left for wifey to deal with because husband can't see them/can't cope. Great.