Partners with ADHD

[PheobeBebe]

How much do you let slide with a partner who has ADHD?

My husband is a wonderful man. He is kind, ambitious, a good provider and extremely generous. He isn't controlling in any way and very loving and supportive.

However......he drives me bonkers! He has self-diagnosed ADHD and has had therapy for his traumatic childhood (which to be fair was horrendous), but these are always given as excuses for his short-comings. I don't mind taking on the traditional wife role - I only work 26 hours pw whereas he works FT so I don't mind doing the cleaning, life admin, shopping etc. But for taking on the 'traditional wife' duties I expect him to take on the 'husband' duties. Bins upstairs are nearly overflowing before he empties them, I have artwork to go on the wall which has been stored behind the sofa for months, there are items on the landing that need to go in the loft and been there for 3 weeks, DD got a flatpack item for her birthday and he didn't put it together for 2 weeks and even then it's because I unpacked it so he didn't have much choice. If I ask him to do anything I'm 'nagging' and 'he was just about to do it'. Last weekend we were having a discussion about feminism and this came up (not in a heated way, just talking) and he asked me 'do you really think I do these things on purpose?'. While I do have sympathy that he may find it harder to focus and get organised, I still can't help but think surely he still see's the items sitting on the landing / the overflowing bin etc. Sometimes he eventually gets around to doing these jobs, but quite often I let it slide and do it for him. But then I get more and more resentful.

AIBU for feeling resentful that I have to pick up his slack when I am already doing the lions share of everything at home? Or can he really not help himself and I just need to suck it up?

I am self diagnosed ADHD and display many of these traits shared on this forum. I live a clean, orderly house, but I just can’t do it. I am however, extremely hard working in other parts of my life and have a successful career so ADHD isn’t an excuse for laziness. I am however all or nothing or “now” or “not now”

Here are some household tips that (mostly) work for my family

• we split jobs - I do all laundry as it is mostly systematic and I cope well with this
• we have a cleaner - life changer
• we share cooking but make a plan together each week
• we have set routines for the week
• at work I’m a teacher, so my day is split into hourly chunks for me - this definitely helps
• I use phone apps for everything - birthdays, calendar, Christmas lists, banking, etc
• i write a monthly to do list for all domestic tasks and jobs - including mental load stuff
• when I do clean - I work my way around a room from one side to another - creating a system.
• I use the Alexa to play music for a time period (eg 10 minutes) to motivate me to start something -

my husband does carry a lot of the domestic duties and is amazing and it does frustrate him that I just can’t manage lots of things but I have definitely had to adopt coping strategies and don’t just settle into “i can’t do it”

as someone else pointed out, I wish I could do this stuff and hate myself for it!

I'm finding this really interesting! The poster who said that 'the task initiation' function is often missing is exactly what I deal with at home. DH is a great husband, father etc but it drives me bonkers that he just can't pick up the phone to book a car service or do things that to me seem easy to just 'tick off'. We highly suspect DS has dyslexia and ADHD and it's been an interesting process of navel gazing into ourselves at the moment.

I have ADHD and put things in the loft and hang pictures - although it takes a while and then a mad burst of 'sorting stuff'.

For example, I had run out of room in my wardrobe and cupboards, so was using the floor in a spare room for dumping clothes on. It has been like that for months and then suddenly, out of the blue last weekend, I absolutely HAD to sort it out. I took five giant bin bags of clothes to the textile bank!

I need things to be tidy and organised, but if I can shut the door on it, then it's out of sight and, literally, out of mind.

Hiding artwork behind your settee probably doesn't help your DH. It needs to be somewhere in sight. Alternatively, I recommend Command Strips for putting up pictures which are dead easy and I use them for everything. I even have one keeping my little Bagpuss on the dashboard of my car!

All I would suggest is not hiding things away. Those jobs will never get done. Don't 'nag' because it somehow does the opposite in our ADHD brains. What kicks my backside is someone saying something needs to be done and they start doing it, at which point I will leap in shouting 'NO! I'm doing it!'. And I do it!

It's a good job I live alone and no wonder I'm twice divorced! 😆

Btw, I was diagnosed last year at the grand age of 51. I take medication but still in the 18 month period of getting the right one.

Exactly this. I have undiagnosed ADHD (perusing diagnoses but it take years and I was ignored when I raised it 20 years ago for being female). My behaviours can be irritating, I fully accept that. Object displacement is the worst, used to drive my ex spare that my glasses/keys/bag/anything would disappear the moment I put it down. I have audio processing issues which means I can barely hear friends and family talk to me. Im disorganised and definitely would be seen as a messier person. I zone out a lot.

But. I’m a single parent, and I have to figure a way to manage a life. It takes much more effort than the average person, my phone is full of lists and reminders. It’s hard and I have constant guilt and worry about things I’ve let slip.

My ex has undiagnosed ASD. I was/am sympathetic to difficulties but it was the same story - capable at work and fell apart at home. Took roles literally - ‘I went to work so now I switch off unless you tell me to specifically do some, and if you tell me more than once it’s ’nagging’’. If you need to nag it means they’re not listening and they simply don’t care. They’re not making any effort to overcome difficulties on their own terms, it always the woman who has to support and pick up the slack. Women do not exists to fix men.

YANBU when it is used as an excuse not a reason. Is he proactively looking for solutions, techniques, and work-arounds to help him be a better functioning adult? Has he read all the books and booked an ADHD coach? That's the difference for me.

Both DH and I are waiting to be assessed following DC1's diagnosis and the diagnosing doctor mentioning it was worth pursuing for us both. Him for ADHD, me for AuDHD. DH uses the possibility as an excuse constantly whilst refusing to do anything to try and change. It is infuriating. It wasn't such an issue before DCs, but it isn't fair on them to keep having balls dropped and I have less slack now to cover for him/make up the gaps. In contrast, I have systems in place that I trained to be automatic (eg keys in a bowl just inside the door, always. His are chucked anywhere and looking for them often makes him/us very late), I fill my phone with alarms and reminders, have endless prioritised lists on whiteboards and in my diary etc etc, I read up on it in books and actively look for strategies. I recognised there was an issue and looked for solutions many years before I had any idea my problems have a name. He shrugs his shoulders and says "you know I'm not doing it on purpose, I've always been like this"... It drives me nuts! It is in every area of his life though (as it is for me), so not saved up solely for domestic tasks.

I could have written this post except my partner is formally diagnosed and on medication. He’s almost got worse since diagnosis like he doesn’t bother trying.

We are a ND family but it’s a nightmare living the way you describe. Things left for months at a time and reminders are nagging. It has broken me and our relationship as he’s got worse not better on meds. Off meds he’d run about like a blue arsed fly doing somethings, on meds he does nothing. Then there’s his debt.

OP people will say you’re inreasonable
and that he can’t help it, and it’s true to an extent but there are systems that can help improve things for him if he wants to - my partner says he wants to then goes plays with his toys because they’re more fun. And that’s no fun. It’s like having an extra child.

While I do have sympathy that he may find it harder to focus and get organised, I still can't help but think surely he still see's the items sitting on the landing / the overflowing bin etc.

Nope. I have adhd. And i really, truly, honestly just don't see these things. Really. I know what jobs i need to do daily or weekly, and I've built habits around them. But ad hoc emptying the bins or putting pictures up? Nope. I've got pictures that have been waiting to go on the wall for 2 years. I think "i must do that" and by the time I've got downstairs, my brain has moved on to another topic. It's very frustrating for me let alone dh.

Perhaps you and dh need to swap jobs so he does the ones that are suited to his adhd. For example, I do pretty much all the cooking, because i know it has to be done at a certain time of day every day so i don't forget it I've got kids to feed. While I'm cooking, i will load or unload the dishwasher - i have to, in order to make space to cook so it's a job that my adhd can't over look. Dh does all the laundry, because i will put the washing machine on and then totally forget to get it out. You need to redistribute tasks on an adhd divide instead of a gender one.

I'm also pretty good at sudden random decluttering or tidying, so when the urge strikes I'll lean into that and I'll be a whirlwind of activity for 20 minutes and get loads done. But at other times, i will think "i need to do the dusting" but if my adhd brain isn't ready, I'll end up sitting on the sofa staring into space trying to force myself to get up and feeling completely unable to. I find that really distressing.

You're right, he doesn't get to use adhd as an excuse - he needs to harness it and work for the family but he will have limitations. Emptying bedroom bins is something i don't think I'd ever be able to do reliably.

To start I have made him a to do list on Alexa and will ask him to set phone reminders for regular tasks.

Being micromanaged in my own marriage is my idea of utter hell. Perhaps your husband is happy to be controlled in such a fashion if so he has my pity. Personally Alexa would end up at the bottom of my garden via my left boot.

Your last paragraph is genius and this would definitely motivate me if i thought my dh was about to muck something up, my adhd would force me into action. Your post describes the kind of help i need to help me get started. I hate that i need help, but sometimes i just really do.

Having my dh get everything ready is amazingly helpful because sometimes the act of gathering everything up that i need to start is the hardest thing. For example I needed to make something for my kids for some tag day or something. Most people would get the stuff, get it done.

But i just physically COULDN'T get started. It was something only i could do (required sewing) - my brain said absolutely not. Every time i thought of doing it, it feels like my brain slid away from me. I think of it like trying to grasp a slippery fish. I wanted to do it, but i couldn't.

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".

But my dh got the things ready for the tag day and came to the sewing machine with me and it meant suddenly i was able to do it and i got it done in under 10 minutes. I hated myself for needing help in that way, but as i said - unless you're ND, you just can't understand how paralyzed you can feel and how hard it is to get out of it. No wonder I'm permanently exhausted, i guess.

That's fine except the waiting list is years and years long and private diagnosis costs about £1000 on average. A diagnosis won't actually make any difference to his executive function skills either.

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.

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.

Oh my god

That's me - I hearbyou x

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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'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.

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.