Double ADHD relationship anyone?

[Ihaveleft]

I was finally diagnosed after an extremely long wait for a great clinic, and just out of a one year relationship with an ADHD man.

I feel like both are really hard to process at the same time. Can anyone help me by telling me their own experiences of double ADHD partnerships? Maybe you are in one that works? I do think if I had been diagnosed earlier, before my 30s, this one would have been different. But I’m not sure.

I feel angry because the ex was diagnosed and medicated and I wasn’t. I got my dx a month after we split. But for some reason I was much higher functioning than he was. I was always helping him out, helping him to regulate emotionally, caring for him, dealing with his meltdowns and putting up with being raged at in the morning because ‘I haven’t had my meds yet.’ I was the typical ADHD spouse, not even knowing I had it myself, and this was a huge burden on me.

The ex didn’t do much of the stuff ADHD folk are supposed to, like exercise and diet and sleep, and I luckily somehow always have known I had to. He had poor relationships/few friendships and I had somehow known how to find my tribe and have amazing mates.

I told the ex about my dx as I thought he deserved to know for closure. That didn’t help me! He said our relationship would have been so much better if I had been diagnosed earlier. But I was functioning anyway. So well I was able to give him so much. It’s like he’s blaming the end of our life together on the fact I wasn’t diagnosed. Not on the fact he was diagnosed and medicated but still the one acting like the undiagnosed partner. The ADHD books for partners (I read all these books, he wouldn’t!) weren’t about him, they applied to me!

Maybe this is just a man woman difference I don’t know. I need to process and work all this out because I’m pretty sure my next significant person will be ADHD. I’m sure all the other ones were.

I want to find someone I can stick with. I’ve had a series of semi-long relationships with probably/definitely ADHD men who are great fun and sparky and hyperfocused on me at first but then moody, volatile or turn out to be addicted to something. Every. Single. Time.

The alternative is that I find a way to be attracted to ‘normals’ and not find them dull. I have a great job, money, I’m attractive. I’ve attracted a lot of nice normals and rejected them over the years.

I am having therapy about all this of course. But if you have some helpful suggestions please help!

[2024horizons]

I'm really interested in this. I'm late diagnosed ADHD and I suspect most of my relationships were with ADHD men. The one that wasn't, I pissed him off!

Firstly with your knowledge awareness and strategies I wouldn't rule out dating someone without ADHD.
You just have to know exactly how it affects you, what you have in place etc. I read a fantastic chapter of a book that talked about sitting down and having a chat quite early on about your executive function skills and working out if you need to divide the labour up according to skills. Other techniques are to agree to understand each others weak areas, both work on a self improvement skill together and if you need them to do something that is a strong area for you and a weak area for them then the key is preparing for this and making it very small achievable steps (I feel like this is the hardest as we are often screaming in our heads but this is so easy why can't you do it let me just do it for you).