ADHD and Relationships
If you or your partner has ADHD, you may be experiencing some problems. Did you know that around 8 percent of American adults diagnosed with ADHD? So not suprisingly, relationships can suffer. Whether you are the person with ADHD or love someone who has the diagnosis, ADHD affects you both in important and understandable ways but please don’t lose hope…therapy can help!
So what is ADHD?
It’s a brain difference that makes it difficult to remember important details or tasks, get and stay organized, manage time, maintain focus, and follow through fully. Different people experience different symptoms, but intense feelings and reactions are a common for most. These symptoms impact not only the person with ADHD but also the person who loves them.
It is often underdiagnosed in adults. Times have changed, so many adults were never diagnosed as children. That means that adults with undiagnosed ADHD are struggling with its symptoms – and have their whole lives – but don’t know any different. They just assume this is how they are, in life and relationships.
So having it or loving someone with it can make you feel entirely helpless. If you don’t have ADHD, you may feel resentful, and if you have it, you may feel shame. Understandably, you may fear that your relationship is beyond repair but don’t worry, it’s not!
It’s common for us at Couples Counseling ATL to see couples who come in with this, overwhelmed. They don’t know where to start. The good news is that plenty can be done to help you to move out of your patterns. You can stop feeling hurt and frustrated all the time.
So how does ADHD affects your relationship?
Common Patterns in Relationships with ADHD
I once heard a great metaphor for ADHD. Think of a house on fire. One of you is stuck inside it. There’s smoke everywhere, and it’s hard to see what’s in front of you or find your way out. Your partner is circling around the house with hoses and sirens. Both of you are fatigued, at times, even desperate. One of you carries the ADHD around internally and has to deal with it every moment, the other lives in reaction to ADHD. It’s not always apparent to the partner with the hose that their partner may be struggling and is doing their best. The person without ADHD often feels like the rescuer or the adult, and the person with ADHD often feels like the one needing saving, or the child, and neither person likes this dynamic.
Labeling ADHD for what it is…just a common challenge that you’re both navigating…will help think of it in a different way, with perspective, and look at your dilemma together rather than at each other with frustration. You can start to think more like a team with a common goal. ADHD affects both of you and leads to very common patterns.
If you’re a person with ADHD, you likely feel anxious and worried about missing things all the time. You often feel hurt and criticized by your partner about what you do or how you do it. It’s normal to feel irritated about being nagged a lot to get things done, and maybe you don’t feel very accepted for who you are.
If you’re the partner without ADHD, you likely feel hurt and let down all the time. It hurts your feelings and frustrates you that your partner forgets things that are important to you or that you have discussed. You’re often overwhelmed by all the stuff left for you to do, and you don’t feel like you can depend on your partner to “be there for you”. You likely feel frustrated by your partner’s intense emotions or defensiveness when you ask questions that seem to come out of nowhere. You step on your partner’s shame landmines all the time, and either want to blow up at them or avoid them and just defeatedly retreat, saying “Fine I’ll just do everything myself!” It’s totally normal to feel frustrated that the same old stuff keeps happening..
Remember that ADHD will always be a difference between you
Every couple has perpetual differences, and ADHD is just one of yours. According to the Gottman research, there are really only two kinds of problems in relationships – those that are solvable and those that are perpetual. Perpetual differences NEVER go away. It can become gridlocked and never go anywhere, making you feel like you’re on some horrible Groundhogs day where you wake up and have the same argument every day, if you don’t have the right skills.
But take heart! Every couple has perpetual differences, even really happy ones. The difference between happy versus unhappy couples is that happy couples talk about their perpetual differences in a respectful, sometimes lighthearted way, for the rest of their lives. They try to stay caring, engaged and respectful and good listeners and avoid the 4 Horsemen (more on that in a moment). They make a point to repair ruptures when they go off track or hurt each other’s feelings.
So remember that if ADHD exists in one of you, it is your relationship’s perpetual difference. Learning to gently discuss your feelings openly and share about your hurts and frustrations so that your partner can truly just step in your shoes, and hear you as their beloved who is confiding in them will help them to hear you instead of feeling criticized or attacked. Even if you’re doing your best and using all the Gottman skills, your partner may still become reactive or defensive because they’re human. This is when an expert couples therapist who truly understands ADHD in relationships is helpful for you to navigate those difficult conversations until you can learn to do them on your own.
You’re going to need to practice this a lot, like going to the gym to get stronger. These muscles patience, attunement, and understanding can be developed! Explore how ADHD affects your partner, what is it like? What are their struggles and strengths that come from ADHD. On the other hand, If you’re the one with ADHD, ahve you sat down to learn how your ADHD affect your partner? How does it often feel for them when your ADHD affects them?
Knowing And Avoiding Gottman’s 4 Horsemen
It’s difficult in every relationship, but critically important to learn and avoid the Gottman “4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. These well researched, toxic behaviors exist in all relationships, but to much lesser degrees in happy long-term “master couple” relationships. They include criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. When they aren’t dealt with, marriages are likely to end if the 4 horsemen continue to reak havoc.
One typical conflict cycle in ADHD couples is when the partner with ADHD forgets to do something which leads the partner without ADHD to be critical of the partner with ADHD, who typically responds with defensiveness.
When this keeps happening, conflicts typically escalate, leaving both of you feeling hurt and not listened to, and it makes both of you resentful and maybe even lose respect for one another. This is often when contempt comes into the picture. Contempt is the most toxic of the 4 Horsemen and the #1 predictor of divorce. Contempt shows that you believe that you are better than your partner, and that your partner is less than or more flawed than you are. Finally, as fights worsen and escalate and one of you gets really pissed off, the other is likely to stonewall which is shutting down and disengaging from the conflict. They might tune you out and be present but not listening, or they may even leave the room entirely. They’re usually in a fight or flight physiological over-arousal and are tyring to calm themselves but unfortunately, it often makes their partner feeling pissed off or neglected. The problem is that it doesn’t help repair or reconnect and make things better, and your partner loses trust that you will show up and compromise and make things better.
If one of you has ADHD, you both need to learn and practice identifying the 4 horsemen and then responding with the antidotes help move towards more goodwill and hopefully setting the stage for compromise or repair. If you typically criticize, instead find a way to complain gently without blaming your partner, just share your feelings about what’s happening and what you wish would happen. If you typically respond defensively, instead find something in what your partner is saying that you can validate, find truth in, and take even an itty bitty bit of authentic responsibility for. If you’re frequently guilty of contempt, which is disrespectful language, eye rolling, or saying something critical that sounds like you are better than your partner, instead find a way to appreciate who your partner truly is, what they bring to the relationship, and try to accept their differences, and just like with criticism, ask for things gently and respectfully. Instead of stonewalling, find ways to soothe yourself so that you’re not seeing red, and when you start to get flooded, say you’re going to take a break but tha you’re coming back. Or learn the signs youre becoming flooded and learn to better self-regulate your emotions so that you can learn how to “lean in” to tougher conversations more, and stay engaged and responsive.
The research shows that it’s critical to see conflict as collaborative and that in a healthy partnership your preferences both matter, and that you’re wanting both of you to feel honored and respected in the end. Instead of a lose/win, there needs to be a feeling of win/win for the relationship to stay healthy.
Repairing Damage Caused by ADHD
When ADHD wreaks havoc on a relationship for a while, without any treatment, it often leads to feeling let down and basically damages trust. Gottman’s research shows that trust is built from being attuned to one another’s feelings and needs, and being responsive to each other, and treating each other with respect. ADHD just makes this a bit more challenging. When you’re easily distracted, it can be challenging to hear your partner and follow through on agreements. Your attention just starts to drift, even when your partner is really important to you and you want to please them. On top of that, ADHD often means having extra heightened sensitivities, emotional swings and impulsiveness that might make you more likely to say hurtful things or not understanding the meaning behind your partner’s complaints, which is their needs. Time management issues often result in impulsively changing focus. Shame is often quickly triggered in people with ADHD. What often remains unspoken negative self talk in people with ADHD is painful beliefs like “I am bad” or “I’m defective” or “I am worthless”. Shame often leads to fear of being unworthy of being connected to others, and this can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of behaving in ways that disconnect us from other people. In effect, we feel worthless and unlovable, so we hide from the people who love us the most and believe we are the most worthwhile.
The problem with shame is that it’s often felt in secret, and the longer it stays in secret and not shared, the more likely it is to make you worse. Talking about shame always makes it go away quicker. By talking with your partner about your shame related to your ADHD, it can help the two of you reconnect and begin to understand each other better. They probably don’t understand how difficult normal every-day things can be for you. Just as important is hearing them out – and being on your best behavior to avoid defensiveness when they share how your ADHD affects them so that you can just put yourself in their shoes and have compassion. Don’t go into your own head and shame spiral. By both of you trying to be open and honest, with more compassion and empathy for each other and for yourselves, you’re much more likely to rebuild trust and feel like more of a team that can tackle some of the difficult dynamics at play with ADHD.
Navigating relationships and ADHD is difficult but totally doable. With all the research-based tools that are now available, including expert couples therapy, you can learn to navigate ADHD together. Reach out today if you need some help!
