My Partner Has ADHD and Now I Do Too

I don't have ADHD, but my partner does. He's an amazing, magnetic, and very artistic man, and people are often attracted to his enormous personality. With that being said, many, many people being attracted to his enormous personality can be a problem in our relationship and then add the ADD (no writing pun intended), and I have a few things to reflect on.


ADD is not an EXCUSE for bad decision making: If a man or woman cheats, consistently disrespects you, or runs over your boundaries, that person, even with a disorder, made that decision. I found myself making excuses for my husband and often using his ADD as an excuse to write off his behavior and mistreatment, when in reality I was the one who accepted his mistreatment because I didn’t know what love is. Does ADD make him impulsive? Yes, and he'll say things and sometimes REACT differently than most people without ADD. But what ADD isn't, is the culprit for is his constant lack of disrespect for my boundaries.

    

What no one tells you: Someone with ADD really and truly doesn't function

the same as someone without. I'm not a therapist or doctor so I won’t sit here and go point by

point with symptoms. But anecdotally, my husband does see the world with a different lense.

And even though it can be beautiful to see a glimpse through that lense, it can also be

incredibly frustrating to not understand 85% of the time what he sees and thinks.  

So, for all married couples, you know marriage isn't perfect. Now add: marriage + the attention span of a gold fish + children + wife on her period, and what does all that equal? At times a perfect storm.

There is true beauty in ADD: 8 times out of 10 I don't understand my husband at all. There are beautiful moments, where you get a look at the true beauty of your partner who has an ADD mind. Like when he or she plays with your kids, like a kid, at their level. Or when he is able to approach an issue on a different level, a more immediate level, that you were unable to see because you worry about everything and everyone. There are many beautiful moments if you open your eyes to see them.

I end this with a lesson I learned. Make sure in any relationship you're clear about who and what you are before committing to anything. This is true for any relationship, but even more true I find with my husband and his ADD. Like a child with ADD, there's more effort and time given to that person: more time to learn, to make compromises, etc. So, if you're unsure who you are, it's easy to become engulfed in who they are. So stay strong and know yourself.

Talk Soon, 

Lavender Letitbe