7 Ways to Support Your ADHD Partner

Expert advice on thriving in a neurodiverse relationship

Loving someone with ADHD can be deeply joyful and rewarding. While each ADHDer is unique, therapists and ADHDers alike have noted a number of positive characteristics common to ADHD, like spontaneity, playfulness, creativity, humor, and the ability to go with the flow. (My husband has ADHD, and this is 100% true in my experience.)

At the same time, a number of aspects of ADHD can be challenging for a romantic relationship. We want our partners to listen to us carefully, remember things that we tell them, help keep our home tidy and organized, make plans for fun activities to do together, and share the load for parenting and other responsibilities. Yet these tasks can be extraordinarily difficult for the ADHD brain. (Again, 100% true in my experience.)

Often, a non-ADHD partner will start to feel unloved, frustrated, and resentful in the relationship (it’s me, hi, I’m the non-ADHD partner). We start reacting to these feelings…and, if we’re not mindful and compassionate, these reactions turn into nagging, criticism, micromanaging, and a whole bunch of other destructive behaviors.

The ADHD partner is usually not a big fan of being nagged and criticized all the time, especially if they (like many ADHD people, my husband included) grew up being constantly nagged and criticized by parents and educators. If both partners aren’t careful to engage in communication and repair, the ADHD partner is going to start feeling defensive, unloved, frustrated, and resentful in turn. They start responding to these feelings with their own unhelpful behaviors, and at that point, the couple is in a downward spiral of relationship dissatisfaction.

What I’ve learned is that thriving in a neurodiverse, ADHD/non-ADHD relationship requires effort from both partners. Both of us can learn about ADHD, implement new strategies, cultivate compassion, and practice mindful communication.

In this post, I want to focus on what non-ADHD partners (like me) can do to support the ADHDers they love. While I focus on ADHD/non-ADHD partnerships, I hope some of this advice is also applicable to relationships where both partners have ADHD and are working to support each other.

Since there aren’t many studies on ADHD relationships, I turned to books written by therapists and relationship experts about the strategies that have worked for their clients. Here is some of what they suggest:

1. Know that your partner’s ADHD symptoms are not personal.

2. Keep in mind that you don’t really know what it’s like for your partner.

3. Watch out for criticism, disapproval, contempt, and disengagement.

4. Be a partner, not a parent.

5. Learn your partner’s best communication windows.

6. Be open to compromises and creative solutions.

7. Learn about ADHD.

Keep reading for more about each of these points.

Photo via Jumpstory

Expert Advice for Partners of ADHDers

1. Know that your partner’s ADHD symptoms are not personal. ADHD is not a choice. Look, I know. If you are excitedly telling your partner about your day, and they suddenly get up and walk out of the room, it feels pretty personal. (I have been there! Many times!) But it helps to remember that impulsivity and distraction are characteristics of the ADHD brain. Basically, your partner’s ADHD is not about you.

2. Keep in mind that you don’t really know what it’s like for your partner. Everyone experiences ADHD-like symptoms—distraction, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, and hyperactivity—at least some of the time. But occasionally experiencing these symptoms is very different from chronically living with them every day.

3. Watch out for criticism, disapproval, contempt, and disengagement. When a partner’s symptomatic impulsivity or forgetfulness is met with a barrage of insults, or with complete withdrawal, the relationship suffers. In severe cases, this can escalate to a pattern of verbal abuse from the non-ADHD or other-ADHD partner.

   While it is totally normal to feel angry at our partners sometimes, lashing out doesn’t help anything. What does help is having a toolkit of strategies to process anger constructively. My personal go-tos are taking a break in another room, going for a walk, breathwork, and journaling.

4. Be a partner, not a parent. Far too often, ADHD partnerships fall into a destructive, romance-killing parent-child dynamic.

   You might be in a parent role in your relationship if you feel like:

• You have to “fix” your partner

• You’re micromanaging their activities

• You’re nagging them to do things over and over

• You’re correcting, disciplining, or punishing them

• You’re trying to control them

• Your partner can’t function in day-to-day life without you

  I know this feeling—the house is a mess, you’re exhausted, you feel totally out of control, and you feel like if you can just make your partner do the thing, then everything might actually be okay for a second. But it turns out that controlling our partner is not the answer here — and the more you try, the worse the relationship gets.

  When I feel the need to seek more control, I find it helpful to use practices from Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer’s mindful self-compassion work. I’ll offer myself compassionate thoughts, like “Yeah, this is really hard. I really wish I could fix this situation, and I can’t, and that is really painful.” Or I’ll repeat some internal phrases like, “May I accept that I cannot control what is happening right now.” 

  If you’re really entrenched in a parent-child dynamic, you might benefit from individual therapy and self-help books on codependency (Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More is widely recommended).

• Learn your partner’s best communication windows. Work with your partner to figure out the best times and ways for the two of you to communicate about different topics. Maybe they prefer communicating about certain things in the mornings, or right before dinner, or on the weekends. For me, my husband prefers that I send him non-urgent, logistical questions (like, who is doing school pick-up on Friday) via email, rather than my less-than-helpful habit of asking him seventeen questions as he’s rushing out the door in the morning. 

• Be open to compromises and creative solutions. When something isn’t working for you, get clear on what the thing is that you really want (for example, do you really want to go to bed at the same time together, or is it really that you just want to have time to cuddle?). Then, together with your partner, brainstorm creative compromises.

  For us, since we go to bed at different times, we make a point to cuddle for a few minutes right after putting our daughter to bed. My husband also has designated “boxes of chaos” in specific places — near his side of the bed, on his side of the closet, near his computer — but we both try to keep the rest of the house tidy-ish.

• Learn about ADHD. Having a solid understanding of what ADHD is can help you be more understanding and patient with your partner’s symptoms. It can also help give you ideas for creative solutions and compromises to make sure that you are getting your needs met. If you’re looking for an ADHD couples’ book to get started, I’d recommend ADHD & Us from therapist Anita Robertson (and you can get it for free if you have Kindle Unlimited).

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I loved getting to immerse myself in expert advice for ADHD relationships. Writing this newsletter really helped me think about ways I could be a more supportive partner in my own marriage.

I’d love to hear about your experiences in ADHD partnerships. ADHDers: what are ways that partners have supported you? How do you wish a partner would support you?

Non-ADHD/Other-ADHD partners: what are ways that you have been able to support your ADHD partner and thrive in the relationship?

A big thank you to

K. Alexandra

, author of the newsletter

Dear People Pleasers

, for suggesting this topic! If you have a topic you’d like me to explore in a future post, let me know in the comments. 

Stay curious,

Dr. Taylor Allbright