Episode Description
In this episode Spencer Chernick, LMFT explores how ADHD impacts romantic relationships, focusing on dynamics where one or both partners have ADHD. He discusses the challenges of unequal mental load distribution in relationships where one partner has ADHD, which can lead to parentified dynamics, resentment, and misinterpretations of behaviors like forgetfulness or impulsivity. For couples where both partners have ADHD, Spencer highlights the potential for shared empathy but also mutual struggles, such as difficulty establishing routines or managing hyperfocus. He emphasizes the importance of neurodiverse-affirming communication, reframing emotional labels, and creating practical systems like shared calendars or body doubling to foster teamwork. Ultimately, Spencer encourages couples to approach challenges as a team, removing shame and building understanding to strengthen their connection and create a more harmonious relationship.
Episode Transcript
Hello, hello and welcome back. this again is, ADHD as an ally, thrive in your career relationships and responsibilities. I’m Spencer Chernick, LMFT, and we are at episode two. So now I am a full fledged podcaster. Now I’m sure you all agree, I’ve become an expert, immediately, in all of this, as a result.
So in today’s episode, episode two, we’re gonna focus on couples. and, how we can navigate ADHD in those relationships. And I wanna break this up into two different areas ’cause it’s a little different, right? There’s the scenarios where we have one person with ADHD and the other one does not.
And then we have the scenarios where you both have ADHD. And so I really wanna talk about those separately, and then we can kind of talk about like how I work with those, what I recommend, things like that. So what I wanna start off with is when only one partner has ADHD now. This often can really feel like that there’s an unequal distribution of the mental load.
especially, especially this will be magnified due to the understanding of wonder, both partners when it comes to ADHD. Now, what I wanna clarify is, anything you hear me say in this episode is not me giving any kind of excuses. It is simply explaining where people are coming from. I fully believe that excuse is, in the ear of the listener.
I get to decide what information you’re giving me. Makes me no longer upset with you directly and just simply upset with what’s happening, the inconvenience that’s causing things, things like that. And why am I saying that? Because when I’m talking about the unequal distribution of mental load, that could be taxing for the neurotypical partner and for those who aren’t familiar with that term, you’ve got neurodivergent, which is, you know, in this case ADHD.
But there are other, diagnoses that qualify as neurodivergent and then neurotypical. When you do not have one of the diagnoses that are considered neurodivergent, not to mention, even if you do have one of those, it’s a different neurodivergence. So that’s why this isn’t a one partner’s neurodivergent.
One partner is neurotypical. It’s one partner as ADHD one partner does not. And if we don’t understand the ADHD element, we can add on. Labels and feelings to things that make us work harder. And, and I really, really find that that, plays a role a lot of the time, right? As it does with anything that we don’t fully understand.
So it’ll look like one partner, for example, isn’t tracking things as well. Maybe it’s a parent who’s not, who doesn’t know, like all the doctors of names of the kids, or, you know, they, they, they can forget to, track, you know, this task or that task around the house. And so it can turn into, somewhat, if not.
Fully something that’s known as a parentified relationship. No one specifically asks for this, but a parentified relationship is when two individuals who do not literally have the parent-child relationship, I guess you could argue that a parent-child relationship literally is parentified, but it’s created for when it’s not the case is when one person kind of.
Feels like they need to take the role of checking in on the other person, maybe even giving them tasks, chores, whatever the, the ADHD person being used to this format and also struggling to believe that they could be right in, you know, something that they’re voicing or, or maybe they feel too much shame about, like, you know, struggling to, track this and that.
They’ll go with it. And now we have this little system where someone’s checking in with something else like, like they’re above the, maybe it doesn’t feel that way, but the system can kinda look that way and. That can feel not great for both people. if it’s a, you know, a, you know, categorically compartmentally, an area of the relationship where you guys are cool.
’cause it’s like, oh, I, I don’t care as much. Just let me know what to do and that’s fine. I’m not talking about those, I’m talking about the strain that the non ADHD partner has a feeling like they are the manager. Right. That completely lead to resentment. And studies have shown that resentment built to enough, of a duration or level that turns into contempt.
And, as someone who is, you know, trained, in various couples things, including the gottman’s, I remember them specifically saying there’s a 97% failure rate in relationships that have contempt. So this is why this is really, really important. You actually wanna have roughly like a five to one ratio of positive to negative interactions to avoid something like that.
So imagine if you feel like you are constantly tracking, or imagine if you’re the a d, C person who feels like you’re constantly being tracked, whether you agree to it or not. It can be really, really taxing. It can be really, really hard and it feels bad for both people. And no one meant for it to happen this way.
It probably started off subtle, Hey, can you just help me remember this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, sure. Da da, da. And that kind of built from there. Snowballed from there. The times where I’ve allowed myself to fall into one of those parentified relationships because it was the only way I knew that’s how it happened for me.
another thing is that there’s common misinterpretations. I think to really understand is that, remember how I mentioned earlier, the person who does not have ADHD to make sense of it, they’re gonna label something the best way they know how, but it’s gonna be based on their bias. It’s gonna be based on their reality, their understanding.
Right? Like have you, as for the ADHD people listening out there and for the partners of ADHD, people listening out there, have you ever heard this phrase? Oh yeah. I don’t know why. I just What do you mean you don’t know? What were you thinking? I, first off, that’s a big shame spot for us. Really, really, really big because we’re telling you the truth.
Like we really just didn’t think that through. That’s kind of part of our executive function was a struggle, and we kind of just did it. We got pulled, boom, or maybe we thought it through, but we didn’t think this part, this didn’t occur to us, whatever the case may be. And so it’ll look like. They, they just didn’t care enough.
That’s why they didn’t think, or they were just being reckless or, oh, they don’t have, and it’ll lead to misinterpretations, misunderstandings, right? I can’t tell you how often I, I help people connect. I didn’t process what you said versus I didn’t hear what you said. I was listening, but I didn’t process it.
So, yes, I was looking at you nodding, blah, blah, blah, blah. Or, you know, real, real common one. I was looking at a screen when you entered the room and started talking to me. Right. I was really locked in, and so it’s like, yeah, yeah. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. I, I’ll do that. Right after. I didn’t process that at all. I fully participated in a conversation that I will not remember later, and so then it’ll look like to the partner, you don’t care, or it’ll look like you didn’t prioritize it or myriad of very understandable optical.
Definitions. Right. And so because we don’t understand it, we label it as something else. another thing, like we could forget something, right? And it could be perceived as like neglecting or a lack of care, right? Forgetfulness is part of the diagnosis. Now, are there techniques, and I will get into these later to help us with forgetfulness, certainly.
It’s not gonna, like if you find a way to never forget again, please like message me. I would love to know how you made it so it never happened again. And you find a way not over to come, not only to overcome the symptom of ADHD, but you also overcame the human element. ’cause humans in general do it. So.
That can be a thing, and especially if it happens repeatedly, especially in the same area. ’cause that’s just the blind spot for that person. It’ll, it feels like it’s further cementing that fact. But it’s a mislabel and that builds from there and, and now we’re addressing this thing with the wrong information.
So we’re gonna use the wrong strategies and it’s gonna look like, it’s only further proving itself. It’s a horrible pattern. Happens all the time. And so I really recommend checking in with these things. ’cause another thing that we do, it, it, it, one of the symptoms, it is labeled as struggling to Wait your turn.
but it’s also, there’s another criteria where we interrupt, right? We wanna finish your sentence. There’s, we, we also process super quickly. So a lot of times, we’ll, we’ll feel like we know you’re going or we know we’re correct, we’re wrong. It doesn’t matter. We feel like we know and we’ll jump in. Or, or we, or we have a random, you know, thought like when people say squirrel.
You know, it’s like bam, like a thought. That’s kinda what we’re talking about. But it activates something else. Then it make, and, and, and. It’s actually a sign of dysregulation. ’cause we’re getting really, we’re getting overly excited or overly anxious or whatever the case may be. And so everything’s gets sped up and we kind of finish the conversation for everybody without realizing it.
And we jump in not recognizing social structure in that exact moment. That person’s still talking and we’re interrupting that in society. Wewe, that gets taught that, that’s rude, that’s selfish, right? But it’s not impulsive, it’s brain wiring. Like, that’s a really, really just synapsis firing site. Oh, I want, and there’s things that we can do.
I’ll talk about that as well. And then also something that we just, you know, we call emotional collisions, right? when the a DC partner feels controlled or nagged. Right. This is, remember I talked about the parentified relationship earlier. I’m not saying that it has to be app parentified relationship.
There’s definitely several ADHD relationships where that doesn’t exist, but it is very common and it doesn’t mean anyone’s bad. It happens very naturally. We’re almost kind of trained to be that way because growing up where we were told we were doing it the wrong way, we kind of got used to like taking someone else’s lead in an area that we had low confidence.
And then we kind of start sprinkling that to other areas. ’cause we don’t know when we’re right, when we’re wrong and we kind of lose track of, well, our opinion matters too. We’re so used to that being a shame response, bringing it up that we stop. Right, or we’re very reactive and we press it. It’s like one of these two.
So when the ADHD partner feels like they’re being controlled or nagged, and keep in mind this might be due to unintentionally or intentionally agreeing to this. You know, parentified structure or just managerial non, you know, like employee or whatever. I wanna think of it. and so now the person’s just doing what has allowed this system to work so far, but now it’s starting to not feel good.
Maybe what started off as like a helpful thing, it went too far the other direction. And so it can feel like our emotions are colliding, right? The emotions of the non ADHD partner trying to still have things operate in, I don’t know, structured way or, or a specific way, whatever the case may be, that doesn’t perfectly align with how we operate and we’re over here it being like, dude, like I.
25, I’m 30. Like, come on. You know, and it’s annoying. Right. You know, and, and we might forget or remember that that’s why it happened. you know, the, the, the formation of the relationship dynamic over time. But we don’t tend to track that stuff. She’s just someone like me who’s like, Hey, do you recognize this system?
And the non EHC partner can feel dismissed or burdened because of this, especially if it’s a partner who’s trying to understand the ADHD. So somehow it goes from, I’m allowed to be upset at that, to I’m not allowed to be upset, and that’s a swing that I really don’t recommend. So for your ADHD people out there all the way to the partners of ADHD people who don’t have ADHD, I want you both to hear this.
The non ADHD partner is allowed to be upset at the circumstance of anything that’s upsetting, even if it was created by ADHD or not, right? We’re allowed to be upset about what’s happening. We, we don’t wanna take that. We don’t want that game taken from us, right? So we don’t wanna take that from that.
But a lot of times, because we’re the partner’s trying to understand, they will dismiss their own feelings. They’ll be like, oh, I just need to roll with that and, and won’t even challenge the ADHD partner to be like, okay, maybe we can do this, maybe we can do that. Right. So that’s a very, very normal thing that can occur, when it comes to these scenarios where it is one partner with ADHD one partner with not.
What I’d like to recommend is like emphasizing like neurodiverse affirming communication. Right. and this will be true for the next thing I’ve discussed, so I’ll go over it again, but slightly differently. But the thing to understand is that we have to meet each other where we’re at. And honestly, if I was working with a couple where no one had ADHD, this would be the same thing.
You guys are a team. You want to feel like a team. The whole point that you of, of you guys joining up was not only because of how strong you were together, but because you also hoped or even believed that where you would struggle. Maybe your partner would balance you. So whether we called it that or not, we, we actually agreed to be a team, not just when things were good.
And if we’re married, most vows have that verbiage in there, right? You know, for better or worse, you know, like da da, da. So it’s understanding that even if it’s frustrating, we gotta get under the understanding that this is not intentional. If you truly believe your partner can just be doing better and they’re not, it’s one of two things you don’t fully understand and, and we gotta find a way to get on the same page.
Or if you really, really think that ADHD or not, that that’s rough, that sucks that, that I would, I would look at that. But chances are very, very, very often that is not what’s happening. It is literally just, it looks like it, right? It, it’s. Like. There’s a nervous system element that goes on where we get this spike in, like cortisol and all these other things.
Adrenaline. And, and we, and it activates our shame because there’s this little, little nursery rhyme. The, the, the, the phrasing is neuroplasticity. But there’s a little thing that we said that we used to say in my master’s program, fire together, wire together. If two or more things get fired enough times at the same time, they’ll wire together.
’cause your brain wants to be efficient. And it’s like, oh, okay. Whenever you do this, you do this also, so I’m just gonna make it. So you’re compelled to do that when that happens. And most times it sets us up for success. Whenever I move my left leg, I tend to follow it with my right leg. So eventually we went from walking like this and falling over and bending over to just a fluid walker.
When now I’m like eating sandwich, I’m texting and I can walk. No problem. Thank you, neuroplasticity. Thank you. Fire together. Wire together. sometimes we have to help the ADHD partner. Learn that this is a safe space. They grew up with other people not understanding this and labeling this as that. And so they’re gonna have this anxious response and they need to help you with this.
They need to also work on themselves and tell themselves like, Hey, like my partner’s trusting me here, da, it’s okay, da da, da. But we gotta understand that. We gotta phrase it like, okay. Was that, was the dopamine pulling you there? Is that What’s going on? Oh, hey, did you get, it’s all good. Are you back now?
Okay, cool. And we try to make as little. Things be a conflict about these side things that we’re just giving labels when really it’s just a quick little thing and also normalizing the need for practical supports like whiteboards or shared apps or whatever. Get on the same Google Calendar, whatever the case may be, right?
Like it, it’s like really, really just saying like, Hey, like I know that you have ADHD. I agreed to that. And so it’s, it’s understanding that like, I’m gonna figure out systems that go with that understanding, but we still gotta figure out what we still need from the ADHD partner in order to still make it a system that works.
Right? We don’t wanna acquiesce, right? We wanna find something that really does work, right? You know, people always say like, oh, I’m just trying to make it work. Well, is it really working? That’s important. So now we’re talking about, and I can go on, on and on for that forever, but, like I said, I’m gonna mention some techniques for when both people have ADHD that will also apply to when one doesn’t and one does.
So when, when a partner, when both partners have ADHD, like, Hey, I get it. Like double the creativity, double the, the excitement and the bouncing and then this and the that. Totally, totally. But it’s also can feel like double the chaos, right? It can feel like the blind leading the blind. Like, okay, well, which one of us is supposed to, supposed to make sure that this thing that we’re doing together is happening?
Or, Hey, let’s go on this trip and who’s gonna make sure we show up this da da, right? You know? and so it, it leads to shared empathy, but also leads to mutual struggles. So this can really lead to a deeper connection or it could lead to circular dysfunction. Like that’s the thing is like there’s gonna be pros and cons to either one, right?
In the first example, the balance can be much more easily established because the powers that be are much more clearly defined and we can kinda lean into whose strength is what. But when it comes to both people having ADHD, it’s actually kind of the same answer, but it’s more like, okay, like which one of us is technically better at this?
And also how do we help each other? Like I mentioned in a previous episode, in episode one, something called body doubling, right? Like setting up something, with a partner. so that way you know, you’re doing something at the same time, like working out together, is a great way to really just, you know, do things together, but at the same time.
These things can bounce off. So it’s, it’s, it ends up being either double magnifying the struggle or double magnifying the strength. so that’s something really, really important to understand when both people have ADHD. there’s also the risk of parallel dysregulation. I. So we’ve got difficulty anchoring routines, finances, parental tasks, like whatever the case may be.
And so I am getting dysregulated because things are getting overwhelming. Things are starting to get out of whack, out of structure. We, we definitely don’t like creating structure. We heavily resist, this is ADHD people, but we do so well within it. Once it’s been going, once it’s in the flow. Once we have the rhythm.
Man makes a huge difference. But the problem is, is that if neither one of us is naturally creating of structures, which is what we struggle with, then we can just both be getting really, really overwhelmed by the things that are overwhelming, right? And so that can make it so that we feel alone, even though the person right next to us is going through it with us.
That can be really difficult. Even still, that’s valid. Then another thing I like to talk about, I’m sorry, my cat’s yelling at me right now. is that when one partner is in a hyperfocus phase, right? Like just because you both have ADHD, it doesn’t mean that you’re always in the same phases of ADHD.
Nothing works like that. Even if you have something in common, you still might be at different parts of it. So one of you is really, really. Struggling, to balance things. And I can throw off the dynamic. Normally you guys have a system, right? But then this new video game comes out, or, or they just got, or my most recent one is I was introduced to golf, so, so I just became like a golf person.
Like it was just like I was golf. And that hyper fixation sometimes led to like, we’re watching a show together and I’d be thinking about it, or whatever the case may be. And I wasn’t present with my partner, which by the way, in my case. They also have ADHD, right? So they can understand the A, DHD, but it still doesn’t feel good.
It’s like, well dang, I was kinda hoping, I thought we were doing this to get, dang I, it’s like so they can get it, but it creates this imbalance. and then it can lead to someone feeling this. When the other person’s feeling different and that can really, really be magnified when things are overwhelming.
Right? Let’s go back to that last one. If things are chaotic and one of us is in a hyper fixation, so at least we can distract ourselves from the overwhelm by thinking about this thing, in fact, we’re gonna be more driven to do that ’cause it’s a great distraction technique. Lean into your hyper fixation mentally or physically, and now we feel better.
well now our partner’s left alone actually. They’re completely overwhelmed. They’re not in their hyper fixation, and you are so. I know that these things can be really, really hard and we wanna be understanding. ’cause it’s like, Hey, I get it. I’ve been there, but we still have to be a team. We still have to, so it’s really important that we help our understand, help our partners like understand like that emotional regulation and memory are intertwined.
Right? I know that that’s gonna be very helpful for, you know, when you have a non a HD partner with an ADHD partner, but even still, we can attach differently. as two ADHD people and you know, maybe it’s, it’s okay to be like, Hey, sorry, I’m in a hyper fixation right now. If you catch it, you can communicate that.
And as the other, a HD partner who’s not in hyper fixation being like, Hey, I get it. You’re, you’re in hyper fixation right now. I understand, but I really need you right now. Is there any way we can pull that out? Do you need to do something? Do you need to like. Go on a quick run. Do you, do you know, do, do you need like five more minutes on this thing?
Telling yourself I have five more minutes. ’cause sometimes our ability to transition from one task, especially if it’s a hyper fixation and it’s like abruptly, like, okay, we gotta go. It’s like, what, what I, you know, I talked about time blindness in our last episode. Maybe we lost track of this thing and we didn’t.
As silly as this might sound to some of you, this is valid. I didn’t know I had X amount of time left, so I wasn’t able to like go through like the acceptance process of like letting go of this task. So it’s gonna make it really hard to transition to the next thing. So it’s gonna make it so we’re more distracted and we’re not present with our partner.
So the partner can be like, Hey, like I, I get it. It’s hyper fixation. I still need you for this task. Like, what can we do? And notice that phrasing, what can we do? Right? Is it, is it a you thing? Is it me thing? Is it a joint thing? Do I do this? Do you do that? Right? We want our partner to win. If our partner wins, we win.
And the thing is, is that when you both have ADHD, at least there’s more understanding, but still there’s the shame of being the person who’s creating the struggle. And also, this is, doesn’t get talked about as much, but as the ADHD partner observing an ADHD partner struggle, and then I have an issue with it.
Now I’m in a bind because I wanna be understanding because I want someone to be understanding when I’m doing that thing. But now I’m also experiencing the frustration that I’ve, I’ve. Heard or seen someone else have towards me when I’ve done something similar. So now I have like shame about, oh man, now I better understand when I’ve done this, but also I kind of feel bad.
Challenging you because I, I didn’t want someone to do that to me, so I wanna be towards you. You know what I mean? So it, what I highly, highly recommend, is just like I mentioned, previously, is we, we kind of really wanna shift the frame, right? you’re not each other’s project. Like that’s not what this is.
You guys are a team. You are each other’s co-regulation. How do we help each other? If we’re gonna both have ADHD, let’s really understand that, Hey, I understand it doesn’t mean we just allow behaviors that don’t set us up for success or even harm success, but it’s being like, okay, okay, okay, okay. I’m not gonna take this personally.
I’m not gonna label it as this. I’m not gonna label it as that. I’m gonna. You know, be towards you, like how I would want, but we still need to figure out how to make this not happen again. And also how do we get outta this right now? Right? So it’s shifting the frame to we, we are in this together. It is not me versus you about this.
It is me and you against this trying to figure this out. So. Reframing the social labeling, the emotional labeling. These play a role whether you have ADHD and the other one doesn’t, or you both have ADHD, they just look a little different, and I highly recommend that no matter if you are option one or option two, communicate and get on the same page, even down to the little things of when you say this word.
Is that the same thing as when I use that word, you don’t have to change your definition, but at least it’s good to know. Okay. When they say that, that’s what they mean. Because if you’re in that like, you know, parallel dysregulation, yeah. Good luck having like the best version of you show up in that conflict, right?
So if we can make less things be a, an obstacle, then we’re not working as hard and then we, that emotional dysregulation can, can kind of. Go through its process. You guys are on the same team. Don’t forget that you want the same things. So the real question is, okay, so what do we do that would get it so that you get this?
And I get that in a perfect world that works out just as is. And if not, then we go into compromise. But it’s the, we come from the we place. This is a shame filled diagnosis that we shouldn’t be ashamed of, but. We almost always are. So let’s be there for each other, whether or not one of us does and one of us doesn’t, or we both have it.
So, I really, really, recommend a sit down conversation where you actually have a conversation about how to conversate. Hey, when I use, are there any phrasings I use that hit your shame? Right? Because just because you’re sending it out with a certain intention doesn’t mean it lands that way, right?
It doesn’t make you bad. It doesn’t make them sensitive. Right? That’s not what that, this is speak the same language, right? If it was literally like, I don’t know, Chinese and French, like would you just keep talking those languages and just hope it works out? Or would you try to create like a friend ease?
I’m just making that up on the spot right now, right? So like it’s. Getting on the same page, removing the shame, and then building that from there together. And, If you can do that. Honestly, I have all the hope in the world and belief in the world that you can kind of figure everything else out. It’s just getting rid of those obstacles that don’t really need to be there.
So, as always, I could talk forever about this kind of stuff, but, gotta end it at some point. Again, mostly for your benefit. I can go on forever. But I just wanna thank you guys so much for, stopping by and, and kind of listening and, I really hope that what we discuss today can really maybe give a new label to something, maybe give you a new strategy, a new way of thinking about it in hopes that your relationship just becomes much more easy to navigate so you have more time just to be happy together.
So, yeah, if we need to do more on this, let me know. But, other than that, I just really appreciate you guys coming by and, thank you. And, until next time I bid you a do.
