The Double ADD Relationship: Why It Can Work

I have ADD, and so does my husband.

What I have found this means for us is that none of the expert advice or standard conversations about ADD and relationships apply to us. All the books, articles, forum chats, stories, rants and related tales from couple's counseling I've ever seen deal mostly with the challenges of an ADD partner and a non-ADD partner figuring out how to reconcile their differences and come to terms with the challenges of the relationship. Most commonly, it seems, the challenges of a relationship for someone with ADD come from the basic caring=instant results misunderstanding we all know too well...you know, where someone close to you assumes that if you actually CARED about their feelings and circumstances, you'd be able to keep a job/get organized/remember birthdays/focus during a conversation, etc.

This is, I think, the greatest reason why our relationship works: we understand one another. We don't hold on to anger about those sorts of little things because we get it. It's easy to forgive when you know that you're going to need forgiveness for some very similar thing five minutes from now.

The biggest problem with our relationship - and this should come as a surprise to precisely nobody - is that, well, we both have ADD, so it's rather difficult for us, as a couple to engage responsibly with the world outside our relationship. Things like paying bills, giving proper attention to friendships, showing up places on time, being self-starting...neither of us is good at keeping track of these things, so they suffer. We can also be pretty terrible enablers when it comes to procrastinating and being impulsive.

But for all that, I wouldn't give it up for anything. Even with the difficult parts, I feel confident that each of us is better able to improve ourselves together than apart...sometimes, just out of sheer brutal necessity (ha!) and need.

More than anything, though...it is the most affirming thing you can imagine, when you have ADD, to find someone who really understands just how difficult it is for you, someone who really understands the meaning of, "trying hard" from the perspective of the spirit being willing, but the neurochemistry, weak.

It helps that I'm of the "high functioning" variety of ADD. Ryan, for his part, is one of the most logic-centered and emotionally even people I've ever known, making him quite the excellent foil to my fits of insanely childish emotional outburst. In many ways, we have compatible ADD symptoms, or compatible enough to be going on with. Where I'm more aware of time, he's less prone to losing things.

One thing that is a major challenge, though; we're both awfully deferential. We have a rather difficult time honestly expressing anger with each other, even when we really should. We were a good year and a half into our marriage, I think, before we really started to have fights, fights we really needed to have in order to address and work through some baggage.

So...it's not a perfect setup, but it is a very workable option that I perhaps some people with ADD don't consider viable. Being understood is such a profound cornerstone of any strong relationship.