The #1 Way to Bring Peace to your ADHD Relationship

That sweet, loving, amazing husband I am always going on about? Well, he and I had a huge fight last weekend. Huge. I was yelling, he was simmering and resentful, and it all culminated with me in a puddle of tears.

What were we fighting over- it must have been significant and important. It must have been something that would have a lasting impact on our family. Right?

We were fighting over….wait for it…counter space.

Not exactly monumental. Not exactly important and definitely not life-defining. But, you know what? At that moment- it felt monumental and important (I’m not going to go as far as life-defining)

I like my space to be clean, clear, and free of clutter. I grew up in a house that looked more like a museum than a home with 2 kids living there. There were countless things that we couldn’t touch and entire rooms we weren’t allowed in unless company was over. My mother spent most of her days straightening up and clearing off surfaces, and as kids, we were brought in on that action early and often.

When I see clutter, I immediately go into action mode. I am one of those annoying people who clean the kitchen BEFORE I cook. God forbid the bed isn’t made- I will literally make it before I get in it at night. I have a hard time settling into anything else if my space isn’t clean and clear.

But I live with 2 tiny humans who can destroy an entire house faster than a class 5 tornado. I also live with an awesome guy with an ADHD brain that doesn’t recognize something exists if it is out of sight. That awesome guy also has a huge number of hobbies, all of which require endless equipment. Oh, and did I mention we live in a small city row home?

It’s a recipe for tension. It’s a recipe for resentment, and its a recipe for fights. And guess what? All of those recipes have come true for us over the years.

We’ve made progress though.

We have zones- some zones are to be cleared off every night, some zones can remain cluttered and some zones I don’t even look at. My husband has his own space to keep (most) of his equipment, and I have a crazy number of shelves and boxes for the toys that seem to multiply while we sleep.

We’ve also had an endless number of conversations about chores, distribution of duties, and ways to share the load. As our family and work roles have evolved over the years, these conversations have waxed and waned. And I am happy to say that our load feels pretty close to even these days.

So that fight- that wasn’t even about WHO was going to clean off the counter- it was about the counter itself. I wanted it empty, and my husband needed a visual reminder of the things so that he would act on them the next day.

He had a plan to clear it off. But he had an idea twice before in the week that the clothes had been piled on the counter (can I emphasize again? City house. Very little space). He had plans, but life happened, and the plans didn’t come to fruition. So what did I do?

On Saturday I asked him sweetly to please find another spot

On Sunday, I asked kindly, “when are you going to take that stuff?”

On Monday, I noted- “Oh, you didn’t take the stuff- whats your new plan?”

On Tuesday I tried to Ignore it

On Wednesday I reminded

On Thursday I nagged

On Friday I tried ignoring again

On Saturday I did the thing. The thing that is the surefire, straight-shot to resentment and fights. The thing that goes in the face of everything I know about ADHD and the way the ADHD brain works.

I took it personally.

All of a sudden, this pile of clothes to be donated was a personal assault. It was evident that he did not care. It was proof that he didn’t recognize all of my hard work or what my needs or desires were. (How a pile of clothes became all of those things is, now with the rationality of several days perspective, beyond me). But it did, and all of those things felt real and true.

And so I exploded.

Fortunately, dear husband and I have done a lot of work on how we fight. So what would have previously been a 3-day ordeal was entirely resolved by bedtime. But really- the whole thing could have been avoided. And not just by not putting the donations on the counter.

If, instead of taking the pile of clothes personally, I had seen them as what they were- a visual reminder- and I had joined my husband’s team in getting rid of them we could have avoided the whole thing.

Because that’s the trick. When one person in a couple has ADHD, the non-ADHD partner does sometimes need to take the role of executive function teammate- not mother, not nag, not disciplinarian, not even coach- but encouraging teammate.

So on Saturday, rather than taking it personally and getting angry, I could have reminded myself that the clothes were a symptom of his brain not a signal of contempt (or whatever I had conjured up at the time). I could have told him, with kindness, that I was getting frustrated and asked him again what the plan was. But rather than letting it go there (because I had tried that a few times), I could have the problem solved with him what he would do if that plan didn’t go perfectly. We could have come up with a plan A and B as well as a deadline for when the clothes would just be put back where they came from.

That would have saved a lot of drama, a lot of stress and a lot of tears. Because I can promise you, my husband’s desire to donate old clothes never had anything to do with me. He wanted the clothes out of his area, and he wanted a cue to remember to take them when he could. His difficulty remembering to take them was about his underpowered executive functioning system, not accessing his memory stores. And his lack of urgency about the clutter? That wasn’t personal either. That was about his brain’s difficulty with time horizons.

It was not personal.

Have you ever taken your spouse’s ADHD symptoms personally? What parts of their ADHD are responsible for the behaviors that trigger you? Are there ways that you can team up with them to make it easier?