“How Did You Learn Your Partner Has ADHD?”

Our oldest son was diagnosed with severe AD/HD when he was in kindergarten and almost 5 years old. Our lives had been hell before that, and I did all sorts of research on the Internet and finally read Driven to Distraction. Aha! I knew that our son had AD/HD. I then began that to suspect that my happy-go-lucky, born-anew-every-day husband, who often would zone out in the middle of our conversations, had AD/HD too. Our son’s therapist evaluated my husband, and yep, I was right. She eventually diagnosed severe AD/HD in my father-in-law and, years later, mild AD/HD in our youngest son. I’m the only one in our house without AD/HD.

Oh—I forgot the how-diagnosis-has-made-a-difference part! Our lives are far less chaotic and I am no longer constantly feeling hurt by my husband’s behaviors, because now I know that they’re not intentional. He’s learned new social skills and is now successfully self-employed, and our sons are flourishing in school.

My partner always told me that he felt different than everyone else growing up. He is an extremely charming and genuine person but there were always little “quirks” that would come up and turn into major incidences that did not seem real and would be hard to explain to anyone looking in from the outside that seemed to think what could possibly be your problem? You seem to have it all.

But you can not explain when things go topsy turvy and you don’t have an answer. You can’t tell the extremes that everything goes to because this is not how you were raised to be and you think you are a much stronger person than what is happening to you right now . Fights appear out of thin air while you are looking like a cartoon character shaking your head and going Whaaaat???! Who is this person that I love??? and how could my judgment be soo off? And then he goes back to being “normal”. Not just normal but all your dreams come true. I wanted to find the bottom of what was going on, I wanted to have a family with this person and I could not understand our dynamic even when he said that I was the person that he would want to have kids with too.

My partner realizes that there is most likely an ADHD diagnosis that should be made but I feel he is not ready to take accountabily and accept all the years of undiagnosis means and who that makes him in the long run.

I began suspecting my husband had ADHD after doing some research and reading some books on it. Some of the stories of his childhood struggles (tics, not being able to stay seated in school, riding a borrowed bike to the movies and then walking home, forgetting he had ridden one to the movies, etc.) and struggles in our marriage, finally could be explained in the context of ADHD. It never dawned on four different marriage counselors that this could be the root cause of our problems. What an eye opener! My husband has subsequently been diagnosed with ADHD, and we will explore treatment in the light of this new understanding.

My boyfriend was diagnosed and received treatment in his early teens, but by the time I met him he was no longer in treatment. He told me that he had ADHD, but I thought that just meant he would have a difficult time sitting still…and that obviously wasn’t a problem for him since he could sit at the computer for hours at a time playing video games! It wasn’t until our relationship was nearly destroyed and we made a last-ditch effort to save it by going to see a counselor that I learned (through the counselor) that ADHD was to blame for the majority of his problematic behaviors. We’re still trying to find a medication regimen that works well for him, but every little bit helps, and just knowing that a behavior is related to ADHD helps us to find ways to cope with the behavior. We still struggle in our relationship, but we’ve made a lot of progress and see that there’s hope for a future without so much “drama.”

My husband and I had been in counseling with a therapist after 19 years of marriage. The therapist told me he suspected something and asked to see my husband for a few sessions by himself. After a few sessions he tested my husband and found him to be ADD. We then tested our 18 year old son too who struggled in school but with no teacher ever telling us to have him tested for ADD. Since there was no hyperactivity it was hard to recognize as ADD. We have had many struggles and now I can say that most of them can be atributed to ADD. I have had my frustrations because of how the relationship is affected and I have had to educated myself about this disability, actually much more than my husband is willing to educate himself. He is currently on medication, but that too was a struggle for him to admit that he needed to take medication for a disability.

My husband’s nephew was diagnosed with ADD and his sister told me she was sure that my husband was AADD. We had been to marriage counselors repeatedly and I was at my wit’s end with trying to cope. My adolescent daughter was creating strategies to avoid confrontations between her dad and myself; she was behaving in a more mature manner than he was. I had talked repeatedly with my sister-in-law about my difficulties in coping.
My husband hasn’t felt that medications have helpful; though I keep hoping for some miracle pill. Most of the time, I know how to cope, but he still makes indredibly ridiculous decisions which cause great difficulties.
I often feel that I’m “in a handbasket headed for hell!”

My husband was diagnosed after I saw the recent Dr. Phil show w/Dr. Hollowell. A young wife was crying and saying how she was so exhausted and stressed from having to take care of everything…every word she spoke I have spoken over the years (to therapists, my mom, friends). I immediately researched the disorder and found that it described every last one of his behaviors. Sadly, we have taken him to a number of different therapists, counselors and psychiatrists over the years….obviously none of whom recognized a disorder.
His sister is severely ADD and his mother and uncle exhibit major characteristics but remain undiagnosed. What prevented me from making the connection is 1)none of the professionals we’ve seen mentioned it and 2)his mother has always told me how punctual, responsible, great in school, etc. he was as a child and so I believed it must be something else

My husband laughed hysterically when I told him this about his mom recently…he says he was none of those things as a child…she’s just being a mom and remembering it the way she wants to.

What it’s meant to us is that we’re still fighting…the childishness, the stress caused, the chaos, the extremely expensive mistakes, the negative behaviors….but we’re not fighting in the dark anymore.