Husband to Me: “I’m glad you’re not perfect!”

“Whoa, looks like I got a little carried away with the pitchfork,” I mutter, looking out the window to see a small fountain shooting from the soaker hose.

“Huh? What’s wrong?” says my husband with alarm in his voice, defensively peering over his impromptu shield, The New York Times.

“Relax, I just punctured the hose when I was digging out those dahlias yesterday. A piece of it was buried in the dirt, and I didn’t see it.”

“Shew!” he says, chuckling and relaxing back into the Week in Review. “I’m glad it was you who goofed up and not me.” Living for a few decades with unrecognized ADHD can make a person a bit…gunshy, always half-expecting to be reamed out for some unintentional, unforeseen consequence. Moreover, living with a domestically and logistically high-functioning mate can bring dispiriting “less-than” comparisons.

Yet, in a sense, that’s the beauty of being married to my husband instead of one of the many engineers I dated in my youth. Make no mistake: They were wonderful men all, with unerring ability to perform tasks (from oil changes to computer-memory upgrades) methodically, carefully, logically. It carried a certain comforting charm that smacked of maturity and reliability.

The dark side of this reliability: A chronic inability to make non-linear leaps — or to fully trust people who can. Commit one deed that struck them as “illogical” and look out. My husband is plenty brilliant, accomplished in areas that I can understand only superficially, but he’s not a judgmental perfectionist (except when I tried to make a healthy pie crust out of ground almonds; a man has to draw the line somewhere).

So, to me, one of the sweetest things my husband can say to me is, “You do so many things well, that it’s always a relief when you demonstrate that you’re not perfect.” Moreover, he never gets angry with me for bone-headed moves — because he knows whatever he says, it can never be as tough as what I’ll tell myself — and he’s always supportive of my endeavors, including writing a book that meant ADHD was the topic of too many conversations.

No, this has nothing to do with the ADHD Partner Survey. I just think it’s important to take a break sometimes and remember why we love our partners with ADHD, even as we honestly validate the challenges many of us face — and then learn to compassionately work through the challenges.

TagsADHD and relationships, ADHD Partner Survey, adult ADHD, Gina Pera