I've been married to my ADHD partner for several years, and after the initial hyperfocus phase, I suspected infidelity. My wife, diagnosed with ADHD since college, seems to have lost focus on me. As a lawyer, she works extensively, and when she does focus on me, things can go well, but this is now rare. Do others feel the same sense of loneliness I do? We maintain intimacy on weekends, though she struggled with the schedule I established due to our busy household with six children, one with special needs. She admitted that without this schedule, we wouldn't be intimate. We still exchange daily kisses and expressions of love, but I feel her absence. When she's home, she's often preoccupied with her phone or focused elsewhere. When I try to hug or kiss her, she claims I'm overwhelming her. I acknowledge being a touchy-feely person, which leaves me feeling isolated and unfulfilled. I contribute to household responsibilities, handling cooking, cleaning, and laundry. I desire some form of intimacy and affection. Do others experience similar challenges with their ADHD partner?
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Too much
I know what you’re saying. In my marriage to a severe ADD partner, his overwhelm made him feel everything was too much.
Periodically he couldn’t sit down to dinner with our family of five.
I concluded he shouldn’t really have had several children, a demanding career or mortgage. He should have lived differently. But for an academically gifted person, like your wife too, it seems achievable to live all those things, doesn’t it?
In retrospect, it’s easy to understand these things. But for a good many years, I had no idea how his difficulties would impact us as a family.
I feel its especially difficult to understand executive dysfunction in the otherwise gifted. This non-symmetrical ability.
I’m sorry you feel alone.
the loneliness is real
I was profoundly lonely in my marriage. No companionship at all; him locked into his hyperfocus and me spinning all the other plates. No physical affection, but the expectation of sex when he felt like it.
I tried telling him I was lonely. I tried asking nicely for his company, for hugs and affection, and to be spoken to kindly. It didn’t work. Sometimes I got upset when he snapped at me. I occasionally lost my rag and stormed back at him. He told me I was critical and negative and cruel. I felt like the worst person in the world.
The marriage foundered; we have now separated. He told me he is lonely now. I felt sorry for him. But I am happy. Nervous about the future and worried about my finances but I also am my own person now. Flawed but not terrible. Single, but not lonely anymore.
Happy your in a batter place
It’s nice that you are now single but not alone. The worst is to be married and feel alone. I have gotten tired of asking for hugs and affection. I tell her I need skin to skin contact, skin affection and she just blows it off and makes fun of me.
But from I have read here it doesn’t seem like I have it so bad . She still hyper focuses on the family . Especially my nightmare ex wife. She tells me all the attention and litigation my ex wife causes makes her have no energy for me at the end of the day.
I’m here and I’m still trying. One day at a time. Thank you for your reply
In the same boat
I absolutely have similar challenges. (My husband is non-diagnosed ADHD. Our marriage counselor recently suggested he get tested.) There's a saying about being loneliest in a crowd. For me, I'm loneliest laying next to my husband who's turned away and snoring while I'm burning with desire to connect... even if only by holding hands while we fall asleep. I understand your challenges with a busy schedule too, as we have 6 children at home.
Drs Ratey & Hallowell's book, Delivered from Distraction, has a chapter specifically devoted to sex & ADHD. It helped me understand how ADHD has been infiltrating our love life for 20 yrs. I'm still lonely, but this give me a new approach to the conversation.
Thank you for sharing your struggles. I've been feeling alone for many years. No one has understood the struggles I've had with my husband; not friends, not family, not the three different marriage counselors we've been to. To them, I'm just mean and petty. This is the only place I've found where almost every post echoes the cries of my heart: the feelings of loneliness, isolation, pain; of feeling unwanted, misunderstood, and irrelevant.
That is moving
That last paragraph moves me. This strange experience we share seems impenetrable from the outside - almost nobody understands it. But we do.