Hi friends, I’m 36 and recently just discovered what ADHD actually is, and am waiting for a consultation/diagnosis from a psychologist (a few more weeks on the wait list I think).
Apologies for the long post, but I’m working through some shit and feel the need to share here.
Anyways, as Ive been processing what having ADHD might mean for my life, Ive been having some incredible “aha!” moments about areas of my life where I feel significant amounts of shame for coming up short.
The one that I’m having now, which I’m very curious to know if anyone has also experienced, is an extreme amount of frustration and stress when my spouse starts “task stacking” with me. She’ll ask me to do something around the house, or with our kiddo, and then while I’m in the middle of doing that thing, she’ll ask me to do another second thing, and then a third, and so on until either all of the tasks are finished or I politely ask her to stop piling work onto my plate.
Relatedly, when we were dating we would spend a lot of time hiking together and its where we got to know each other a lot. However once we got married I began to really dread the days when we went hiking together. My thoughts on this now are that, we would have to wake up super early (which sucks but isnt a deal breaker in itself), but my wife would spend the entire morning in a whirlwind of task stacking, talking to fast to understand, and then have an unbreakable rigid “get out the door” time. Once we were in the cat to go hiking, I was a complete wreck of feeling exhausted and beaten down. I never had any of these frustrations or dread of hiking before we lived together.
This ended up in me coming to the conclusion that maybe I really don’t like hiking at all (which I’m starting to suspect is not actually true), and then fighting back on planning days to go hiking (planning is another massively shameful kryptonite of mine, but that’s another story). She’s also silently blamed me quite a lot for taking away something that she really loved doing together, and I’ve felt this existentially deep shame about “false advertising” for myself while dating as an adventurous spirit, only to turn into a massive homebody once we got married.
Essentially, I’m starting to realize that many of the things that have caused me deep shame and cost me insane amounts of relational capital in my marriage might actually just be symptoms of ADHD.
Can anyone else here validate whether or not these sound like ADHD symptoms you’ve experienced and, if so, whether or not those symptoms have been helped by medication?
It sounds like your ADHD diagnosis is helping you with some introspection! I think you should discuss this with your wife so the two of you can come up with some strategies that will help you both get back to an activity that you both enjoy together.
You may be irritated at “being told what to do” because of Opposition Defiance Disorder, which is often comorbid with ADHD.
Or maybe you’re hyperfocused on your own morning routine and getting irritated at being interrupted when your wife asks you to do things.
But to me, this sounds like a communication issue more than an ADHD issue.
Is your wife asking you to take care of things related to the hike? “Can you fill up the water bottles? Can you pack the snacks? Where should we go today?” These are all things that could be planned/prepped at a different time, like the night before. Maybe doing so would be less stressful.
Or is your wife assigning you to-do list items unrelated to the hike? “Can you wash the dishes? Can you call X this week to ask about plans for Y?” Again, these assignments could be discussed or completed at a different time or in a different way (i.e. shared list with to-do items she could add for both of you.)
If it’s the latter, why does your wife feel like she needs to assign you tasks in your household? Is there a chore imbalance that could be addressed? (Is your ADHD otherwise affecting your shared household management tasks?) Is your wife more of the “project manager” and she’s the one keeping track of what needs to get done every week? If yes, please for the sake of your relationship, look into the concept of emotional labor. I’d also suggest looking into Fair Play Life. Potentially you and your wife could reorganize how responsibilities are split so that she no longer needs to ask you to do things, and thus you stop getting annoyed at a growing to-do list of assigned tasks.