Three Strategies for Supporting a Partner with ADHD

Millions of adults with ADHD feel as though they’ve endured a lifelong uphill battle simply to become and remain responsible, reliable, and valued. Diagnosed or not, they’ve endured decades being poorly understood by loved ones, teachers, and colleagues — an in many cases, themselves.

Podcast host and entrepreneur Alex Partridge shared a simple but effective analogy on Instagram.

Relationships can be hard, and ADHD can make them much harder. If your partner is one of those affected, know that there are millions of individuals in the exact same situation as the one you two are facing. Sometimes it can be easy to forget what your partner is dealing with and — even if you also struggle with the condition — you may blame them for the challenges that arise in ways that don’t take into consideration how little control they have over their behaviors.

Here are three strategies you can use to better support them.

1. Practice Active Empathy

Adults with ADHD have it rough. Our understanding of the disorder and its management has evolved in recent years, and medication and therapy have changed lives but haven’t solved a fundamental problem: Having ADHD doesn’t absolve you of adulthood’s responsibilities. Adults with ADHD still have to show up to work on time. They still need to remember to buy a gift for an upcoming wedding. They still need to stop by an elderly relative’s house to help them out. And it’s simply more difficult for them than for their neurotypical counterparts. That difficulty can be hard to imagine if you’re neurotypical.

ADHD is true disability and is recognized by the United States Social Security Administration and American Psychiatric Association among many worldwide authorities. Unlike other disabilities (such as motor impairments), ADHD isn’t always obvious and outwardly visible, so it can be a challenge to consistently remember that many of your partner’s more frustrating attributes aren’t malicious, ignorant, or an indicator of laziness.

This is where empathy comes into play, and that can manifest in many forms. It can be as simple as checking yourself when you’re about to say, “We already talked about this,” “You always forget,” or any sentence that begins with, "Why can’t you just…”

However, active empathy refers to taking dedicated, regular time to consider your partner’s perspective and intentions, as opposed to doing so reactively only when challenges or frustrations occur. How can you work active empathy into your life?

2. Familiarize Yourself with ADHD’s Challenge Domains

While the medical community’s understanding of ADHD continues to change, the spectrum of behavioral symptoms that tend to accompany it are in many ways well-understood and agreed upon.

You could spend weeks learning about every one of these symptoms, but for the sake of supporting your partner in a practical way, it can be helpful to familiarize yourself with a summarized list of broad “challenge domains.”

1. Personal Organization (Including Time Management)

2. Intention Drift (Lack of Follow-Through)

3. Avoidance (and Procrastination)

4. “Hyperfixation”

5. Motivational Deficit

6. Distraction

7. Impulse Control

Note: If your partner seems to struggle with a few of these “challenge domains,” then they likely struggle with most or all of them to some degree.

Becoming familiar with these challenges better equips you to understand why your partner behaved the way that they did in specific situations — what they did or failed to do.

3. Meet Them Where Their Strategies Are.

If your partner asks you to “put the concert tickets in their sneakers so that they don’t leave the house without them,” it can be easy to roll your eyes, make a dismissive comment, or flat-out refuse. Cohabitation requires sharing spaces, so blocking your partner’s strategies can leave them feeling disempowered. Sadly, many adults with ADHD go through life having never developed coping strategies that work for them; when they do, it’s a wonderful thing, and you should encourage it through tolerance. Doing so may require you to compromise a bit. Plus: Placing concert tickets in their sneakers is less stressful than feeling unsure whether or not your partner will remember them.