living with someone with ADD
Jul. 15th, 2004 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sevMy primary partner was diagnosed with ADD a couple of years ago. He's pretty open about that, and we're for the most part dealing with it.
Many places don't provide resources for partners. Sometimes it seems like there's only four categories of people affected by the condition: adults with ADD/kids with ADD/parents/educators. The resources I'm finding for partners-of-people-with-ADD seem to fall into two categories: basic rah-rah stuff like "you can do this!" that lists vague to-dos like "identify the problem. Come up with a plan!" or horror stories from people for whom nothing is working.
Well, I'm somewhere in the middle. I've read a bunch of material about the condition. (I'm not interested in calling it a disorder. Sometimes the ADD drives me crazy, but there are also aspects of him that are probably ADD-related that are *good* things.) I talk to my therapist about it and he talks to his therapist about it. We identify problem areas and sometimes we actually manage to do something about them. Our communication abilities have improved a zillion-fold since the diagnosis now that we've started putting new communication habits in place.
So, with some trepidation, I'm leaving this entry public. I'm not brave enough to publicize it, but I'm not marking it friends-only, either. I can't be the only one who wants to hear from people who are dealing, but not achieving perfection. I'll probably show it to him, and I'll certainly bring it to my next therapy appointment.
It's good that nowadays I don't feel like as much of a nag when I find myself coughing up ten reminders a week for a month before something gets done. It used to be I'd have to ask several times, and I'd feel like a nag for doing it, but even several times wasn't enough to actually *get* it done, so on top of feeling like a nag I'd be pissed off because I had to do it myself anyway. Now I can ask over and over again until it gets done, and I don't feel quite as bad. This perspective has improved my interactions with people in general, too -- not just with Z. Not that I engage in ten-reminders-a-week with anybody else, but I normally have a lot of resistance even to asking more than once. Once I've initiated two or three conversations with somebody about something, I figure the ball is in their court. This has more than once led to frustration when the person forgets I asked in the first place ("oh, you were interested in that? Why didn't you tell me when that became available? No, I don't remember you expressing interest before it was available; why would I remember something like that?") or figures that since I didn't ask twice I must not have really been interested, or whatever other reasons people seem to need multiple reminders of something. So, lately, I set myself deadlines: If I haven't heard an answer/seen results in N days, I ask again. The number of days varies with how time-sensitive the request is, how reliable the person has proved to be in the past, and how much trouble I'm having asking. (If I'm having trouble getting myself to ask in the first place, I'll usually let the reminder take longer.) So if I seem to be bringing up a topic every six weeks, that's why.
I still feel like if I want anything done I have to do it myself. At least if I care about it getting finished or if I care about when it happens. What's frustrating is that I know not everybody in my life has ADD! I have a suspicion that since other people see Z doing it to me they subconsciously end up figuring its okay for them to do it, too -- and since they're not in love with me, they've got even less incentive to consciously try to do differently, which sometimes means that he's more reliable than anybody else I'm dealing with! Either that, or everybody but me is just an asshole. Um, wait, did I say that out loud? ;) Seriously, though: I think putting up with flakiness in Z means I might let other people get away with it more often than I should. People who reliably follow up on their commitments tend to inspire my loyalty and devotion. I couldn't do this without you. If you know more people like you, please introduce us. :)
Speaking of following up on commitments, one thing about being partnered with somebody with ADD is sometimes that means *I* end up flaking on commitments, which drives me up the frickin' wall. It probably drives me more crazy than the people we inconvenience by being late. I hope so; if they're more mad than I am about this then we've made our friends really, really pissed off. We're late a lot, because failure to properly estimate how much time it takes to do something is a common ADD symptom, as is failure to get going on time because one is buried in something interesting. When we're home, I can do reasonable time-estimates about when we should leave and I can interrupt whatever he's engrossed in to point at the clock, but that doesn't guarantee he will have enough time to finish everything he needs to get done before that time rolls around. And when he's at work, there's little I can do to push him to get home in time for us to get stuff done. I can call and tell him to Leave Now Dammit, but generally he brushes me off. And that's if he remembers to tell me we have something we're supposed to do in the first place. It's embarrassing to have to make excuses when people ask, "where were you? We missed you!"
I'm tired of being the killjoy. I'm the one who says, "No, I don't think you have enough time to do this fun thing. It's not because I don't trust you or because I think you're a flake; it's because experience has shown me that if we're going to get there on time we have to leave now or that if we're going to get this task finished at all we have to do the boring parts, too." When I try to redirect him away from the part of the task he's hyper-focusing on, I think he's trying to be amusing when he responds, "but this is the fun part!" Knowing that he's trying to be amusing doesn't make it easier for me. We do live a more organized and effective life because I do this, but I need to find something to do about the way it makes me see myself.
I'm not always right; sometimes he does manage to heroically get everything done he needs to get done or we manage to hurry and get someplace on time. And then I get, "see, I knew I could do it!" and he's less likely to listen the next time. It works better if sometimes I just let it slide. Where's the turning point, though? Where's the balance between the one extreme where he ends up in crisis because he can't get things done and I end up doing most of what we share myself and we're nearly always late, and the other extreme where I have to hyper-control everything to make sure he gets things done and we get things done and we get places on time? I feel like I can't win; either I'm hyper-controlling or I'm disappointed. Every once in awhile I'm pleasantly surprised, but that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough. I'm trying to lower my expectations, but who wants to *expect* to be let down?
I feel like some of our coping mechanisms paint me as the wet blanket. "Honey, did you write that down? Wait, stop, we have to think about this. I don't care if you want them to like you, either you or I am going to have to go back and tell them "no" because you committed to something you shouldn't have. Hey, wait a minute, you've gotten everybody all excited about this impulsive idea of yours, but what about what I want? What about what you said you were going to help me with?" I want people to like me too, but it feels like all they see is me playing the stereotypical nagging housewife to his vibrant enthusiasm. And sometimes they remember I'm the responsible one, but I want them to remember I'm fun, too! And when they don't remember I'm the responsible one, I feel like a bitch reminding them; it's not nice to say mean things about my partner, and it sounds awfully mean to me when I say, "please don't assume we're going to show up just because you and he had a conversation about it. If you don't take it to email it's probably not going to happen, and even if you do discuss it in email it still might not happen unless you bring me into the loop, too."
We're using technology to help keep him organized and manage his to-do list and appointments and stuff. That's good, but it's not sufficient all by itself. Even on top of the email archives and the calendar programs, I still end up "offline storage" for anything that comes up when he doesn't have his computer with him or that he doesn't realize was important at the time it came up. I don't have time to take care of my life and his too, and it's not fair if I have to do most of the work and he gets to have the fun parts. And it feels selfish to complain about that since he's the one bringing in a paycheck right now, but on the other hand, who do you think maintains this house so we can take in rent to cover half the mortgage, anyway?
Reminder to self -- order him a new PDA battery, since its voice-recording feature is an important tool for us dealing with keeping track of things, but even after we've talked about it several times, and it's come up more than once as the right solution when we've post-mortemed problems, the damn purchase hasn't gotten high enough on his priority list for him to do it. It's mostly me who's been lobbying for him to start doing it again, since it's mostly me who is affected when he doesn't do something in the "came up away from computer" or "didn't realize it was important at the time" category of things. I hate it when I ask, "so, did you ask these people this important question?" and he says, "I can't remember who I asked." It's not that he doesn't think that the question was important; it's because the question was important and he had to ask in person, and so he doesn't have record of having done it. For the most recent iteration of this, if I could ask these people for him, I would. All I can do is pester him to ask, and if he can't remember whether or not he asked someone, he needs to ask them again. And I need to remind myself that just because he can't remember having the conversations with these people doesn't mean he doesn't think they're important. Writing down notes, whether with a pen or with his laptop, just doesn't fit in his life, so he doesn't do it. Recording voice-snippets does fit in his life, and I'd like to see him start doing it again.
His meds work well for him, but they're short-term. The sustained-release version doesn't work for him, so he manages to be very effective at work by taking a pill every few hours. In the evening and on the weekends, though, he takes less or often doesn't take any. This means I don't get to see the effectively-focused Z; I just see the one with no focus at all or with obsessive hyper-focus. I don't think it's good for him to be on them all the time, but I'd like to see a sign that he cares about home as much as he cares about work. We're more forgiving than his office is going to be but there's got to be some middle ground, not just "all his good hours are spent at his job."
Speaking of the job, he's loves his work and is enthusiastic about his projects. It means he does damn fine work. On the downside, though, is that his work tends to invade everything. Working late, bringing work home, using "gee, I want to show you this cool thing I'm working on" as an excuse to do more work. Co-opting tools other people use so they can be used to do work and making them less useful to the rest of us. In moderation it's okay, but when in the space of four days he's very late for a shared social occasion, working late and canceling date night, *and* breaking things other people use while working all weekend, that's at least two things too many.
It's important for somebody with ADD to make lists, but it's way too easy to spend all our task-time planning, and never get anything done. If he sleeps 'till noon on weekends and then it takes six hours to come up with a fifty-item list on Saturday, that only leaves Sunday afternoon to get anything done. Can you imagine how much I can get done in the twelve hours that I'm awake and he's either asleep or listmaking? (edit: in a misguided attempt to share responsibility for this problem I may have made it sound like I participate in making really long to-do lists for our weekends. I generally spend a half hour during breakfast jotting down a handful of items, and then I'm done. But I don't think that approach works well for someone with ADD.)
He's appreciative when he comes to me for rescue. I'd prefer he need rescuing less often, but at least for the most part he's not taking me for granted. Sometimes his own frustration at himself for having screwed something up spills over and he snaps at me for not being able to fix it perfectly. Fortunately that's pretty rare these days; it makes me very defensive and it's difficult for us to extricate ourselves from feeling bad about ourselves and each other once I've snapped back at him. I think the aggravation of rescuing him makes me less likely to ask for rescue when I've dug myself a hole, though. So far, nobody's yet said to me, "I don't want to help you because you're too apologetic when you ask for help," though. I realize I'm over-apologetic and over-thankful when I have a crisis and somebody else bails me out, but in part that's because I *don't* have much in the way of resources left to rescue my friends if they might need it, because I've already spent my energy supporting my partner. Fortunately there are other reasons my friends like me beyond my ability to pitch in when they need help.
I don't understand why he still tries to do one thing and listen to another thing at the same time. Well, I understand why he wants to; it's because he failed to get the thing done on time, so he's trying to do it and prepare to do the next thing all at once. But it doesn't *work*. It means he ends up without the information he needs to get the next thing done. He might fail to retain the information even if he *is* listening closely...but it's almost guaranteed he won't retain it if he's not really listening at all. I can't help him with this, other than to do his tasks for him, unless I can convince him to make the time to do them himself.
Speaking of listening, what do we do about verbal instruction? If we're somewhere where we're learning a new thing, like a workshop, when it comes time to try the thing we just watched getting done or heard instructions about, he's almost never retained enough information to actually do it. His brain fills in the gaps with things that seem logical to him, and he never even notices there's a hole that was filled -- he'll swear that that's what they told him to do. And then he gets frustrated when it doesn't work. He's not willing to listen to me walk him through it when he thinks he knows what he's doing, and once he's tried and it didn't work, he's frustrated and that means he can't pay attention at all.
I'm currently coping by not bringing him along when I go to learn a new thing. I don't think this is a good long-term solution. For one thing, it's making me a better-rounded person while he's just getting better and better at the one thing he does all the time -- his job. His mom has expressed worries about the same thing -- that even the charitable work he does involves working with computers, the same tools he does for his job. They did not have a satisfactory conclusion to that conversation. He mostly just felt attacked because she was criticizing his choice to do this volunteer work he was proud of. I don't think even now he understands why she's worried; he feels that since computers are what he's good at, that's the most effective charity he can do. He doesn't understand that we're worried about his *own* development and well-being, not that we think the charities need different things than he's providing.
And now, I'm off to order groceries so I can be done by the time I need to leave to go to his office so he and I can go to an appointment tonight. I hope that the time-and-place he communicated to me is also the time-and-place the people we're meeting think they agreed upon...
Many places don't provide resources for partners. Sometimes it seems like there's only four categories of people affected by the condition: adults with ADD/kids with ADD/parents/educators. The resources I'm finding for partners-of-people-with-ADD seem to fall into two categories: basic rah-rah stuff like "you can do this!" that lists vague to-dos like "identify the problem. Come up with a plan!" or horror stories from people for whom nothing is working.
Well, I'm somewhere in the middle. I've read a bunch of material about the condition. (I'm not interested in calling it a disorder. Sometimes the ADD drives me crazy, but there are also aspects of him that are probably ADD-related that are *good* things.) I talk to my therapist about it and he talks to his therapist about it. We identify problem areas and sometimes we actually manage to do something about them. Our communication abilities have improved a zillion-fold since the diagnosis now that we've started putting new communication habits in place.
So, with some trepidation, I'm leaving this entry public. I'm not brave enough to publicize it, but I'm not marking it friends-only, either. I can't be the only one who wants to hear from people who are dealing, but not achieving perfection. I'll probably show it to him, and I'll certainly bring it to my next therapy appointment.
It's good that nowadays I don't feel like as much of a nag when I find myself coughing up ten reminders a week for a month before something gets done. It used to be I'd have to ask several times, and I'd feel like a nag for doing it, but even several times wasn't enough to actually *get* it done, so on top of feeling like a nag I'd be pissed off because I had to do it myself anyway. Now I can ask over and over again until it gets done, and I don't feel quite as bad. This perspective has improved my interactions with people in general, too -- not just with Z. Not that I engage in ten-reminders-a-week with anybody else, but I normally have a lot of resistance even to asking more than once. Once I've initiated two or three conversations with somebody about something, I figure the ball is in their court. This has more than once led to frustration when the person forgets I asked in the first place ("oh, you were interested in that? Why didn't you tell me when that became available? No, I don't remember you expressing interest before it was available; why would I remember something like that?") or figures that since I didn't ask twice I must not have really been interested, or whatever other reasons people seem to need multiple reminders of something. So, lately, I set myself deadlines: If I haven't heard an answer/seen results in N days, I ask again. The number of days varies with how time-sensitive the request is, how reliable the person has proved to be in the past, and how much trouble I'm having asking. (If I'm having trouble getting myself to ask in the first place, I'll usually let the reminder take longer.) So if I seem to be bringing up a topic every six weeks, that's why.
I still feel like if I want anything done I have to do it myself. At least if I care about it getting finished or if I care about when it happens. What's frustrating is that I know not everybody in my life has ADD! I have a suspicion that since other people see Z doing it to me they subconsciously end up figuring its okay for them to do it, too -- and since they're not in love with me, they've got even less incentive to consciously try to do differently, which sometimes means that he's more reliable than anybody else I'm dealing with! Either that, or everybody but me is just an asshole. Um, wait, did I say that out loud? ;) Seriously, though: I think putting up with flakiness in Z means I might let other people get away with it more often than I should. People who reliably follow up on their commitments tend to inspire my loyalty and devotion. I couldn't do this without you. If you know more people like you, please introduce us. :)
Speaking of following up on commitments, one thing about being partnered with somebody with ADD is sometimes that means *I* end up flaking on commitments, which drives me up the frickin' wall. It probably drives me more crazy than the people we inconvenience by being late. I hope so; if they're more mad than I am about this then we've made our friends really, really pissed off. We're late a lot, because failure to properly estimate how much time it takes to do something is a common ADD symptom, as is failure to get going on time because one is buried in something interesting. When we're home, I can do reasonable time-estimates about when we should leave and I can interrupt whatever he's engrossed in to point at the clock, but that doesn't guarantee he will have enough time to finish everything he needs to get done before that time rolls around. And when he's at work, there's little I can do to push him to get home in time for us to get stuff done. I can call and tell him to Leave Now Dammit, but generally he brushes me off. And that's if he remembers to tell me we have something we're supposed to do in the first place. It's embarrassing to have to make excuses when people ask, "where were you? We missed you!"
I'm tired of being the killjoy. I'm the one who says, "No, I don't think you have enough time to do this fun thing. It's not because I don't trust you or because I think you're a flake; it's because experience has shown me that if we're going to get there on time we have to leave now or that if we're going to get this task finished at all we have to do the boring parts, too." When I try to redirect him away from the part of the task he's hyper-focusing on, I think he's trying to be amusing when he responds, "but this is the fun part!" Knowing that he's trying to be amusing doesn't make it easier for me. We do live a more organized and effective life because I do this, but I need to find something to do about the way it makes me see myself.
I'm not always right; sometimes he does manage to heroically get everything done he needs to get done or we manage to hurry and get someplace on time. And then I get, "see, I knew I could do it!" and he's less likely to listen the next time. It works better if sometimes I just let it slide. Where's the turning point, though? Where's the balance between the one extreme where he ends up in crisis because he can't get things done and I end up doing most of what we share myself and we're nearly always late, and the other extreme where I have to hyper-control everything to make sure he gets things done and we get things done and we get places on time? I feel like I can't win; either I'm hyper-controlling or I'm disappointed. Every once in awhile I'm pleasantly surprised, but that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough. I'm trying to lower my expectations, but who wants to *expect* to be let down?
I feel like some of our coping mechanisms paint me as the wet blanket. "Honey, did you write that down? Wait, stop, we have to think about this. I don't care if you want them to like you, either you or I am going to have to go back and tell them "no" because you committed to something you shouldn't have. Hey, wait a minute, you've gotten everybody all excited about this impulsive idea of yours, but what about what I want? What about what you said you were going to help me with?" I want people to like me too, but it feels like all they see is me playing the stereotypical nagging housewife to his vibrant enthusiasm. And sometimes they remember I'm the responsible one, but I want them to remember I'm fun, too! And when they don't remember I'm the responsible one, I feel like a bitch reminding them; it's not nice to say mean things about my partner, and it sounds awfully mean to me when I say, "please don't assume we're going to show up just because you and he had a conversation about it. If you don't take it to email it's probably not going to happen, and even if you do discuss it in email it still might not happen unless you bring me into the loop, too."
We're using technology to help keep him organized and manage his to-do list and appointments and stuff. That's good, but it's not sufficient all by itself. Even on top of the email archives and the calendar programs, I still end up "offline storage" for anything that comes up when he doesn't have his computer with him or that he doesn't realize was important at the time it came up. I don't have time to take care of my life and his too, and it's not fair if I have to do most of the work and he gets to have the fun parts. And it feels selfish to complain about that since he's the one bringing in a paycheck right now, but on the other hand, who do you think maintains this house so we can take in rent to cover half the mortgage, anyway?
Reminder to self -- order him a new PDA battery, since its voice-recording feature is an important tool for us dealing with keeping track of things, but even after we've talked about it several times, and it's come up more than once as the right solution when we've post-mortemed problems, the damn purchase hasn't gotten high enough on his priority list for him to do it. It's mostly me who's been lobbying for him to start doing it again, since it's mostly me who is affected when he doesn't do something in the "came up away from computer" or "didn't realize it was important at the time" category of things. I hate it when I ask, "so, did you ask these people this important question?" and he says, "I can't remember who I asked." It's not that he doesn't think that the question was important; it's because the question was important and he had to ask in person, and so he doesn't have record of having done it. For the most recent iteration of this, if I could ask these people for him, I would. All I can do is pester him to ask, and if he can't remember whether or not he asked someone, he needs to ask them again. And I need to remind myself that just because he can't remember having the conversations with these people doesn't mean he doesn't think they're important. Writing down notes, whether with a pen or with his laptop, just doesn't fit in his life, so he doesn't do it. Recording voice-snippets does fit in his life, and I'd like to see him start doing it again.
His meds work well for him, but they're short-term. The sustained-release version doesn't work for him, so he manages to be very effective at work by taking a pill every few hours. In the evening and on the weekends, though, he takes less or often doesn't take any. This means I don't get to see the effectively-focused Z; I just see the one with no focus at all or with obsessive hyper-focus. I don't think it's good for him to be on them all the time, but I'd like to see a sign that he cares about home as much as he cares about work. We're more forgiving than his office is going to be but there's got to be some middle ground, not just "all his good hours are spent at his job."
Speaking of the job, he's loves his work and is enthusiastic about his projects. It means he does damn fine work. On the downside, though, is that his work tends to invade everything. Working late, bringing work home, using "gee, I want to show you this cool thing I'm working on" as an excuse to do more work. Co-opting tools other people use so they can be used to do work and making them less useful to the rest of us. In moderation it's okay, but when in the space of four days he's very late for a shared social occasion, working late and canceling date night, *and* breaking things other people use while working all weekend, that's at least two things too many.
It's important for somebody with ADD to make lists, but it's way too easy to spend all our task-time planning, and never get anything done. If he sleeps 'till noon on weekends and then it takes six hours to come up with a fifty-item list on Saturday, that only leaves Sunday afternoon to get anything done. Can you imagine how much I can get done in the twelve hours that I'm awake and he's either asleep or listmaking? (edit: in a misguided attempt to share responsibility for this problem I may have made it sound like I participate in making really long to-do lists for our weekends. I generally spend a half hour during breakfast jotting down a handful of items, and then I'm done. But I don't think that approach works well for someone with ADD.)
He's appreciative when he comes to me for rescue. I'd prefer he need rescuing less often, but at least for the most part he's not taking me for granted. Sometimes his own frustration at himself for having screwed something up spills over and he snaps at me for not being able to fix it perfectly. Fortunately that's pretty rare these days; it makes me very defensive and it's difficult for us to extricate ourselves from feeling bad about ourselves and each other once I've snapped back at him. I think the aggravation of rescuing him makes me less likely to ask for rescue when I've dug myself a hole, though. So far, nobody's yet said to me, "I don't want to help you because you're too apologetic when you ask for help," though. I realize I'm over-apologetic and over-thankful when I have a crisis and somebody else bails me out, but in part that's because I *don't* have much in the way of resources left to rescue my friends if they might need it, because I've already spent my energy supporting my partner. Fortunately there are other reasons my friends like me beyond my ability to pitch in when they need help.
I don't understand why he still tries to do one thing and listen to another thing at the same time. Well, I understand why he wants to; it's because he failed to get the thing done on time, so he's trying to do it and prepare to do the next thing all at once. But it doesn't *work*. It means he ends up without the information he needs to get the next thing done. He might fail to retain the information even if he *is* listening closely...but it's almost guaranteed he won't retain it if he's not really listening at all. I can't help him with this, other than to do his tasks for him, unless I can convince him to make the time to do them himself.
Speaking of listening, what do we do about verbal instruction? If we're somewhere where we're learning a new thing, like a workshop, when it comes time to try the thing we just watched getting done or heard instructions about, he's almost never retained enough information to actually do it. His brain fills in the gaps with things that seem logical to him, and he never even notices there's a hole that was filled -- he'll swear that that's what they told him to do. And then he gets frustrated when it doesn't work. He's not willing to listen to me walk him through it when he thinks he knows what he's doing, and once he's tried and it didn't work, he's frustrated and that means he can't pay attention at all.
I'm currently coping by not bringing him along when I go to learn a new thing. I don't think this is a good long-term solution. For one thing, it's making me a better-rounded person while he's just getting better and better at the one thing he does all the time -- his job. His mom has expressed worries about the same thing -- that even the charitable work he does involves working with computers, the same tools he does for his job. They did not have a satisfactory conclusion to that conversation. He mostly just felt attacked because she was criticizing his choice to do this volunteer work he was proud of. I don't think even now he understands why she's worried; he feels that since computers are what he's good at, that's the most effective charity he can do. He doesn't understand that we're worried about his *own* development and well-being, not that we think the charities need different things than he's providing.
And now, I'm off to order groceries so I can be done by the time I need to leave to go to his office so he and I can go to an appointment tonight. I hope that the time-and-place he communicated to me is also the time-and-place the people we're meeting think they agreed upon...
