After a conversation with a friend I started to think about empathy. My friend has a healthy integrity. She has a respected position in a caring profession. With all her resourcefulness, she is also kinder than most. She humorously described some interactions she's had with close relatives lately. She's intrigued by not being understood by them at all. Her relatives seem to mindlessly take advantage of her generosity without showing any consideration for her needs. I recognized this. During two decades with an increasingly vulnerable and dysfunctional partner and later children, other people have often benefited from my initiatives but not chipped in. I've become more and more confused, ashamed at my exhaustion, hurt when not understood, and bad at asking for help. When overlooked, I've felt resentful. During this time, I've also developed much more empathy than before.
It seems my friend and I as professional caregivers share an attitude to empathy. We use it as a tool, it shapes us, it's part of us and what we value and do.
But my friend has not been laboring with psychiatric illness on the home front. While she can pause her empathetic work for rest and private rewards, there really hasn't been much of that in the ADHD marriage.
I wonder, can ADHD marriage make nons too empathetic? I don't have any taste for martyrdom and dislike unbalanced relationships. What happened was just a lot of time spent with a troubled and different mind. Do nons maybe stretch their empathy so hard to understand their partner, that they break something to do with integrity and self-preservation?
And also, after that break, when integrity leaks and invasion follows: what boundaries do we need for other people who like to lean too much on us?
not my most fully formed thought on this
Submitted by alphabetdave on
obviously I'm coming from the ADHD side here so I can't really give any insight as to the non partner's experience but..
I've been thinking a lot lately on whether ADHD is really the only thing that causes issues in an ADHD marriage. Don't get me wrong, it absolutely is one of the things - but I struggle to get fully on board with the formula that "there's a third entity in your marriage, ADHD, and this is the source of your issues". It's a better way of looking at it than blaming the ADHD partner as a person but I feel like it misses the mark slightly, particularly with how understanding of ADHD has changed over the last few decades
Fundamentally what makes ADHD a "disorder" is not that we're broken and incapable, but rather that we deviate from the majority in terms of the way our brain works. And it['s this expectation that we're going to "do things the normal way" that does so much harm, to the ADHDer specifically but it's also the source of a lot of the frustration in the people around us. By the time an ADHDer settles into a relationship they generally are pretty broken, but it's unfair to just call that brokenness "ADHD" - it's the cumulative effect of living their life up to that point with ADHD, not living up to what people expect of them and being beaten down repeatedly, and all of the internal hurt from people being unable to deal with their symptoms.
In my opinion there's a fourth entity in these marriages which is "neurotypical expectations" - and to be clear here this isn't something that the non partner brings into the relationship. We all grow up in a neurotypical society and often the ADHDer will have neurotypical expectations too. There's this feeling that for some reason "we've not grown up yet", and this expectation that there's some landmark moment round the corner that will act as a significant moment, inspire us to step up and we'll be a fully functioning person from that point on (thanks, Hollywood in particular for making that message so abundant but I imagine it shows up even outside there).
My point is I do wonder how different my life could have been, if I knew about ADHD early on. If I and the people around me had realistic expectations of what I could do/be and allowed/helped me build strategies that worked rather than letting me flounder trying and failing to do things the way everyone else did, and putting me down whenever I tried to do things in a way that worked better for me. And I wonder how different my marriage could have been if we'd both known I had ADHD, knew what I could expect of myself and where I'd need to build coping strategies rather than do things "as expected". Maybe we would have decided it wasn't going to work, I don't know - but at least we would have had a better idea what to expect.
I imagine relationships with ADHD are hard regardless, but IMO the "undiagnosed" part of "undiagnosed ADHD", particularly where it's also "not even remotely on our radar" does an awful lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the hurt caused, on both sides.
Doesn't seem like I've really answered your question at all here lol - I think the link is just that, these neurotypical expectations (and let me again be completely clear, not the non partner's expectations - I'm talking about cultural expectations that have been present your whole lives and that get brought into the relationship by both partners here) exacerbate a lot of the friction in the relationship, and raise the level of stress and dysfunction (in ADHD terms, the less we feel understood by those important to us the more we tend to compensate in maladaptive ways) to the point that the empathy you need to exercise to keep any kind of relationship going is absolutely through the roof
I'm not trying to imply that ADHD doesn't cause issues in relationships, I hope that's clear. Even with clear expectations and a life free of trauma we'd probably still be difficult for NT partners in particular, I just think that the idea that "ADHD is the third entity in the marriage and the source of all your problems" is a bit simplistic and puts too much blame on what is fundamentally just a different way in which our brains work, and doesn't address some of the reasons why ADHDers get so dysfunctional.
And don't get me wrong, it's not a non partner's job to resolve those dysfunctions, or that trauma - not at all. My point is more that I think where a relationship has ADHD present and NT expectations (e.g. that the ADHDer will "grow up" and become functionally NT), it tends to add to that trauma/dysfunction rather than reduce it. And in fairness no doubt it traumatises the non partner as well - I'm coming from the ADHD side here but I recognise that a lot of your experiences are valid and horrific, and also not a million miles away from my wife's (near identical in some cases)
Hope this reads as intended - I believe everyone posting here has tried their best at their respective relationships including those that ended, my point here isn't to say anyone could have "done better", if we were failed by anything it was a culture-wide expectation of homogenous neurotypes, and nons have been failed by that just as much as ADHDers, and the autistic community and just about anyone who was considered "sub standard" for having a brain that worked differently
Empathy is probably why we stayed in so long
Submitted by BurnedOutLady on
I am overly empathetic. I feel a lot of pain in this world. And I feel my ADHD husband's pain. I am empathetic to his childhood pain, to the PTSD in his family. Every time I have come close to leaving him (which I just did), I always started feeling the pain that would cause him and honestly I have never wanted to hurt him that much. Also, in order to avoid killing him many times, I have had to force myself into compassion and empathy that I honestly didn't really want to feel. It was the only way to forgive him and move on, though I knew the same patterns would repeat.
could be!
Submitted by honestly on
I had thought that there was something broken in me that made me tolerate what others wouldn't. The poor sense of self, heightened empathy, hyper vigilance, and lack of boundaries that come from being the child of a narcissist. But it's quite possible that the effects of being in a relationship with someone with ADHD kind could exactly parallel that. You either are like that already, or you become like that, or you're already outta there!
Maybe parenthood too?
Submitted by Swedish coast on
Having children also changes us. It gives heightened receptivity and emotional connection. It may not be by chance that the arrival of children in an ADHD-non relationship makes the non suddenly accept things formerly unacceptable. As a strategy to keep family together possibly, but also I imagine by a not so conscious biological surge in empathy. Oxytocin makes it happen. And at a time where ADHD symptoms also might increase because of the challenges of parenthood.
I know at least I went through a great personality change when became a parent.
Wouldn't want to be without the young ones though.