Hi, all,
I would appreciate hearing about your experiences (potential solutions!) in making plans with your ADHD partner and getting him/her to execute them. What worked? What didn't? Last night my husband agreed 'we' would make some phone calls for appointments, then go do some errands. This morning I had to tear him away from watching news on TV to make the calls. As soon as one number came up as incorrect and I tried to google to check the number, he tried to jump and and leave the room. He said I was wasting his time having him sit there while I looked for the number, and he had other things to do. Before he got that sentence out, I had already found the number. I tried to discuss why, when we'd agreed what we would do today, he felt it was suddenly urgent to go do something else. That went badly. We had only spent ten minutes making calls, then we argued for half an hour. Obviously it makes him feel too busy to have some scheduled commitments, and he started thinking about things he has let go undone for weeks and months. He fussed about how his day will be taken up running around, and it will keep him from doing other things. The 'other things' rarely happen due to procrastination and distraction. But the commitment to do some needed errands with me are making him so miserable that he can't even be civil to me this morning. How can we do better? I put things on calendar, and he lets them pass unremarked. I remind him of the calendar entries, and he gets angry. We agree to sit in the evening and make plans, then evening comes and he wants to 'do it some other time'. If he agrees to run errands, then while we are out, he starts complaining about being busy and wanting to skip some of them, even though we are driving right past those places. For today he is already saying we can't do everything we planned. He expects to take some things off the list. I look forward to hearing how other couples are handling planning and execution (follow through) struggles.
Thank you,
Angie
Angie
Submitted by Brindle on
Is he fully aware of how his adhd is at work when that happens? Can you broach that subject and bring it to his attention? And if you can bring it to his attention without him becoming defensive, will he agree to a coping strategy? (Maybe a reminder that he feels the need to do anything else, but that the phone calls only take 20 minutes and then he can go do xyz? Or whatever works for him.)
Of course, all this is dependent on how seriously he wants to address the adhd picture. I hope he’s determined and committed.
Commitments to plans and awareness of ADHD
Submitted by Angie_H on
Hi, Brin,
Thanks for your comments. I can't know if my husband is fully aware of how his ADHD is at work when he fails to keep commitments and is less than gracious when reminded of plans. I think he acts out of habit and on how pressured and overwhelmed he feels at that moment, that he does not analyze.
We repeat these cycles over and over again. He seems to get less and less attentive to commitments and my gentle reminders until we reach the boiling point. Then we argue, he apologizes, and he tries very hard for a couple of days, then he slides back to the old behaviors. Since we argued, he reminded me of our agreed commitments, and he asked when I want to do those things. He was willing to do all the planned errands, no subset of the list. He was patient while we shopped. He knows what to do but can only do it in a crisis. To me this is typical ADHD behavior, crisis mode.
It has not worked for me to put things on our phone calendar. He doesn't look at his calendar reliably. Once the event appointments have passed, they no longer exist for him. He started keeping a planner, and he made it very complicated and time consuming to maintain. He says he looks at it regularly but most of the things go undone.
Like many in this forum, I feel burdened to be in charge of everything, and I do not want to be in a parent role, yet often I am. When we argued the other day, he actually leaned back stiffly on the chair and screwed his eyes tightly shut like a little child and didn't speak at all in response to anything I said.
I hope others in this forum will share what worked and did not work for them in getting their partners to keep commitments. And I hope some will share their success stories about a partner independently tracking commitments and keeping them.
All the best,
Angie
I hope I’m wrong...
Submitted by Brindle on
but I think the reason no one is answering so far with their stories is because most of us on here don’t have adhd spouses that are making significant progress. That’s why I just asked questions. I don’t have any success there.
I’m considering saying to my husband “what I’m watching/hearing right now is an adhd symptom.” He knows so little about adhd and seems uninterested in knowing how to fix it. He has expressed mild interest in taking a med, but not working on anything.
It is a warped sense of hope that I have - I don’t think anything will change if I tell him that I’m seeing an adhd symptom. I think he will get angry or annoyed. That, plus his desire to avoid personal work, seems like I’m just going to be trying another futile tactic.
That’s why I asked how serious your husband is about addressing his adhd. Have you two ever discussed his feelings about adhd and asked him what kind of help he wants when you see his symptoms affecting a situation?
Angie
Submitted by 1Melody1 on
I think you're right, Brin. Successes here are few and far between. I can relate to the OP's story of squinting eyes shut like a child. At one point the humidifier in our home was broken and it was extraordinarily dry. My husband kept promising to fix it for months and I would gently remind that we were all waking up with dry, sore throats every day (not to mention the wood in the house was cracking and so was our skin - it's dry up here in Canadian winters!). Then our daughter got sick and had a terrible sinus infection with it that needed antibiotics. The doctor said it was likely a lack of humidity in our house that caused the infection! So I came home and not-so-gently demanded it be fixed by the next day or I was calling a professional. He actually put his face between two kitchen cupboards and closed them on his head to block me out. COME ON!!
Yes, I should have just called a professional earlier, but I am so tired of dealing with everything myself. I ask him for virtually nothing on a day to day basis. Not to mention the expenses pile up when I am the only stable income.
Okay, now I'm just venting. For your original post, Angie, I have had some very limited success with giving my husband one simple thing to do at a time vs. a list. I think lists tend to overwhelm ADHDers. Writing one item on a recipe card has worked for me. Rarely the first time though. I have to write it as a post-it reminder on the door as he's leaving, send a follow up e-mail about that ONE thing, etc. I think when I stay singly focused and don't let it drop, he can 1. stay on track with what I am requesting and 2. see I am not going to let it drop... so he finally does it.
For things I can do myself though, it isn't worth the effort. Because all the while he doesn't do whatever it is, it still remains a part of MY mental load, which is already way too heavy. I reserve this tactic for when I really can't do it myself and it's cost prohibitive to hire.
A friend of mine has success with a giant whiteboard calendar in the kitchen. She writes everything on it and reviews it every day with the whole family at dinner time. For me, calendars have not worked, but maybe a physical (vs. digital that he can ignore on his own time) calendar might work for you.
Good luck!
I too am eager to hear what
Submitted by dvance on
I too am eager to hear what others have to say because I have nothing useful to offer. I have put many systems in place at the advice of four separate counselors and DH uses none of them with any consistency and gets angry when I refer to them. For example, I have a white board calendar in the kitchen that I keep current--it is for one month at a time. If he looks at it I don't know. I also have a google calendar that I have shared with him and our two teenage boys. The boys put their work schedules on it. DH not only does not put anything on it, he doesn't look at it. He will tell me he put his work travel on it but nothing he has ever claimed to put on it has ever actually appeared on it. These two weeks of winter break, the younger DS had track and the track schedule was really all over the place--I entered each practice in the google calendar and was prepared to shuttle him to and from practice. DH texted me more than once that he would pick DH up from practice...but it was at the wrong time. I would say it's on the calendar. He would claim he had looked, but how could that be true when practice was from 12-2 and he was going to pick the child up at 6pm?? If DH uses a reminder system for work I have no idea-I have never seen/heard him use alarms or a notebook or anything, so I have no idea. I also do the weekly menu for lunches and dinners on a google doc that I have shared with him to both of his personal emails. Twice. And this morning he couldn't find it. So I shared it again. Despite the fact that it showed on my end that I had shared it twice and what dates I had shared it. So even what would appear to be foolproof systems don't work.
Eager to hear what others have to say, but I suspect it will be similar from what I have heard from other posts--no system gets used with enough consistency to in fact be useful. I use all of these systems, I am incredibly organized, thank god, or this entire family operation would go off the rails (like everyone else on here).