emotional cues

Tired of always leading the show?  Here’s what's going on and how to connect, anyway.

I’m spending quite a bit of time these days thinking about how to get men with ADHD to realize that their ADHD affects those around them more than they think.  At least two men I can think of who have ADHD say they wish someone (other than their wives) had “hit them upside the head” with information that would convince them that their ADHD was causing real problems.

Are you embarrassed when your ADD spouse takes over a conversation at a party, and doesn’t notice when his audience winces or starts to yawn?  People with ADD often have more difficulty reading emotional cues than those without, and this can cause some interesting moments both socially, and even between just the two of you at home.  What to do?

There is now a wealth of information in the forum and blog posts here about what types of issues are related to ADD.  A recent post reminded me that it also makes sense to focus a bit (pun intended) on the fact that not all marital issues can be ascribed to ADD (and the inverse, which I wrote about in my "Ode" post that some wonderful things in a relationship can be directly attributed to ADD characteristics).  Here is the post that brought this to mind and my response: