Yeah, what the title says.
When I try to explain to friends or family how difficult it makes things in a relationship when one person (me) has ADHD they never get it and I often get the impression they think my wife is overreacting.
I understand that they want to support me but they aren’t helping, it just makes me angry. I know that it’s not all my fault but I want them to understand what a mental and emotional burden it can be to be the partner of an ADHD-person. Even when I tell them that our problems are typical for ADHD-partnerships, that everything I’ve read about it tell exactly the same story that we have been going through, it doesn’t really make an impression and I want to scream at them “please for fuck’s sake believe what I’m telling you!!”
Ugh.
Edit: Looking at the comments and reading my post again I feel like I should have phrased it differently:
What bothers me is not that people don’t get how much I struggle with ADHD. What bothers me is that they can’t seem to comprehend how mentally and emotionally draining it can be to be the partner of someone with ADHD and seem to have very little understanding or sympathy for my partner. And that makes me so mad because everyone seems to think I’m this great person and my wife must be overreacting.
Thank you for your replying <3
After reading the comments I went back and read my post and realized I didn’t get my point across. The thing that bothers me isn’t that I don’t get enough sympathy for my own struggle. What bothers me is that when I tell people “my ADHD has been eroding our marriage” everyone seems to be low-key (or not so low-key) assuming that my partner must be overreacting because it can’t be THAT bad. They think I’m just a bit more chaotic than most people and my partner must be overly sensitive.
Obviously I’m not you, so will never fully understand your situation, but from my own experience, I can see why your in a very tough spot.
Even with all the work that me and my wife have done, there are still days that we get to each other. That one of us is at their most hyper or the other at a real low/overwhelmed state, unwilling to do anything but curl up in bed. Each ignoring our own bodies, either because we are too focused on something or don’t want to/can’t move.
Medication is a temporary fix for some or perhaps one symptom of ADHD.
Other people really won’t understand unless they’ve lived in our heads for a short while.
I would be very annoyed as well that my problems were being dismissed and discounted.