Relationship Stuff That Might Be ADD

Those things and others, some of the things that are required to run a family and a household, like filing, handling money, taking care of routine tasks, like I recently renewed our car tabs on the computer. You know, so I went to the website and those kinds of things that require sort of paying attention and interacting with a perhaps not super duper well designed website and sticking with something where it might not work out exactly right the first time. That kind of activity for people whose brains are kind of dopamine starved can be excruciating. It's harder for us than it might be for our partners. Hi, welcome to Sex Love Power. I'm your host, Michelle Lisenberry Christensen. This podcast is where I convene the conversations about love and sex that help powerful women and those who love them to create the intimacy and intensity they really want in bed and in life. Together, we navigate the tensions between our desire and our devotions, between our wildness and our security with our eyes wide open. This podcast is designed to help you create more closeness, ease, pleasure, and justice in your relationship. And we do it by blending wisdom from the fields of sexuality and spirituality, trauma and self regulation, and intersectional feminism. I'm so glad you're here. So we're going to talk today about behaviors that baffle you and your partner. Because time and again in my practice, people come to work with me and we come to realize that one of the partners has add either the hyperactive type or the inattentive type, both of which present very differently, or one of them is on the autism spectrum, or they have sensitivities which correlate highly with giftedness, or they're simply introverted rather than extroverted. All of these recognitions of differences between people and the uniqueness of a particular partner are like finally getting the operating instructions. Once we recognize them, we've got the manual. Now that helps us understand my partner's not weird, they're not broken, they're not deliberately messing with me, and they're not trying to withhold reasonable behaviors. They're just wired differently. And before a couple gets this kind of recognition, then the behavior, thought, and feeling patterns can cause a lot of frustration and friction and pain in their relationship. After we've got this recognition, those insights can help us see the same patterns in a very different context. So the relationship starts to feel different, and we're able to create much more workable approaches to each of the challenges that we've been facing for a while. So I can't clinically diagnose anything, even when I am working with you privately. That's not what I do. And while you're listening to the podcast, I won't be able to hear the particulars of your relationship and your partner as you listen. But my intent and hope is that you hear something in today's podcast episode that makes you say, oh, that's what's been going on. Now I need to give a caveat. My academic self and my perfectionist self both tell me that I need to research for a week. I need to pull in all kinds of citations and statistics and background, and I have to take each of these neurological differences, personality style differences from the top, and give you its full diagnostic criteria and do all this stuff. But there are actually many other podcasts that have done that very well already. And you can go down your own learning road with these ideas after this episode if one of these really lights up for you. What I'm going to discipline myself to do in this episode is create the episode that only I can make. I'm not going to worry about replicating all those details, but I'm going to share with you just the relationship sticking points that often go unidentified as signs of neurodivergence. And I'm going to share with you my own experience in my relationship because it may well be that I'm add. So as we jump in, I'm going to start with inattentive ADD in particular, because that's what my husband and I grappled with before. We discovered about 12 years ago that that's what was going on with my brain, or so we suspect. And I'll say more about that later. But there's several different forms of add. And then I will talk very briefly about some of the other things that I see with couples and see in individuals, because I hope that this episode might be that kind of light bulb moment for you that helps you go with learn more about it. Not because I'm an expert on any of those things, but I can usually help clients see like, oh, wow, yeah, this isn't just a character flaw in your partner or something that they're doing on purpose to you. It's kind of baked into who they are, at least so far. And so what's needed is an individual approach to building skills. This isn't necessarily a relationship problem. So let's start with how we knew, you know, looking back, how we can tell that I had something neuro atypical going on. So my husband has always noticed that when I use the windshield wipers on the car, they're either on super high, going, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, back and forth, or they're off. There's no in between. That's kind of a good metaphor for a lot of things. I tend to go hard or go home. He also notices that I'm a cabinet lever opener, and that's often because I'll be in the middle of. Or a dishwasher also. I'll be in the middle of unloading the dishwasher, and then something else will arise, or I will know that I need another thing out of the dishwasher. So I leave it open, but then I get that thing, and then I move on. And so those are some of the things that kind of can drive him crazy. Just recently, we were making some upgrades in our kitchen, and we brought home these under cabinet lights, and they wired together and did all these neat things. And so I got them out to start to understand what was going on. And Kurt saw that I had opened up the boxes and pulled out the lights. And then they've got these other little, you know, the wire nuts and different parts that go with them and the manuals. And he was like, we need to keep all this stuff together. It's late at night. If we could just not open these right now, that would be great, but I can't resist. You know, he calls it the, like, shiny apple syndrome. You know, it's the next bright, shiny object. I want to fixate on it. And so that ability to hyper focus on something and to get fascinated by something is a gift. But it can also be a curse, particularly in a relationship. It lends itself to an obsessiveness, which, you know, as we set out on a beautiful trip that I've planned down to every detail, we can see the blessings of my obsessive qualities. But I've been known to have problems with eating my committed food because I was so obsessively planning a trip. And it, you know, it interfered with the meal. So it's that tendency to get tunnel vision to hyper focus on one thing to then switch gears to the next most exciting thing. That can sometimes be hallmarks of add. If you have someone in your home who leaves toilet seats up, who drops things wherever they stopped using them and doesn't put them away, who forgets tasks they said they would complete, who can't keep straight, for example, what brand of salsa we buy or what day the piano recital is, those things might be them just not caring enough about you and what you've already told them you want. Or those could actually be differences in brain function where that kind of recollection is harder for that person and they actually need better tools, like writing those things down, getting things calendared. I have to do a lot to keep everything straight and to remember because I think of it like white water. You know, something will arise in my consciousness like an object floating up in a whitewater river. And later, when it's brought back to my attention that I've forgotten it, I'll remember, oh, yeah, I did see that email. Or, oh, yeah, I did say I was gonna do that, but in the interim, it's just gone downstream. So people with ADD really need to build in external supports to remember things. And if someone in your life has been using you as that external support, you may start to resent it after a while because it's a big job to do all your own remembering and somebody else's. So really useful to recognize, like, oh, it's not that they should be able to do exactly what I do. It's that we need better tools. Now. Another piece of ADD that is sometimes evident in me, but often not. But that is more the what has been in the past labeled and may still be in some circles, the hyperactive, you know, ADHD hyperactivity is, you know, an inability to sit still, an inability to stay in one place, a necessity to move one's body in order to listen, for instance. And so sometimes this can be gendered as well, that it may be more comforting for someone to have deep conversations if they're in motion. If you can take a walk together to have a deeper relationship conversation that might be really helpful to your partner. If you've noticed that sitting down to talk about something makes them really anxious and conversations don't go well, and they're impatient, or they always act like the conversation took too long. This may be part of why. And, you know, you don't have to, like, diagnose them with ADD to recognize, like, oh, yeah, this helps. That's certainly the case in our marriage, that we do better when we walk around the block to have a conversation. Another hallmark of maybe a lot of people in our culture now is that we don't get enough dopamine from some of our activities. We become dopamine seeking missiles. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes things interesting or signals that something needs our attention or is worthy of our attention. So activities that stimulate dopamine are exciting things, things that thrill us. And so for a Lot of people screens give us dopamine hits. A lot of our apps are designed to give us dopamine hits. Online shopping forums are designed to give us that. Lots of stores have lots of design built in that way. And certainly, you know, sex can give us dopamine, adventure sports can give us dopamine. But you know, what seldom gives anybody dopamine is cleaning the toilet. And for a lot of people, basic self care tasks like brushing our teeth, changing our clothes, grooming, taking care of our home, tidying up, doing dishes or washing up as you call it in the uk, those things are just so boring. And I know that sounds really like high maintenance or demanding if you are not someone who's dopamine deficient, but those things and others, some of the things that are required to run a family and a household, like filing, handling money, taking care of routine tasks, like I recently renewed our car tabs on the computer, you know, so I went to the website and those kinds of things that require sort of paying attention and interacting with a perhaps not super duper well designed website and sticking with something where it might not work out exactly right the first time. That kind of activity for people whose brains are kind of dopamine starved can be excruciating. It's harder for us than it might be for our partners. And so if you have a partner who just seems so avoidant, so resistant, so not helpful with some of those things, you might consider that it might actually literally be harder for them than it is for you. And that's not to say that you should just absorb it. It's just something that when we can recognize it, we can have more mutual compassion. You know, the partner who's dopamine starved can have empathy for the other partner of like, oh, these things aren't fun for you either, but you just do them. And for the partner who tends to be able to do some of those drudgerous things without undue struggle, they can have compassion for like, oh, okay, so when you say this is really miserable for you, you're not just being a wimp or trying to manipulate me into doing it, it actually may feel differently for you than it does for me. Another kind of subset of these criteria is anxiety tolerance. So social anxiety is its own whole thing that many people have and that overlaps to some extent with add. It can overlap to some extent with intensities, it can overlap to some extent with autism spectrum. And so a lot of times with the shared tasks that couples have, you know, where somebody among us is going to need to do this if your partner is often wanting you to do the dealing with the school, dealing with other parents of your kids, friends calling in and following up on the taxes, all of those things. If your partner tends to avoid those things or be squirrely about them, or procrastinate on them, it may have to do with social anxiety. And so being able to name that and have mutual compassion around that can be really helpful. How do these things affect us in bed? Well, distractibility, as you can imagine, can have someone unable to be fully present and make it more challenging to have truly intimate connected sex because they're thinking other thoughts, their head's off somewhere else, or they could quite literally be paying attention to things in the room that aren't their lover. So acknowledging that possibility as to what goes on for you in the bedroom can be helpful. And a degree of sensitivity to touch, to smell, to texture. It might feel like one of you is really high maintenance to the other one, like, oh, everything has to be just right or you don't want to have sex. But it may well be that again, that person's threshold of need for things to be a certain way is literally higher than yours. It's not just them being demanding. So I wanted to not close this episode without mentioning the autism spectrum and intensities and introversion, because they are all also things that I see with clients and that I then send them to other people who know a lot more about those things to learn more. But what I can say here is simply that many people have a very mild, high functioning, not stereotypical, like rain man version of an autism spectrum disorder. They might be very socially adept. They might not just present anything that you would think of as autistic, but challenges with processing their own emotions and other people's and in a verbal way can be traced back. And once we get the perspective of an ASD situation, then a lot becomes more clear. You know, it's like you got the code like I said at the beginning. So that may be worth looking into. If there are longstanding pervasive challenges in your relating that you just go, what is wrong with you? If we can take it out of the context of wrong and really understand difference, we go a long way to having a much more mutually satisfying relationship. And this kind of insight saves marriages. Another piece is intensities. So this is something I learned about as my daughter started to get into her middle childhood years and just had a lot of emotional intensity, had a lot of perfectionism. I guess I don't need to Talk a whole lot about her. But some of the patterns that we saw correlated with what has been identified in the giftedness literature as intensities. And I could really relate. You know, I grew up in the. They called it the program for academically and creatively talented kids when I was in elementary school and beyond. And in that arena, there were lots of us who were, you know, just had a lot of this intensity going on. So kids that need tags cut out of their clothes, kids that are sensitive to smells and bright lights, kids that feel things really deeply, you know, feel criticisms, just cut them to the core. All of those things are not just your kid being a jerk or an adult being a jerk. They really are intensities where lights might be brighter to that person's brain. And then finally, introversion versus extroversion. Susan Cain's book Quiet has been an eye opener for many people to recognize. Like, oh, our culture holds extroversion up as this pinnacle of achievement. Like, it's a way to be. And if you aren't that way, you need to learn to be that way. And the truth is that we are all either wired toward getting our energy from other people or toward getting our energy from solitude. And being more inward focused has a lot of gifts and strengths to it as well. But in an intimate relationship, if one of you is extroverted and the other is introverted, it may look to the extrovert. Like, the introvert either isn't that into the relationship or isn't very good at it. And so when we can really put that lens of introversion versus extroversion onto the relationship, it lightens the assessment of what's going on between the two of you considerably and takes it out of the right and wrong context and puts it into a context of difference and mutual appreciation and learning to adapt and make sure that everybody gets their needs met, given the different proclivities that you each have. So that's a really high level, you know, just barely scratching the surface of the details of what you would need in order to roll up your sleeves and truly understand what goes on between the two of you. And. But all I wanted to do today was trigger the awareness that what's going on might not just be your partner being bad in some way or you being bad, but there may be meaningful brain differences. And I said that I would say later something about add. And my husband and I were talking about this recently. He's like, I don't even know if I believe anymore that that's what it was for you or is for several years I used medication, and then in my recovery journey, I stopped using medication and really relied more on structures and tools and on my recovery work and my relationship with the divine. And I don't at all purport that that's the path for everybody, but it has been really useful for me. And I still struggle with a number of things and I'm building better and better systems every year to help me with that. But the other thing is that as I get further away from the toxicity that I was putting into my body, the more I think my brain may be healing. And so it's a little bit chicken and egg. Did I abuse food as a drug because I was neuroatypical in this way? Or did my brain change because of the ways that I consume so much flour and sugar and sometimes alcohol? So we'll never really know, you know, but it's worth just looking at the constellation of symptoms and signs and being able to look at them together and begin to address it with the right tools as a result. So the key things that I want to leave you with are that long before we effectively address any of these situations, we need to recognize, first, it's a brain thing. This is not a moral failing. This doesn't mean the same thing that it would mean if there were a neurotypical spouse doing the same behavior. Second, because this is a brain thing, it is not the person's fault. It's not your fault that you are the way you are. It's not my fault that I am how I am. But that said, if you want to be in a relationship, it's key to take responsibility for the impact you have on those around you, even your unintended impact. So neurodiverse people are well served by an investment in the listening skills to be able to effectively hear and validate our partner's feelings as about our actions and inactions. And then third, outside help can be life changing. Working these things out on our own takes tremendous amounts of energy. And even when we're willing to invest all that energy, our own, quite understandably, emotionally intense experience of it can limit our problem solving. You know, from the inside, we just can't see that far. So it really helps to have somebody who's really conversant with what we're facing. So I really encourage you, if anything has lit up for you about like, oh, yeah, this sounds like me or sounds like my partner, I encourage you to do some more research, learn more, and get the specialized support that you deserve because your relationship problems may not actually be relationship problems. They may be the fallout from not understanding well enough what I won't even call a problem. You know I'm not a problem. Add asd, introversion, intensities. None of these things are things that are wrong with anybody. They're just things that are not typical. They don't match the textbook or the kind of the psychological rules that a culture of kind of trying to make us one size fits all has put on people. So Viva la difference. I celebrate you and your partner exactly as you are, and may you find new ways to fit ever better together. Let me know if you have questions and I can't wait to hear what this episode brings up for you. I'd love to hear what you're taking away from this episode and what questions you have. Where do you feel this conversation in your body? My free Conscious Couples Circle is the place to continue our conversation. You can share your experiences, ask questions, and get more actionable ideas for creating the love and sex you deeply desire in ways that evolve you both. It's all happening@society.lizenberry.com that link is in the show notes for you. You know, new listeners need to hear what you're taking away too. Podcast reviews are what really help others recognize how this podcast is different from other Relationship and Sex Part Podcast. So thank you in advance for leaving a review right now in your podcasting app while you're thinking of it. Before you forget, with just a few words about what this show gives you. And hey, have you subscribed to the podcast? You're going to want to so you never miss an episode. Please go to the app where you listen, hit that subscribe button, and then you'll always get notifications of new episodes when they drop. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Michelle Lisenberry Christensen and this has been Sex Love Power. I will see you on the next episode. And until then, may the light within you illuminate the world around you.