Episode 58 – Struggling to Understand ADHD? Here’s What Your Partner Needs You to Know

Jane McFadden:
If you are a hyperactive ADHD mum, you don’t need any accountability. You already have a slave driver and it’s you. So what we need is to strip it back, make it more simple and remove the guilt and the perfectionism and get back to what’s important.

First up, my personal values clarification exercise. This will stop you doing the same thing over and over and wondering why you didn’t get a different result. It is quick, it is simple, it is ready to implement straight away.

The next part is the essential de-stress planner for hyperactive mums. You can pick these up, put these down, start any time. It won’t guilt trip you if you forget that it exists for a week. Use it to brain dump the chaos, prioritize like a boss and stop pretending that you’ll just remember everything in your head.

One of the things I got sick of was reflecting at the end of the day and thinking of all the things that were really important to me that I didn’t do. These resources are 100% fluff free and made for the ADHD mum life. They’re cheaper than therapy and far more satisfying than yelling at your microwave for ruining your fourth attempt at reheating coffee.

This isn’t about perfection. You need something that works with your life, not against you. Grab your copy now at adhdmums.com.au and all of the links will be in the show notes.

Welcome back to ADHD Mums, the podcast that supports you through the chaos, laughter and deep realities of neurodivergent motherhood. Today we’re going into something that so many ADHD mums have shared with me as the biggest challenge, getting their partner to understand ADHD or getting their family members to understand ADHD.

Whether your partner or family member is skeptical, overwhelmed or just unsure or really attempting to get on board and they’re doing great but you’re sending this to them as extra information, this is for them and this is also for you the ADHD mum. We are going to cover how to communicate ADHD without defensiveness, what to do if your partner also struggles with ADHD traits, tools and strategies that actually make life easier for both of you and validation. This isn’t about blame, it’s about connection.

So who is this episode for? If you’re an ADHD mum who feels misunderstood, dismissed or overwhelmed by your partner’s response to ADHD, then this is an episode for you. Or if you’re a partner or a family member listening, thank you for being here. Maybe ADHD feels new or confronting to you.

Maybe you’re a partner and it feels like just another thing that you need to deal with and that’s okay. You’re not alone in that feeling and this episode is not about pointing fingers. It’s about learning how ADHD impacts your partner and your relationship so life can feel easier for both of you.

We also want to acknowledge that sometimes partners could possibly be neurodivergent themselves. I do hear from partners a lot that they feel like their ADHD mum suddenly finds out this and then just starts pointing to every single person they’ve ever known, pointing out all the ADHD people. And you know what? I’ve done this.

I get it. For me, I felt super excited in the beginning and I think when you are really hyper-focusing and you are so intense about the ADHD experience, you are on TikTok, you’re on Instagram, you’re on all the podcasts, you’re on all the YouTubes, you are so in it and then when your partner comes home or whatever it is and you’re like just information dumping to them, all of the things you learn and they’re not keeping up with you, it can feel like they’re not invested yet they’re still actually doing the best they can. They are still talking to you about it but possibly it’s not their primary focus.

ADHD mums, you may need to give your partner a second. They may not be ready quite yet. This is about you and them supporting you.

This is not about getting your partner on to the same level of investment and excitement that you are on. They may not get there yet. If you are an ADHD mum and you wonder if you are also autistic, be aware that autistic women have incredibly high standards of their partners. So if you are expecting your partner to meet you where you’re at, give them a little bit of a break.

Okay, now I am Mrs ADHD. I live and breathe ADHD. I talk about ADHD on date night with my husband. It does drive him mad. I actually have to try not to talk about it too much because it is my special interest and I am autistic.

But what I will say is he did not believe in ADHD when I first spoke to him. When I rang him, he thought it was a load of crap. I was diagnosed with ADHD and then I chose not to get medication. My husband didn’t want me to try medication. I didn’t want to try medication. I thought I could do lifestyle changes.

I tried that for a year. I actually got a bit worse. And my impulsivity as an ADHD person is quite intense. We actually bought a caravan in 12 hours and then decided to drive around Australia. My husband, he supports me in all of the crazy endeavors. But when we got back, we were really burnt out.

And when we put my daughter back in school, the teacher said to me that she thought that she had auditory processing disorder, which is a lot like ADHD if you look it up. And when we went to get her assessed, they said straight up, she has ADHD. And when I spoke to my husband, he just couldn’t believe it. He thought it was an absolute load of shit.

And when the psychologist saw my two boys as well, who were bouncing off the walls, which was completely normal for me, the next session, and she said, I think we should assess those two. He thought it was ridiculous. So I am not somebody who’s had a partner who’s jumped on board instantly. We said that we would never medicate our children. We do that now.

But ADHD mums, that doesn’t happen straight away. Everyone gets there in their own way. So the same way that the ADHD mum is expecting and hoping that their partner will meet them where they’re at with their new ADHD self, we also have to meet our partner where they are at. And they may be neurotypical or they may be neurodivergent, but they may not be ready yet. So give them a chance and don’t make this about them. This is about you.

Jane McFadden:
So back to ADHD. Let me share a story that I hear from so many ADHD mums. I remember one mum telling me about how she tried to explain ADHD to her husband for the first time.

She was on the edge of burnout. Her mind was racing with unfinished tasks. She was emotionally overwhelmed and that deep sense of failure that ADHD mums know so well. When she opened up to her partner, desperate for support, he said, well, everyone feels overwhelmed sometimes. Can’t you just get it together, write it down or something?

She felt so crushed, dismissed, like her struggles were invisible. But here’s what she realized later. Her husband wasn’t actually being cruel. He genuinely did not understand ADHD. He didn’t know that it was more than stress or forgetfulness. He didn’t know it was a neurological condition that impacts focus, memory, emotional regulation.

And he admits later on that he saw so much himself in her struggles, it hit too close to home. He thought, well, I feel like that all the time. What do you want me to do about it? That turning point came when they started learning together. She shared ADHD tools that work for her and he began to see how much easier life could be. Not just for her, but for the whole family.

Sometimes the key isn’t convincing someone, it’s showing them what’s possible when you work as a team.

So let’s talk about the struggles here from both sides. For ADHD mums, they may be feeling dismissed. If their partner’s saying everyone gets distracted, you’re overreacting. That’s just mum life, isn’t it? No one else seems to have this problem.

Or one of the ones that I think is really interesting is how come all of a sudden that this is an issue? And if that is a conversation that you’re having in your home as to why all of a sudden this is an issue, the partners do need to have a look at the cumulative load that motherhood is.

So maybe when you were together, you were doing it half-half. Maybe that ADHD mum was taking a bit more of the load at home because she was working part-time, let’s just say if you’re in the gender stereotypical relationship. But cumulatively, if you’ve got one or two kids or more, you’re doing so much more laundry, so many more people to navigate.

You’re basically a personal assistant for your children and possibly the partner. And you’re working, and you’ve got all of this on top of top of top. So it’s the cumulative load that ADHD mums sometimes really struggle with.

And they don’t have time to do those things that they used to get emotional regulation from, for example. They’re not able to go to the gym or do yoga or go out with friends or go to the beach as much as they used to. They’ve got so much more to do and less time than ever.

The ADHD mums also can feel like they carry the blame for the unfinished tasks, the emotional outburst to the kids, the chaos at home, all of the teacher in the school coordination. They can feel exhausted from masking the ADHD and holding it all together, doing all of the extended family stuff at Christmas, you know, the birthday parties, all of the things. The ADHD mums can hit overwhelm real quick.

And when they’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed and the emotional regulation is not good, a simple conversation can spiral into an argument and they can get very defensive instead of connection. They can also be experiencing that mum rage where you’re so cooked all the time.

I know for me, and I’ll admit it, I hit mum rage. If my kids are at me and at me and at me and at me and at me, and I’m holding it together, trying not to yell at anybody, I go into the shower and then my husband goes, is this a clean towel?

I will like just lose my mind that I think he might be saying to me, is this towel needs to be washed? Giving me another job or why can’t he get his own towel? Why do I have to be involved? And I’ll just blow up. Instead of seeing it like he’s just saying, is this my towel? He’s not doing anything to me, but yet at that time, I’m so cooked and overwhelmed.

And he’s the one person I don’t have to mask with. I will blow up like a volcano. So that can be the ADHD mum real challenge there. And that’s just part of it.

Partners, it can feel really overwhelming. All of a sudden, it’s now this whole other thing that I have to deal with. I am already overwhelmed with work, whatever it is that I do. The timing of this is also can be really frustrating.

If you have school age kids, young kids, they’re getting diagnosed with ADHD. Your ADHD wife, hears that word ADHD and just goes off into the distance with massive research diagnosing everybody. And suddenly that is the whole topic of conversation that can be really overwhelming. And it can be frustrating.

If ADHD isn’t visible, it isn’t easy to understand. It can be confronting too. If you’re the partner and you’re thinking, I thought that’s just what everybody did. But your partner’s saying that that’s not true. And you’re starting to question everything and feeling personally attacked. I’m fine. Why is everybody pointing to me, my ADHD now? I don’t even have that.

Your partner might be jumping straight into let’s medicate the kids and the NDIS and all of this stuff. And you’re like, hang on a second. We’ve only known about this for three days. The partner can feel that life is chaotic enough. They don’t know how to make it better. They feel like nothing that they say is good enough.

If both of you have got executive functioning issues, then maybe nobody is doing certain tasks easily. Your partner’s trying to give them to you. You don’t know how to do them. And you’re going back and forth. And both of you are feeling pissed off and unappreciated.

The partner can feel like, well, this conversation just seems like you have ADHD. So now you’re going to give all the jobs to me. You may feel like you’ve already got too many and you feel like you’re about to go into the firing line. The tension can start to grow when neither of you feel seen or supported.

Now, first off, we do need to just unpack the biggest conversation in the room just to start off with. If you do have ADHD kids as well or not, it’s so easy as a parent to just start blaming the other parent. If you had have just done this, I wouldn’t be so stressed out. There’s so much to do. You feel like you are on, on, on all the time. And you feel like your partner has it easier than you.

But from their point of view, maybe they’re not feeling appreciated either. So it’s so easy to go into blame. And this is why we’re going to attempt not to do that.

Jane McFadden:
Okay. If your partner does not believe in ADHD, or if you are the partner and you are unsure of that ADHD exists, you feel like everyone feels like this. It’s not really a thing, is it? It’s just from TikTok.

I don’t really believe in it. I’m sorry. I just don’t think it’s a real thing. Everyone forgets things. Everyone gets overwhelmed. Everyone struggles to focus.

But here’s the truth. ADHD isn’t just about occasional forgetfulness or feeling stressed. It’s a pattern that impacts every area of your life all the time. It’s chronic overwhelm, endless to-do lists that never get done, and the emotional rollercoaster of being overstimulated, and then the frustration of knowing what needs to be done, but then feeling stuck.

It’s not a competition who struggles more. It’s recognizing that life doesn’t have to be this hard. There are strategies and tools. And if we can get the partner on board, we can start to make life easier. If we stop brushing this off as normal and looked at how we could support each other better.

So this podcast is not about convincing you that ADHD is real partners. It’s about showing you what’s possible if we approach things a little bit differently. Imagine a home where things feel less chaotic, where we don’t feel like we’re behind, and we could work as a team without getting so frustrated with each other.

So let’s just look at research and science. Brain imaging research shows that ADHD brains have structural and functional differences, particularly in the prefrontal cortex. There is a reference from Barclay 2018, which is a clinical research paper. I’m going to put that in for the references for people that want to see the science behind it.

We know that ADHD brains struggle with dopamine regulation. Dopamine is responsible for motivation, focus, and the brain’s reward center. This explains why things feel hard, even when they know what to do.

Another great website, I’m going to put it in the show notes. It is written by doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and it is all clinical reasoning. If you’d like to look more into the why and if ADHD really exists, go right in there.

If you’re an ADHD mum, something to say to your partner is, ADHD isn’t about effort. It’s about how my brain processes things. Imagine a computer trying to run a huge big program with a faulty RAM. It’s still running, it’s glitchy, it’s slow, it’s hard to work, it shuts down, and it’s highly frustrating to work with. That’s an ADHD brain with too much on.

Acknowledging to the partner, if you are trying to run a program with a computer that has a faulty RAM, it probably is frustrating when those tasks don’t get done. Those things that you’re expecting, or for my partner, one minute we’re doing this way, one minute we’re going the other way, and I’m all over the place.

Your partner may have ADHD too, they may experience the same struggles, and they may have normalized it. So ADHD struggles don’t always look dramatic. They can look like low-level chaos, chronic overwhelm, procrastination.

Partners, ADHD mums might think this is just life. They’ve lived like that for years. Research shows that untreated ADHD can lead to increased stress, relationship strain, and high rates of anxiety and depression.

So let’s explain masking. Your ADHD partner may have been explaining this to you. I’d like to call it the invisible load. Why masking drains in ADHD mums? Many ADHD mums spend all day masking their struggles. They appear fine, but they’re working twice as hard to keep up. By the time they’re home, they’re mentally cooked.

If you’re an ADHD mum, try saying to your partner, I spend all day trying to hold it together. When I come home, I just want to let my guard down and recharge.

For the partners, if you took the kids for 10 minutes, or ask her what she needs to decompress, it doesn’t have to be two hours. It can be half an hour. Maybe it’s just keeping all of the kids out of the bathroom so she can have a shower by herself. Or maybe doing some slow cooking so then she doesn’t have to cook dinner. Maybe you can figure out how to do the Coles delivery so she doesn’t have to stop at the shops.

How can you work together to make this better for everybody? The one thing that an ADHD mum really is wanting here is they want to be validated. And they want you to just spend a moment to say, hey, I can see it’s really hard for you.

When you do the morning run with the kids, you go straight to work or whatever it is that you’re doing, you go, go, go all day and you’re drained. I can see it’s hard. And in that moment, they want to feel like you can see them.

The research shows that for women, if we just talk women, they want to feel seen. And for husbands or partners, men, they want to feel respected. But in female to female relationships, they both may want to feel seen. In gender diverse relationships, maybe they both want to feel respected.

But in those moments, if we’re in a stereotypical male and female relationship, the male does like to fix things. But maybe the mum just wants you to say, hey, I can see it’s been pretty tough. What do you need me to do?

When my husband says that to me, do you know what I say to him? Nothing. I usually give him a hug and say, I just love that you’ve asked. And I’m actually fine. As soon as he says to me, would you like to go for a walk? Are you okay? Do you need some time out? I just feel 20 times better.

But when I feel like he’s not supporting me and he can’t see what I’m going through, grinds me. It’s just a moment from him to validate and make me feel like he can see me struggling and he would help me in any way that I ask. Sometimes he doesn’t know what to say.

If you’re a partner and you don’t know what to say, depending on your partner, me, I always say to my husband, I’m okay if you say that. Sometimes I tell him some heavy stuff and he says to me, I don’t know what to say. And I just say to him, I’m really looking for you to say this.

And sometimes it’s simple. I’m telling him a really, really long, sad story. Maybe I’ve got PMS and everything he says is wrong and I’m just feeling overwhelmed. And he says, I don’t know what to say. I just say, I just want you to say you’re here for me and you’ll help me if I ask you to. And he goes, okay.

And he repeats it and it helps him skill up. So he kind of gets the themes, the general concepts of what he should be saying.

Some women say to me, but doesn’t that invalidate it that you’ve told him what to say? And I say, well, actually no, because his heart is in the right place. He wants to learn. He wants to know. If I keep him guessing, he’ll probably never get it.

But this isn’t about me winning or him not getting it. It’s about me helping him build those skills.

Jane McFadden:
If you’re a partner, validating language, like I can see you’re struggling. How can I help?

Dismissing big feelings is one of the ones that ADHD mums talk about the most, which is like, calm down, it’s not a big deal, why are you still talking about it, everything ends in an argument, why are you being ridiculous. All of that dismissing language adds fuel to the fire.

Partners, if there’s one thing to avoid, it would be dismissing feelings. Because you can see if you have a partner that wants to feel seen and you’re dismissing her, it’s going to aggravate her.

There are no winners in a big argument, which no one ends up talking to each other. When it’s the weekend and we have the kids and it’s me and my partner, we have such a better day if we’re getting on. So by dismissing somebody, it’s not a path to happiness.

And that goes the same way. You’re just dismissing people, dismissing partners or friendship. It’s just, you want to avoid dismissing language completely.

One of the other things that the ADHD mums talk about is a partner that says something like, why can’t you just do it? Just do it. I’ve heard of ADHD mums spending a lot of money on a course, for example, and all they have to do is hand in the last piece of paperwork, which is basically a tick and flick. And they don’t do it repeatedly.

And all of the course gets lost. They missed a window. It expires. They have to pay again for the next time. And they never get the qualification after doing all of that work. But the partner’s saying, why can’t you just do it? From the ADHD mum’s experience, it feels like she’s failing. It hurts her feelings. And it’s actually really difficult to do some tasks.

If you want to be supportive, say, what is it that you actually have to do? Tonight after dinner, I’ll sit with you. It’s probably only going to take 10 minutes. Why don’t I just give you a hand? Or I’ll sit on my phone next to you and do something else whilst you do it. How can I give you a hand?

We also do want to have a quick chat about rejection sensitivity dysphoria, RSD. And ADHD mums and ADHD people can take criticism quite hard. ADHD brains are wired to amplify and blow up perceived rejection and criticism.

Making an offhand comment as a partner without thinking can have a huge emotional wound. And you may find yourself saying as a partner, why are you overreacting? You may find that it’s because of rejection sensitivity dysphoria, where partners end up saying, why is this so hard? Why does this conversation have to be so difficult?

And anything they say is wrong, for example, and the ADHD mum is seeing everything like a rejection. They’re defensive. They’re angry.

You might want to look at RSD and talk about how it plays out for the ADHD mum and the partner, whether they have ADHD or not, and what the ADHD mum is wanting to hear, what you’re actually saying, and having an honest conversation about what do you say to each other that really hits hard, because sometimes it’s not what you think.

Some quick tips and strategies that I know that work, or some quick tools that you can use. We know that traditional tools like planners, verbal reminders often fail because ADHD brains struggle with memory, follow through, overwhelm.

You want to have a look at visual accessible systems that benefit everybody, like a shared digital calendar, GCAL, to remove the burden of keeping everything in your head. One of the best things I did was I started writing up the weekly schedule on a board, which my husband read, because otherwise he would ask me seven times a day what we were doing, and I’d have to re-remember, which was often hard.

So setting reminders for reoccurring tasks, like bills, school forms, activities, direct debits for bills, automate everything that you can. Maybe that’s a task you do together, maybe one afternoon, all you do is direct debit and automate as much as possible.

You also might want to break tasks into specific steps. If the ADHD mum is saying, help me more around the house, what does that mean? What does that mean for the partner? Do you want them to load the dishwasher? Is wiping the counters important? Taking out the rubbish, when do you want it taken out?

A lot of the time partners are like, they think a full rubbish bin is different to an ADHD mum’s version of a full bin. My husband and I actually had that conversation where I was like, you’re not taking the rubbish out. He’s like, they’re not full. When they get to this point or when they start to smell, this is when they’re full. And he was like, oh, I didn’t realise that.

So when tasks are broken into small actionable pieces, it’s easier to get started.

Jane McFadden:
The next strategy I like is the two-minute rule for shared tasks. One of the biggest frustrations that partners have is unfinished tasks that pile up. Now, if both of you have ADHD or you may have ADHD, this might be both of you. Or if it’s just the mum who has the ADHD and the other person is neurotypical, then it can be really frustrating for the neurotypical when all the unfinished tasks pile up.

The washing, dishes, paperwork. ADHD brains can struggle to start tasks because of feeling stuck or having decision paralysis. The two-minute rule is the rule that both of you use where if a task takes less than two minutes, just do it.

Partners can approach tasks as a team, focusing on small wins. If you continue to walk past things on the ground, you could just pick them up.

Now, I want to acknowledge that where you are in the medication journey is completely up to you. But I did find when I started taking medication and my husband and I were both absolutely against medication initially. If you’d like to know more about it, check out the From Skeptic to Advocate, where I talk about medicating my children and my husband and I and how we completely changed our views on that. From one piece of research that I read, check that out.

I really believe in ADHD medication now, but that’s been a journey for me and I’ve also done the lifestyle changes, which for me didn’t work. So everyone has to do their own kind of journey on that at their own pace. But I did notice that once I started taking ADHD medication, I stopped walking over things on the ground, wondering when I would pick that up.

For example, if you notice dishes piling up in the sink, instead of leaving it for one person, both of you commit to going over and doing a two-minute clean blitz. If it’s only going to take you a minute, go over and clean it. If someone sees mail on the table, go over, grab it out, put it in the pile.

If you see some washing that needs to be put away or something needs to be picked up, if it’s going to take under two minutes, just do it now. But if you leave all of those two-minute tasks, the next thing you know, you’ve got four hours of shit that you both have to deal with and you don’t know how it’s happened. Small tasks that linger often create tension and mental clutter.

My husband and I just do them together now. So for example, I used to do all of them myself and walk around getting quite resentful, passive aggressive, start like cleaning the oven and all this stuff I wouldn’t usually do, like full victim. And now we just do it together.

I go, hey, if we both do this together, we can hang out in the pool this afternoon. Instead of me walking around angry and then him just, I don’t know what he does. And then we both end up pissed off and neither of us actually have any time connecting.

Number three, you might try a weekly reset and reflect check-in. Now my husband and I hate planning. I hate talking to him about our plan, what we’re going to do this week. He hates it. However, we do make a plan. We do check in with each other once a week because otherwise we don’t really know what’s going on.

And often I have conversations with him in my head because the kids interrupt all the time. And then he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. He then asks me constantly what we are doing. And I feel like I can’t ask him to help because there’s no time to explain. And we go around in this cycle.

So make time to have a weekly reset, reflect, even 10 minutes works. If you’re thinking, what do we do in that weekly reset and reflect? What do we do?

Step one, celebrate the wins. Acknowledge what went well. ADHD mums do not fixate on what didn’t happen. Focus on what has happened. Focus on what did work well.

Step two, check in on priorities. Review what’s the calendar for the week. Who’s doing pickups? What needs to get done? What’s extra? Okay, you’ve got lots on this week because you’re traveling. What can I do to help here? I’ve got lots on because of this. I need you to help me more here. Make a plan. ADHD mums, if you actually make a plan, you might find that you receive more help than what you think.

And it’s some of the small things that all add up. Your partner is willing to do. Your partner is willing to do.

Step three, share feelings without blame. Use I statements to express challenges without making your partner feel defensive. For example, I feel overwhelmed and I feel like all of the food shopping for the lunches and the dinners and the weekends and all of the stuff falls on me all the time. Can we find a way to share it more evenly? Could you do the IGA run that I do two days a week to get fresh vegetables and I will do the rest? Can I leave that part with you? Or I’m feeling so stressed out at the moment. This isn’t about you. What can we take out? How are you feeling?

So when someone’s saying I feel overwhelmed, I feel stressed out, it’s not about blame. Sometimes someone just wants to state the feeling and your partner might go, me too, this week’s been horrible, I’ve had such an awful week.

Or you might say one of our kids has been sick a week. I’m so stressed out with work. And the other person may agree. Maybe you then decide to get a babysitter. Do something with a third party. Ask a family or a friend to share the load. Have the conversations without blame.

Step four, adjust systems together. If a system isn’t working, tweak it. Did the shared help calendar work? Did everybody actually put the tasks on there? Did something not work? And if so, what could you do that would be different? And give both parties a space to communicate and reduce the chance of misunderstanding later, which can turn into conflict.

Jane McFadden:
One common challenge that I see with communication is what is called weaponised incompetence. It’s a common challenge in relationships where tasks are divided but not followed through, leaving the ADHD mum feeling like she has to do it all to get it done right.

Partners may not realise what they’re actually supposed to do because a vague instruction from ADHD brain really can lack clarity. So for an ADHD mum to truly receive help, she actually has to break it down.

Can you brush the kids’ teeth while I grab their pyjamas? Can you read one story to them tonight? Instead of saying, help me with the kids, why aren’t you helping me? actually be specific about what you want them to do.

And the ADHD mum, I can know what you’ll be thinking. You’ll be going, well, why do I have to tell them every single thing? Yes, but we don’t know what we’re dealing with here. We may have a neurodivergent partner who may need a lot of prompting.

Now this might be polarising, but for me, if you have a partner that requires a lot of prompting and he’s unsure what to do next, I will prefer to tell him what to do next than to give him a general but vague direction and then be frustrated why he isn’t doing it.

You can also teach your partner what needs to be doing if you think they are neurodivergent or they’re having trouble understanding. You might have to break down bedtime. When you get home from work, I would really like you to do all the baths with the kids and the homework whilst I cook dinner. And then I will do this. If I’m cooking, I’d like you to clean up.

You may break it down so everyone knows what they’re doing and you may have to put that visually. If we don’t break it down and we have a neurodivergent partner, it may be really difficult to get them to really help.

And this is going to be a decision that’s up to you. For some people, this does break up their relationship, where the ADHD mum feels like they have to do it all and the partner doesn’t realise what they’re exactly supposed to do from the vague instruction. Then this miscommunication can lead to resentment and eventually breaking up without actually addressing it.

Have a look at when the tasks are divided, what is actually under each sub-task. When my husband and I did this, it completely changed our relationship and I realised that he actually didn’t know what I meant a lot of the time.

So when I’d be frustrated with him and he would kind of go on his phone or go do something else random like, you know, cut down a tree or mow the lawn, I’d be like, why are you not helping me? He didn’t actually know what he was supposed to do. So he went and did something else unrelated that he thought was helpful but wasn’t actually helping me, but was adding to my frustration.

Body doubling is a standard one. People talk about it a lot, but it may be worth doing things together. One of you might sort paperwork, one of you might pay bills, one of you might cook together while the other one folds washing. Have a look at body doubling.

If you’re an ADHD mum, you might find it really helpful with someone in the room. So if you’re struggling to get that last subject done at university or whatever it is that you’re doing, you may have to say to your partner, can you sit in the room with me and do something else just so I stick to it and don’t get up and walk away.

Burnout is a massive thing for ADHD mums. It might be worth having a look at having flexible roles because you’re going to have fluctuating energy. Particularly with women, if you’ve got at least one woman in the relationship and they have PMS, PMDD, perimenopause, menopause, you may have tight parts of their cycle where they’re really productive and excited, they’ve got lots of energy, and others when they’re overwhelmed, depressed and exhausted.

You may want to have a talk about how that impacts. And partners, especially if you’re male, I would not be saying, have you got your period? If my husband asked me if I have PMS, I just get very, very, very upset.

I don’t advise bringing it up, but I do think it’s great if an ADHD mum can say to their partner, hey, I’ve actually got PMS this week. So this is what I need this week. I need to shower alone this whole week. If you try to cuddle me, I’m going to lose my mind.

Like have those real boundaries so you both know where you’re at. Often partners work really well with direction. They just don’t know what to do.

So why do these tools work? Every relationship faces challenges. ADHD adds a layer of complexity. The good news, when both parties commit to understanding and using tools, proactive communication and validation, life gets easier for everyone.

Even if you as a partner are still like, I don’t really believe all this ADHD stuff, try the tools and just see what happens. The tools aren’t going to add more work. It’s actually about simplifying, reducing frustration and building connection.

These strategies work best when they’re collaborative, not about the ADHD mum bossing around or telling the other one what to do, but flexibility and being very clear. It isn’t one size fits all. It’s about what works for you.

Jane McFadden:
If you’re a partner listening to this and you’re still feeling very, very hesitant, that’s okay. This could be new for you. Maybe you’re overwhelmed. Maybe I’ve talked too much. That’s normal. It’s okay to take time to process.

It’s not about placing blame. It’s not about forcing you to change. It’s about how to make life easier together. What if things could be better if you gave it a try? I’m not asking you to believe in ADHD overnight. I’m asking you to get curious.

What if you both weren’t getting frustrated? What if your ADHD partner wasn’t constantly overwhelmed? You don’t have to do everything in this episode. If you’re the partner and you’re listening to this episode, pick out one thing that you can commit to just trying.

It will mean a lot. And if you can only pick one, validate her experience and say to her, hey, I listened to the episode. You’re right. It does sound pretty hard. I hadn’t thought about it that way. It’s about understanding each other.

Okay. And one thing I’ve noticed is that if I am the ADHD mum and I’m feeling really overwhelmed and unappreciated and not seen, and it doesn’t take much to get me there, I can start really picking at my partner. But what I notice is when I start to appreciate him, he does it back.

If you are feeling really unappreciated and you are the partner or you are the ADHD mum, try appreciating the other person and see if they start to do the same thing back. And this episode is for people that are in a healthy relationship with partners who want to be supportive, but don’t know how. So I wouldn’t do this obviously with a toxic relationship or anything with huge levels of resentment.

But if you can try and appreciate your partner in a few small ways, figure out their love language, figure out what matters to them, you’ll notice them soften. Particularly if you’re the partner, the ADHD mum may soften. If you truly see the struggle and see her, this is something that’s talked about so in the ADHD mum community.

So many of us have shared the same struggles. Check out the Facebook group, it will be in the show notes. Feeling misunderstood, dismissed or blamed. But also share what works.

If this episode resonated, here’s what you can do. Share this episode with a partner, a friend and open the door to curiosity. Pick one strategy to just try.

To the ADHD mums, your struggles are valid, you are not failing and you’re not asking for too much. You’re asking for connection, support and teamwork and you deserve that.

And to partners, ADHD might feel familiar or overwhelming and that’s okay. You don’t have to have all the answers, but being open, curious and willing to try can make the world of difference for both of you. It doesn’t have to feel hard. You’ve got this. I’m cheering you on one step at a time.

Thank you for listening. The key message here is you are not alone. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, follow us on Instagram or head over and join our amazing ADHD mums podcast Facebook community. Everything you do matters and helps to spread the word about what neurodiversity in females looks like.