Q. In your new book, “the ADHD Effect on Marriage,’’ you talk about how Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder can make marriages more challenging. why is that?
A. the impact of untreated ADHD on marriage is very significant. there are high divorce rates, high dysfunction rates. the reason is that the symptoms add something to the marriage that you’re not aware of that tends to be negative.
Q. You say that many people have ADHD but don’t know it. What are the warning signs of adult ADHD?
A. when they talk about chronic distraction, that’s one indicator. ADHD is hereditary, so if you have a child who has it, that’s a good indicator that at least one parent probably has it. If there’s really chronic nagging and anger and frustration due to repetitive action of one spouse, that’s an indicator. Parent-child dynamics, where one person has taken over control and the other plays the role of an irresponsible child, that’s another indicator. It’s not a little bit of distraction or a little bit of nagging or a little bit of anger. It’s really chronic. It affects everything.
Q. You say that it’s common in ADHD relationships for the ADHD spouse to act one way when the relationship is building and a totally different way a year or two later.
A. What happens during infatuation is that your brain is flooded with dopamine and feels great. ADHD to some degree is a lack of dopamine, so this flooding of the brain is a completely new state for somebody with ADHD. They’re exceptionally attentive and really energetic and it’s a wonderful happy time. That’s the person the non-ADHD partner gets to know. and then the newness and the infatuation wears off and so does the dopamine, and suddenly you’re back to the more typical pattern of an ADHD person — which is a lot of distraction.
Q. What do you recommend to turn things around?
A. It’s important that people do something to help change their brain physically to address the dopamine and neurochemical issues. Medicine is a very effective way for most people to do that. But it’s not the only way — there’s exercise, fish oil, and getting enough sleep, etc.
Q. You describe the second leg of treatment as “changing behaviors and habits.’’ What do you mean by that?
A. by the time you’re an adult who has had undiagnosed ADHD your whole life, you have a whole lot of coping mechanisms that are not in your best interest. You have to change those coping strategies. An easy way to think about these habit changes is creating external structures to compensate for the fact that you don’t have a lot of internal structures.
Q. and the third?
A. To create interactions that are ADHD-sensitive, I teach them certain kinds of conversational techniques and verbal cues. If you are an ADHD person who has gotten distracted during a conversation, it’s better to say, ‘Wait a minute, I spaced out for a second, can you repeat that?’ — and have both members of the couple think that that’s a positive thing to say. the other option is to fake it, which is one of those bad coping strategies that people with ADHD use all the time.
Q. You also talk about the role of humor in an ADHD relationship.
A. You have to be able to laugh at a lot of this stuff, just to be able to keep your priorities straight. KAREN WEINTRAUB
Interview was condensed and edited.
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