One reason I shy away from words like “disorder” is that experts aren’t infallible. We have a lot of intelligent, talented, highly capable people who have a tremendous amount to offer the world who, rather than being cherished and set up to succeed, have been made instead to feel like failures because their brains didn’t work like someone else’s.
When terms such as Asperger’s, autism and ADD are seen as a means for better understanding one another and used to change systems rather than people, I’ll be less hesitant about using the word disorder. Right now, there are still too many people who are stuck on seeing diagnoses as excuses, cop-outs and total BS for me to be completely comfortable using “disorder” rather than “difference” in open society.
The arrival of my ADD books–“Driven to Distraction,” “Delivered from Distraction,” and “You Mean I’m not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!”–from Amazon prompted a good discussion with my significant other about ADD in general and specific manifestations of it within our relationship.
I realized after giving the two Hallowell/Ratey books the once-over, I probably have ADD, too. (Reading and comprehension aren’t issues for me. I learned to read easily, I read very quickly, and I have very good comprehension and retention.) I don’t know if his is worse than mine, or mine just shows up in different ways than his, but we’ve each been affected by it for as long as either of us can remember. We’ve both been described as distant, different, and daydreamers. We’re both creative, him more than me. He did not do well academically and hated school with a bloody passion. I loved school and maintained honor roll grades with little effort through high school graduation, but was always told I wasn’t performing up to my potential. Neither of us are hyperactive in the stereotypical sense, but we both do show signs of that as well. Me through excessive talking, him through excessive busywork.
We each developed different sets of coping skills and use them in different areas of our lives. He did best at jobs that required him to juggle several things at once, be physically active and set his own hours within reason. I also do best when I have several irons in the fire and rely heavily on organization, schedule and structure. The disastrous effects were, well, disasters. 
We aren’t in a situation where one person sees it as a problem and the other doesn’t. We both want to do something about the clutter and the paperwork problem that has had such a longstanding negative effect on our respective financial situations. We both want a relationship that better reflects the feelings we have for each other, and we both want to put his online crap behind us.
We are scheduled to meet with a professional to begin work on this. I think we will get the most benefit by working with the same person in a coaching format, rather than working independently with different practitioners.
The books allowed us to actually talk about his 20-year string of failed relationships and one night stands, why he came to have 4 children with 3 different women, why he continued to engage in behavior he knew was risky, and why, before he got married, he’d never had a girlfriend or fiancee he’d never cheated on. He finally understood that I wasn’t asking about what he calls “his other life” to beat him up about it, but because it sheds light on why he was joining “cheating wife” dating sites now even though he knows it hurts our relationship and he doesn’t want to do that.
I don’t know if either of us is going to move forward with obtaining a professional diagnosis. Aside from the fact that we both have other medical conditions and need to be aware of it if those medications might make these symptoms worse, I don’t know what difference a professional confirmation of what we both already accept would make in our day-to-day lives. It’s not going to generate more income, it may very well generate more expense in the form of increased insurance premiums, and it’s not going to make other people stop being who they are.
We’ve each spent years taking antidepressants that didn’t work, or didn’t work as well as we’d hoped, or whose side effects we couldn’t tolerate. We are each now comfortable with how our individual depressive symptoms are being managed. We also know that lifestyle changes are as important, if not more important, than the meds. Neither of us feels that the other’s symptoms require more or different medication right now, and the history of our relationship is such that either of us would definitely lovingly tell the other if he or she needed to take or change their meds.
One of the things we want is to be better at taking care of each other. He and I each lack the ability to tell our bosses and coworkers no. As our relationship has developed, we’ve each become less hesitant to tell the other that no, we shouldn’t cover someone else’s shift or help them on that project. There have also been times when we each told the other that yes, we did need to report a coworker’s inappropriate behavior to human resources.
If I had it to do again, I would get either “Driven to Distraction” or “Delivered from Distraction” but not both. I’d get either “Married to Distraction” or “The ADHD Effect on Marriage” by Orlov instead.
MissMuffins
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