The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

Product Information

As humans, the lens through which we view the world is so second nature that we often believe everyone in our lives shares our perspective. In reality, however, our points of view are highly individual. So, something obvious to you might be a complete mystery to your beloved.

Learn more about adult ADHD. Learning more about your partner's experience will help you have more empathy and patience. Start by choosing to “reset” your relationship. Today will be a fresh start, with you both setting out on this adventure to a happier life together.

Section 2 - Rebuilding Your Relationship in Six Steps

Step 5: Setting Boundaries and Finding Your Own Voices - using your "best self" to reinvigorate your life (p. 187. Audio 8. Kindle loc. 3112) When ADHD’s presence in a relationship is denied, ignored or misunderstood, everyone in the household suffers. As each partner struggles to have their point of view respected, resentment, loneliness and anger creep in. Before long, what was once a happy, loving home has morphed into one filled with sadness and distance. Step 1: Cultivating Empathy for Your Spouse - stories from real life and what they mean for you (p. 79. Audio 4. Kindle loc. 1403) The ADHD Effect on Marriage helps couples understand why things never seem to get better, no matter how hard they try - and how to change that, not by "trying harder," but by "trying differently" so they can renew their love and joy. One helpful consistent reminder from the first half of the book is how helpful getting consistent exercise is for people with ADHD so I've taken that too heart and prioritized working out - it's made me more likely to want to keep doing stuff at work and home (but I'm getting a little too hyperfocused on it since it's new and exciting again - story of my life).

My personal situation is likely impacting this review a lot - as is the fact that I listened to this as an audiobook. I almost gave it a 3 star review because of the last fifth of the book finally giving me some useful things to use to strengthen my relationship with my husband - but it was too little too late to recover my opinion of the book. What I would recommend you do first is read “Why Does He Do That” by Lundy Bancroft, who has 25 years of experience working in his field. Melissa describes a lot of the destructive patterns I have wrestled with myself over the years as either my partners or myself has been noticing and suffering under in an ADHD relationship - especially the parent/child dynamic and the ensuing anger/resentment that follows it and many more of the core dynamics which is active in an untreated relation between a couple where one or both suffer from this diagnosis. Orlov also blogs for Psychology Today, and authored the “Your Relationships” column for ADDitude Magazine from 2008-2014. She is a contributing author to Married to Distraction, with Hallowell and his wife, Sue George Hallowell, LICSW, and to The Distracted Couple, the first therapist handbook about counseling couples with ADHD.I bought "The ADHD Effect on Marriage" because my ADHD daughter is about to be married. I didn't have to read much of the book to realize that my children's dad is also ADHD. The problems in my marriage and subsequent divorce wreaked havoc in my life and the lives of my ex-husband and children, who continue to be impacted today in their adult lives. Melissa Orlov has written a very knowledgeable, honest, practical, compassionate, and positive book in which neither the ADHD partner nor the non-ADHD partner is considered flawed or wrong. Her empathetic approach encourages the couple to hear and be heard in a manner that enables them to reconnect and work out their problems together. She also offers specific ideas and techniques for doing so. Furthermore, reading her book is like sitting around the kitchen table, talking with a friend. Ms. Orlov not only knows her subject inside and out, but has lived it and successfully turned her own marriage around. If we had read this book thirty years ago, four lives would have evolved quite differently. I am passing the book to my children so that we can make the most of the present and future even though we can't change the past.

People with ADHD often feel different, ashamed, unlovable, and afraid of failure. Every day, they must navigate through the world with a constantly buzzing mind that prevents them from distinguishing what’s important to focus on and what isn’t a priority. Being relentlessly barraged by so much information is overwhelming, and can easily lead to panic. Melissa provides a nine-week couples seminar live by Zoom three times a year (fall, winter, and spring) and in a self-study version the remainder of the year. Regardless of whether you decide to work with the consulting group, we STRONGLY recommend you take the seminar. Past participants repeatedly say the course ‘is one of the best things they have ever done’ for their relationship. Regardless of who has ADHD in your relationship, the best way to break this cycle is to direct your focus onto yourself and set personal boundaries. These are values or behaviors that are absolutely essential if you want to be your truest self. Secondly, some of the advice was sound, but other suggestions were obviously not being provided by a professional. I just finished the book, so the first that comes to mind is her suggestion that people with ADHD might go to bed with their spouse for "cuddle time" and then stay in bed on their phone or laptop until they're ready for bed. Anyone with trouble sleeping knows that you should never look at a screen before bed, especially while you're IN bed. The fact that the author is not actually licensed in any way but is just "experienced" definitely comes through sometimes. Why should you read the first? Because about 90% of “The ADHD effect on marriage” actually describes abusive behavior.My DH has refused to invest in the thousands of dollars over the course of the first year that therapy or coaching for him, therapy for me re: eggshell/walking living, and the all important therapy for the marriage would require. He became (apparently predictably) depressed, when, once medicated, he began to take in his large part in our difficulties. It had been his pattern all through the years to dismiss and blame me, and now I expected real improvement, and it seemed valid, yet overwhelming. His behavior became more passive-aggressive and deteriorated to the point I could no longer live in the same household, for my own sanity, waiting for a "good moment" with him, much less anything requiring compassion and forethought. He doesn't believe in the available help, after so many costly therapy sessions that went nowhere. He's tired & hopeless before he really began. I am going through a difficult divorce now, yet believe it must be for the best. With 16 years of this marital challenge behind us, divorce was very much on it's way, and yet with this book we both have a new ally, a resurgence of hope. I will go to the next therapist, put this in his or her hands, and say "read this, and handle us this way". I'd also like to give my thoughts on another review which I think is very unfair. Never does this book state the nonADHD spouse is superior to the ADHD spouse, in fact the main gist I got from it was that you shouldn't act like that and you shouldn't have a parent-child like relationship unless you want to be unhappy and make your spouse also unhappy. Also it IS use to women with ADHD, the author has a section about both partners having ADHD and while most examples are using "he" as the one with ADHD there are lots of examples where she says "she" has the ADHD. Also don't forget this author is a she and her husband was the one that has ADHD so she's going to talk more that way. Doesn't mea it doesn't talk about it the other way round though. It's not patronising, you need simple things to get through to your head, I can't sit there reading scientific wording and overly complex ways of saying simple statements, otherwise I won't understand what I need to do? It's not written for a dumb person, you still feel it's intelligent. It also doesn't say that all problems are down to ADHD, in fact it makes clear that often both parties have other illnesses that might be causing issues and suggests the non-adhd spouse look into if they have issues of anxiety/depression and so on and clearly says that those with ADHD most of the time have other illnesses along with that like depression etc etc. I mean it is a book about ADHD so the author is gonna focus on that? If you want a book about general marriage problems and tips then go for a totally different type of book. Create a plan to reach long-term goals for your relationship that aligns with who you are as individuals To identify your boundaries, reflect on a time when you felt truly happy because you were living authentically. What mattered most to you then? What typical behaviors or outlooks did you have at that time?