Melissa Orlov > Quotes

“Parenting” an ADHD spouse is always destructive to your relationship because it demotivates and generates frustration and anger.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“The shame that people with ADHD, male or female, carry around with them after years and years of being told that they are inadequate is a critical factor when a marriage starts to fall apart, or when they are approached by a well-meaning spouse about asking for an evaluation for ADHD. Shame often triggers anger and defensiveness, which can shut down what ought to be a straightforward conversation before it has even begun. Anger, stonewalling, and defensiveness can seem unreasonable to a non-ADHD spouse who, not having experienced this same type of repeated bashing of the ego, doesn’t understand it or interpret it correctly.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“He learns that getting things done doesn’t get him much credit, which demotivates him.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Medication is the most efficient way to jump-start treatment, but it does not effectively treat ADHD in marriages without the addition of behavioral changes. These changes must be voluntary. No matter how much a non-ADHD spouse may want to, she can’t “make” her spouse do certain things like be more organized or more attentive. Furthermore, these changes must come from both partners.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Shame often triggers anger and defensiveness, which can shut down what ought to be a straightforward conversation before it has even begun. Anger, stonewalling, and defensiveness can seem unreasonable to a non-ADHD spouse who, not having experienced this same type of repeated bashing of the ego, doesn’t understand it or interpret it correctly.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Recognize, however, that some people with ADHD compensated for their ADHD in childhood but fall apart after they have too much on their plate as adults. Typically, this happens with the introduction of children into your lives. Raising kids takes an inordinate amount of organizational skill, which is not generally an ADHD strong point.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“If you are married to a person who has (or might have) ADHD, you might feel ignored and lonely in your relationship. Your spouse never seems to follow up on what he agrees to do—so much so that you may feel as if you really have another child in your home instead of an adult. You feel you’re forced to remind him all the time to do things. You nag, and you’ve started to dislike the person you’ve become. The two of you either fight often or have virtually nothing to say to each other that either of you finds meaningful. You are frustrated that your spouse seems to be able to focus intently on things that interest him, but never on you. Perhaps worst of all, you feel intense stress from not knowing whether you can rely on him and feeling saddled with almost all of the responsibilities of the household, while your spouse gets to “have all the fun.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“insecurity had nothing to do with reality. He loved me deeply. He just didn’t realize that he wasn’t paying attention because he was distracted by just about everything else.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“if the partners don’t get workload distribution issues under control, the anger and resentment that builds up can end the marriage.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“If you had asked Dan during that period whether he still loved his wife, he would have looked at you in total confusion and said, “Of course!” Although his wife was at that very moment wallowing in despair over his treatment of her, he perceived things to be fine between them. This isn’t because he is dense; it’s just that after a lifetime of having people mad at or disappointed with him, Dan weathers periods of anger and criticism by mostly ignoring them. And, because people with ADHD don’t receive and process information in a hierarchical way, Maria’s suffering enters his mind at about the same level as everything else he perceives—the lights on the radio clock, the dog barking, the computer, the worrisome project he has at work. “But wait!” you say. “It doesn’t matter—she’s still alone!” You would be right. Regardless of whether Dan was intentionally ignoring his wife or just distracted, actions speak louder than words. She becomes lonely and unhappy, and her needs must be addressed. But recognizing and then identifying the correct underlying problem is critical to finding the right solution. In marriage, just like in middle school math, if you pick the wrong problem to solve, you generally don’t end up with a satisfactory result. Furthermore, the hurt caused by the incorrect interpretation that he no longer loves her elicits a series of bad feelings and behaviors that compound the problem. This is the critical dynamic of symptom–response–response at work.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“How both of you think about ADHD is actually very important. Having a “disorder” can suggest an illness that is perceived as “bad” and permanent. Thinking of ADHD as a series of traits that can be both positive and negative, and that can be managed with the right strategies, is far more likely to encourage optimism, effort, and patience. It is the trap of the non-ADHD spouse to feel that he or she is “normal” and the ADHD spouse is “not normal.” This usually unspoken sense of superiority, or assumption that the non-ADHD partner’s way of doing things is more “reasonable” than the ADHD partner’s approach, dooms many relationships. Consider the words of this fiancée:”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“days of “talks” about his “problem”? People with ADHD are all too aware that others think they are “broken,” and the resulting low self-esteem and resentment sometimes color their ability to enter into a relationship in the first place. Take this professionally successful woman with ADHD:”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“feel like I have begged, pleaded, cried, yelled to get his attention but it never works…or never works for long. If I get mad, I’m the bad guy because I’m not supportive. If I get sad it makes”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“It is EXTREMELY STRESSFUL to feel like there is no companionship because I can’t rely on my husband to do what he said he would do. It is sooo lonely to feel like my husband is constantly in his own “happy place” while I am saddled with all of the responsibility…I,”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“For those of you with ADHD, please hear what we are saying. Your tolerance for pain and failure—the ability to “go with the flow”—is most likely a coping strategy for dealing with the inconsistencies that your ADHD has created. It is time for a new coping strategy. The old one—creating a high pain threshold and going along—has not served you as well as you have convinced yourself. It is part of the reason that your relationship is in trouble. That pain threshold does not align with your partner’s needs. A better relationship strategy is to face the ADHD symptoms head on and treat them, using every resource science suggests will work.”
― Melissa Orlov, The Couple's Guide to Thriving with ADHD

“Now and Not Now The joke is that there are really only two time zones for a person with ADHD: “now” and “not now”! A person with ADHD is very present focused. Often, something that was going on ten minutes earlier is out of mind, as is the thing that is supposed to happen ten minutes in the future.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Painful Misinterpretations of ADHD Symptoms and Motives Good communication isn’t just a matter of saying the right words or starting your assumptions in the same places. Correct interpretation is critical, and in this realm couples dealing with ADHD may fail miserably for two basic reasons: An ADHD symptom is lurking that they don’t realize is influencing their interaction (and subsequent interpretation of the interaction). They “live in the world” so differently that they incorrectly assume they understand the motives that are influencing frustrating behaviors. One of the most common misinterpretations is feeling as if an ADHD spouse doesn’t love his partner anymore because he isn’t paying attention to her.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Most often, a non-ADHD spouse can make this transition easily, but the ADHD spouse ends up lost; and because the non-ADHD spouse assumes that an adult should be able to make the transition, this inability to adjust is frustrating.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“I am not suggesting here that a non-ADHD spouse should simply roll over and say, “She’s ignoring me because she’s eccentric [or because she has ADHD]. Oh well!” In fact, having an ADHD spouse take charge of creating a systematic approach to treatment is one of the most important elements of improving your marriage. The “symptom” is, after all, at the beginning of the symptom-response-response sequence, and not much changes until the symptoms are under control—and that task can be accomplished only by the ADHD spouse. But ADHD in relationships is like a dance. One partner leads and initiates the steps, but both must understand their role to successfully circle the floor. In an ADHD partnership, an ADHD partner can address her symptoms, but the couple will be unsuccessful if the non-ADHD partner’s response doesn’t change, too. The inverse, of course, is also true.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“You should allow yourself to experience this sadness, because grieving for what you have not had in your marriage up to this point is one of the first steps toward building a new life together. But know that there are many reasons to be hopeful as well. As you learn about the patterns in ADHD relationships, you will also learn what to do about them.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Key to the success of many with ADHD is finding the “right life” in which to live. This means a job in which their particular talents for nonlinear thinking and quick emergency response are prized, and a spouse who can appreciate, or at least learn to live with, an often uneven distribution of work within the relationship. Without these things, many with ADHD feel that they don’t really fit into the world, or that the face that they put forward in order to fit in is false. The other critical factor for the success of an ADHD spouse in a relationship is for both partners to continue to respect differences and act on that respect. Here’s what one woman with ADHD says about living a life in which others assume that “different” is not worthy of respect: I think [my husband] uses the ADD as an excuse to be bossy and stuff sometimes but I find it very upsetting and hard on my self esteem to have my disorder and learning disabilities used that way. We do have very different perspectives but reality is perspective. Just because I see things differently from someone else doesn’t make one wrong or right…how I experience life is colored by my perception, it is what it is. I hate how people try to invalidate my thoughts feelings and perceptions because they are different from theirs. Like telling me [since] they feel…different[ly] from me [that their feelings] should make me magically change! It doesn’t work that way. Even if my ADD makes me see or remember something “not right” it’s still MY reality. It is like those movies where the hero has something crazy going on where they experience reality differently from everyone else.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Though not true in all cases, people with ADHD often have trouble planning ahead. Planning means organizing a number of different options into a workable game plan and anticipating what will happen in various scenarios. Executive function differences in the ADHD brain often don’t accommodate these common skills. One upside of not being natural planners is that people with ADHD can be really good at going with the flow, making things work in real time. It’s not unusual for a person with ADHD to be attracted to a partner who is a good planner. In courtship, her ability to organize and plan helps to make things happen, and his easygoing nature provides liveliness and spontaneity. They both benefit and thrive. After kids, though, the ADHD partner’s inability to plan becomes a real negative as the organizational demands imposed by taking care of children require that both pitch in to keep life from becoming overwhelming.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Perhaps worst of all, you feel intense stress from not knowing whether you can rely on him and feeling saddled with almost all of the responsibilities of the household, while your spouse gets to “have all the fun.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“To this woman, a “comfortable” life is one that includes a predictable routine and quiet, intimate, shared time with her husband. I suspect that this is at least in part because routine makes taking care of three boys much easier. Her husband’s energy level is disruptive and foreign. Yet this is inherently part of him; the energy, humor, and wit that have gotten him out of tough spots in the past are the key to his professional success and are likely a reason why his wife was initially attracted to him (before she needed the routine to help make her and the children’s lives easier). Neither spousal style is wrong in this situation; her routine helps her succeed as a mother, and his energy helps him succeed at work. It is the intersection of their styles at this particular time in their lives that creates the problems.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“You can’t solve someone’s grief. Just acknowledge and empathize; don’t dismiss. Over time, grief that is acknowledged and validated will heal.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“I hear so many excuses that I’ve pretty much become numb to his endless tales of woes. Communication is a major problem in our marriage. He doesn’t listen very well and it’s frustrating when I learn that he didn’t pay attention to key points, especially in matters pertaining to the finances. It’s like he zones in and out to keep up with the conversation”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“People with ADHD can put coping strategies in place that help them to plan more effectively, but both members of the couple need to be conscious that this requires significant effort and lots of organizational tools such as lists, charts, conversations, and the like. Don’t assume that just because you are both adults, you can also both plan well.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“If you are being parented, it means that ADHD symptoms are getting in the way of your relationship, whether you are aware of it or not. To get out of parent–child dynamics, consider these suggestions: Talk with your doctor about improving treatment”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“In short, I feel many times like the mom of three children instead of two. I have to keep his schedule as well as my own and the kids.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps

“Always consider the symptom and the response. It’s tempting to focus only on the ADHD issue when you confront a problem, but considering both the symptom and the response provides a more realistic picture of the situation and helps keep the ADHD partner from feeling as if she is being blamed. Don’t let the presence of negative responses turn into an excuse not to manage ADHD symptoms. A classic example is the ADHD spouse who convinces himself that his wife’s anger is the real cause of their problems. Yes, the anger is a factor that needs to be addressed, but it’s also a response to specific ADHD symptoms. Learn which responses produce positive outcomes. Anger, nagging, and withdrawal are responses that don’t move you forward. Look for different ways to get your ideas across. Responses are important, and choosing how to express yourself in constructive ways is the best and fastest way a non-ADHD partner can contribute to breaking out of symptom-response-response deadlocks.”
― Melissa Orlov, The ADHD Effect on Marriage: Understand and Rebuild Your Relationship in Six Steps