The ADHD brain works differently than a neurotypical brain, and in the marriage relationship these differences create unique stressors. The constant stress can really wear out the non-ADHD spouse emotionally, mentally, physically. That’s what ADHD spouse burnout is.
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Disclaimer: neither of us are professionals, and this post should not be considered medical advice. We’re not medical professionals, we’re not mental health professionals. We’re just a couple who has been navigating life with ADHD for 20 plus years.
We didn’t know Brian had ADHD until about six or seven years ago, but the signs were there. His undiagnosed ADHD was at the heart of many of our relationship problems.

What is ADHD spouse burnout?
I’m going do my best to discuss this topic in the kindest way possible. This can be a really dicey subject because, especially with neurodivergence, it’s hard to understand who you are and what’s going on.
When you are married to someone whose brain, on a fundamental level, works differently than yours, there are unique challenges that you don’t necessarily recognize at the beginning of the relationship. Unless you make the effort to adjust for those challenges, it often leads to burnout.

How ADHD affects a person
For ADHDers, it can feel like being a square peg and you can’t get into that circular hole, and everyone is expecting, “Well, why can’t you fit into the circle hole?” So many people with neurodivergence have a lot of baggage coming into a long-term relationship.
When the person closest to you is being affected by ADHD, it can be difficult to have a conversation about ADHD with them.
Compassion fatigue similarity
In professions where you’re caring for someone else (eg. doctors, pastors, nurses, counselors), burnout is especially common. It’s called compassion fatigue.
And while I’m not saying that you are the caretaker for your adult partner, it’s easy to fall into excessive caretaking as the non-ADHD partner. Your partner’s ADHD symptoms have a significant impact on their daily routines, emotional regulation and executive function, which also impacts you.

How is ADHD spouse burnout different from ordinary burnout?
Every relationship has its arguments over how do you fold the laundry, or why does this person always leave the laundry on the ground, why do the Amazon boxes get emptied but never actually thrown away, and so on…
Additionally in our society today, there’s so much about men not sharing the mental load with household chores and different things. So how’s that any different with ADHD burnout?
The biggest difference is that there’s still a stigma around ADHD and other mental health challenges. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition, but it often carries with it so many additional mental health challenges.

The occurrence of co-morbid disorders with ADHD, like depression, anxiety, OCD… A lot of these other things that we consider mental health challenges frequently come alongside ADHD.
So the non-ADHD partner will be dealing with the symptoms of adult ADHD, as well as the fallout from any other mental health conditions.

It’s not that the spouse without ADHD is a “caretaker” per se… It’s the fact that our society isn’t really built for ADHDers. It’s the emotional toll of ADHD on both partners.
If you’re not aware of that going into it, and you don’t find effective strategies to take care of your own mental health, it’s super easy to burn out.
What ADHD spouse burnout looked like for me

Before we knew Brian had ADHD, it felt like I regularly had to “cover” for him. Outside observers of our relationship (eg. family and friends) voiced opinions that weren’t realistic expectations for an ADHD-affected relationship.
At some gut level I understood that Brian couldn’t help some of the daily life struggles he faced. He consistently struggled with getting to places on time, forgetting stuff, losing stuff regularly…
A lot of people in our society who don’t have ADHD easily manage these things without any additional support and with minimal effort. But when you have ADHD your brain just works differently, and a simple task can become nearly impossible.

Condemnation and judgment from others
When people don’t know that ADHD is why you’re struggling with household tasks or time management, it’s super easy for them to blame the person with ADHD. People would tell me (or subtly suggest it non-verbally):
“Oh well, Brian’s just lazy,” or “He’s just immature.”
“Why do you keep helping that loafer? Why don’t you just come down on him and tell him? Put your foot down!
Even if people don’t say that out loud, there’s still that sense of judgment that you feel when you’re talking about those issues.

How Brian’s ADHD impacted me
There’s a real hard space that you’re in, because you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
On one side, I had family, friends, society, even (to some degree) myself saying, “Look, why can’t Brian just get it together? This guy’s just blowing you off, he’s not giving his best!” And I recognized it.
On the other side, Brian had been taught so many years that he just needed to work harder. As if “magically” working harder is going to fix all the problems, or that it was simply a lack of willpower on his end.
Brian even believed all of those things about himself. I had to work with him to change that mental narrative. He was saying to himself: “I AM a loafer! I AM lazy! I AM cowardly! I AM a big procrastinator!”

It’s like you’re fighting against the narrative from both sides, and the emotional exhaustion is constant.
Undiagnosed adult ADHD impacts emotional well-being
I remember that for years before we knew Brian had ADHD he would just get so discouraged and down, and often dealing with thoughts of self-harm.
Mostly it was his own self-esteem that I was fighting against, because he spent his whole life struggling with these symptoms of ADHD. Until he met me, nearly all the people around him were telling him that it was his fault, and if he just tried harder he could do better.
Higher emotional support needs
I don’t know WHY I knew all of that wasn’t true, except that I trusted Brian and I watched him and I knew him well. I understood that it wasn’t a lack of willpower or a lack of desire for change.
There was something different about him that made it so much more difficult for him to do things like, get places on time, turn in papers on time, track small objects… Somehow, deep down, I knew that it was something he wasn’t doing on purpose.
To try to explain that to other people when you don’t know that your spouse has ADHD, and you don’t know what ADHD is – it’s exhausting!
I wanted to protect him a little bit, but I also realized I didn’t know why there was a problem! I had intense feelings of frustration almost constantly.

The constant cycle of burnout
I could see the roller coaster of ADHD of emotional dysregulation, the unexplained hyperfocus, the ups and downs of ADHD burnouts…
For example, Brian had learned effective coping strategies to survive through the toxic behaviors he faced in his family, and with the church group that we were a part of.
Those strategies masked his ADHD, allowing him to perform under pressure and do what needed to be done at a conference or at church which is what everyone else saw. But then when he came home afterward and he would just crash and burn.

How ADHD burnout also impacts the spouse
In those situations I was left holding the bag. He was completely unable to do anything – total emotional, spiritual, mental and physical exhaustion. We had young children, and he was just on the couch, sometimes for hours or days after an event.
We had small children to care for, and he had been gone, but when he came home he STILL wasn’t available. It was almost like I was single parenting while also trying to supply his constant need for validation and emotional support.
I didn’t know anything about healthy boundaries, or what was balanced and sustainable for our relationship and for our family.

What are some of the common signs of burnout?
What indicated to me that I was in burnout?
Feelings of resentment
I had a lot of feelings of resentment over how much I had to do. Dealing with our kids, dealing with household responsibilities…
For example, paperwork has been a real struggle for Brian through a lot of our marriage. I often found that if I didn’t do the paperwork myself – taxes, whatever it was – it wouldn’t get done on time or AT ALL.
That felt like a lot to deal with when I was already mostly responsible for caring for our kids and other household tasks.

Utter exhaustion
Exhaustion that doesn’t get better from getting enough sleep and better sleep. The emotional exhaustion, the compassion fatigue that comes from just constantly having to help with your partner’s condition and navigate through this ADHD relationship.
It’s not merely being physically exhausted. I found myself sitting and just struggling to have a will to do anything. Trying to get up and make dinner for myself even was hard.

Apathy
I wanted to care but the feelings were not there. I started noticing it with people other than just Brian.
I started noticing it with my kids. Sometimes they would hurt themselves and I would just be like, “Oh well that’s too bad,” and I couldn’t summon any empathy.
I knew that there was something wrong. That was one of the biggest indicators to me – I was unable to feel compassion for anyone else. It was like my compassion button got broken.
I was so depleted, my cup was just dry and there was no way to fill it because it had just been dried so much.

Feelings of isolation and loneliness
There was a feeling of loneliness and of isolation. One, because I didn’t understand the problem we were actually facing. That was a big reason I felt alone.
And two, nobody seemed to understand why we couldn’t just get ourselves together! It was so frustrating because I knew that he wasn’t doing it to be difficult or lazy.
Brian constantly felt guilt when he wasn’t doing something. He had a constant feeling of guilt and shame when he wasn’t doing some kind of work.
I knew reasonably that everybody has to rest sometimes, but Brian struggled to rest and to even to go to sleep at night. He found it difficult to stop working long enough to sleep.
Lack of understanding from others
It really makes you feel lonely when you see how hard your partner is struggling and you don’t know why. And everybody else tells you that you’re being ridiculous, and that you shouldn’t stay with him, that you should not let him have that much slack.
But you see what your partner is going through and you’re like, “No, they need this. I don’t know why, but they do.”

Feeling confused, feelings not matching experience
There was a lot of confusion too, because we were highly effective in what we did. We visited church groups all over the United States and Canada. We traveled the country with our kids.
Brian was one of the premier teachers. We were great parents.
But we were having to drink a lot of caffeine and sugar. It was like two steps forward, three steps back, four steps forward, three steps back. It was really difficult.
For folks who could see it, there was just something weird. We could see it too, but we were just trying to figure out, how does that work and what is it? How could we be so effective and yet also so disjointed?

Physical symptoms of burnout
My body started noticing. My body started giving out. I started getting constant migraines. I had migraines five out of seven days a week.
I would lay down and my heart would be racing. Even though I was exhausted, I couldn’t stop myself from stressing and worrying.
Loss of interest in things that once brought joy
I lost all interest in things that I usually loved and enjoyed. It was hard for me to read a book that I liked. It was hard for me to enjoy movies. Anything that I would usually enjoy was just gone.
And it sounds a lot like depression because they’re very closely connected.

What was your turning point for burnout?
In 2017 I started going to counseling. The thing that made me start go to counseling was the recognition that my compassion for my children was severely limited. I couldn’t summon it, it was just gone.
I realized, “This isn’t normal, brain-wise: I should get professional help.”
In going to counseling, I started to learn to have compassion for myself. I began to understand a lot of things about how I had grown up, and trauma, and various other issues.

Getting our child’s ADHD diagnosis
I was also homeschooling our kids and watching a couple of our kids really struggle in ways that didn’t seem quite right. As I started to get curious about that, ADHD started to make sense as a possible explanation for one of our kids, so I got her assessed and sure enough, she had ADHD.
As I began doing research to understand our daughter, I learned that statistically it was highly likely that my husband probably had ADHD. There’s a 50% chance that if a child has ADHD one of the parents does as well. (Source: ADDitude.org)

What to do if you think your spouse might have ADHD
How do you navigate the very complicated process of educating your partner or communicating with your partner about ADHD? It’s particularly difficult when he’s been told for years that HE is the problem!
For Brian and I, we had to walk through this journey. And it wasn’t one day, or one week, or one month – it took two or three years.
It was a process coming to recognize that Brian had ADHD, and then coming to understand what that meant.
Untangling the ADHD traits from other issues
Brian had so many matters that he was working through that were related to ADHD: anxiety, depression, addiction, self-contempt. All of those are connected to ADHD, but they’re also connected to other things.
So there was this untangling of trauma, physiology, relationship dynamics, and spiritual aspects that was very complicated.
How did I navigate talking with my ADHD spouse about my own burnout?
It was hard for Brian at times, hearing “Your ADHD impacts me!”I did a lot of “feeling statements” as one of my communication strategies.
I also went about it slowly. I didn’t expect there to be an immediate adjustment, as in “Well, I know that you have ADHD and so now this is what I want you to do.”
I knew that wasn’t going to work. Or worse, “Here’s what you’ve got to do: read this book and it’ll fix you!
Change is a choice
The hard thing about any situation like this, where one partner recognizes the other partner is in need of something is that you have to be willing to recognize that your partner has to choose to change. You can’t change them. The only person I can change is me.
As a parent, I can influence my kid’s environment, and hopefully help them to change.
And the same thing is a little bit true with your spouse. You can influence the environment so that they have every support for possible change, but you still have to go about it carefully because they are an adult. Your adult partner gets to choose whether they want to change or not.
Open communication
Some of what I did was educating Brian about ADHD. I was talking a lot about what I was learning about our daughter’s brain. I shared about how I was seeing parallels between ADHD experiences and Brian’s experiences in college.
Something we’ve always done as a couple is when we’re reading books we’ll often talk with each other about our insights.
I also talked about his ADHD and my own burnout with my own counselor. I had her help me walk through effective communication around specific topics.
ADHD is not a choice, it’s a condition
I regularly assured Brian that I knew that the ADHD part was not something he understood or could control.
Instead I positioned the conversations around ADHD as, “I want to support you, because I’ve seen how much this impacts your heart, how much this impacts your own self-esteem. I think some of these tools would really help.”
It’s not just about helping myself here. I also want my partner to experience the best of life that’s possible for him and not to be hindered anymore by something that we could actually do something about.

ADHD is morally neutral
I was also being very clear that I was not judging Brian for his ADHD. I don’t see this as a moral issue at all.
I disagree with all the people throughout his life who suggested that he was lazy, irresponsible, whatever else… all the stigma around people who have ADHD.
I reject those completely. I told him often, “You are not lazy!”
I would give him evidence of how I know he’s not a lazy person. I know he’s not irresponsible – look at all these things he does do and has done well!

ADHD isn’t a free pass
Just as important, at those times in which Brian WAS legitimately lazy, or he was not doing well, I was straightforward on that too. So there was a very clear delineation.
Your expectations can call someone to something higher when they’re approached as encouragement. Throughout life I’ve tried to learn how to encourage and inspire, rather than condemn and judge.
I used all of these tactics to suggest to my husband that he look into ADHD treatment, but he made the choices to go do that.
Choosing to pursue ADHD treatment
Brian decided to go to the doctor, decided to take the ADHD assessments, decided to have those conversations with his doctor, with his counselor, and pursued all of that.
Eventually as we started talking through it, we talked about the possibility of him taking medication. Brian had already gone through 30+ years of life learning all the coping skills to help with the executive function issues.
We knew that we had hit the limit of coaching and coping skills. So that’s why we decided TOGETHER to try ADHD medication.

You cannot force the ADHD partner to change
I think it’s really important just to underline something. I’m not saying that it is the non-ADHD spouse’s responsibility, or power, or capability in any way to force the other spouse to recognize and address their ADHD.
You certainly can help the process. Brian came to recognizing his ADHD partly from my assistance, but also because he had already been addressing matters of addiction.
It’s common for people who have ADHD to also have one or more addictions, especially if they’ve gone through childhood undiagnosed. It’s super common for them to have found an addiction to cope with their pain.

Pursuing his own healing
Prior to us having these conversations around ADHD, Brian had already been in counseling for a number of years. He was already going to support groups for his recovery from addiction.
He was running across people who had ADHD, and he was actually hearing about these connections between ADHD and addiction. So there was already this cultivating that was happening over days and weeks and months.

However, my willingness to know more about it, and my compassion was critical for him. Brian says, “I don’t think I would have had the bravery and the courage to push forward if I didn’t have that from you.”
So a spouse’s support is critical. However it ultimately is up to what the person with ADHD decides to do.
Of course, all of this additional support for your ADHD spouse can contribute even more to your own burnout, so how do you start to address that?

First steps in dealing with ADHD Spouse Burnout
If you’re a spouse that’s already burned out, and you recognize yourself in the description, I have some tips for you.
Now I know you’re probably feeling, “I’m so tired, I don’t even know if there’s anything I can do at this point.”
So I would say the first step is visit your doctor, because a lot of burnout and chronic stress it impacts your physical body. Although you can’t solve it all physically, there’s a lot that you can get help with.
For me, I had constant migraines that we’ve realized (finally) was partly due to the burnout, and partly due to the stress I was under all the time. So I started with getting help for the migraines.

One migraine medication I’m taking is an anti-depressant but it also helps with migraine. So that was one of the first steps I did for myself.
Start with your doctor. Discuss it with a professional: your doctor, psychiatrist, counselor… Go to a professional and talk about the symptoms you’re experiencing and see what they suggest.
More tips for ADHD spouse burnout recovery in our next post!
There are lots of other options such as getting yourself community support, either from a support group or professional counseling. Taking care of yourself is essential so that you don’t break down.
We’ll be following up with more burnout recovery ideas in an upcoming post.
©️ Copyright Jenn and Brian Warren 2025.

