It’s easy to get burned out when your partner has ADHD and you don’t, especially if the ADHD diagnosis comes after years of being in relationship. In healthy relationships, you’ll always have to make accommodations, and that’s magnified when ADHD enters the picture. Once you’ve hit burnout, you”ll need to make a recovery plan and find sustainable practices to avoid getting burnt out again.
That’s what we’re talking about here: figuring out how to work with each other when one of you has ADHD and the other doesn’t, without contributing to a cycle of burnout.
Table of Contents
{This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases made from the links on this site, at no extra cost to you. Thanks for supporting our family business!}
All relationships require work and accommodation
It’s helpful to recognize that this is not something that is unique to an ADHD spouse relationship. In a relationship you’re always having to figure out what works.
There are times where I’m having a lot of pain – for example, sometimes I have a migraine that lasts for a week.
Brian has to adjust and ask himself, what is going to be appropriate? How does he need to step in? And also, what does he need to do to protect himself so that we’re not both burned out at the same time?
That’s just a regular thing. The primary difference with what we’re talking about though is that ADHD doesn’t last for a week – it lasts for years. It lasts for a lifetime.
A lifetime of adjustments
That’s one of the adjustments that you make – you recognize that with ADHD this is going to be a lifelong condition. You’re going to be able to do things to help make it easier on both of you but it’s never going to go away or get cured.
ADHD is just a feature of how your brain works. So in that way it’s kind of like learning to navigate having to wear glasses.
You’re going to have to live life that way, so you start carrying a glasses case around, and you make sure you have what you need to clean them. You go in for your eye doctor visits. That’s your life now, and it’s the same thing with ADHD in that way.
So once you work through that process, then you can start thinking about “How do I, as the spouse who doesn’t have ADHD, take care of myself as well as support my ADHD spouse?”
Beginning with boundaries
I was not raised understanding what boundaries were. Boundaries is a really familiar concept to us now because there’s a lot of conversation around it.
(Side note: if you haven’t read Dr Cloud and Townsend’s book on Boundaries, we’d highly recommend you pick up whichever one is relevant to you. Boundaries in Marriage was the one we started with.)
Are boundaries contrary to Christian teaching?
Boundaries were revolutionary for me because I grew up in a Christian household, and I was a very compliant child. My parents didn’t have to do very much to have me do what they wanted.
I was taught that the Christian thing to do is to give up all your rights because that shows that you’re a good Christian. That is totally false!
If you’ve fallen prey to that incorrect teaching, let me just tell you that is not what Christianity is about. It IS about yielding to other people.
However it’s not healthy for either party if one person is always ignoring their own needs and their own rights. If you’re going to have a healthy relationship, both people need to understand what stuff is their responsibility and what stuff is the other partner’s responsibility.
Going through the book “Boundaries in Marriage” was helpful because it taught me that it was okay for me to have needs, and it was okay to express those needs. It was appropriate and healthy for both of us to work on getting our needs met appropriately.
Figuring out what my needs were
So that was really the biggest part. I had to figure out, “What do I actually need?” That process took a lot of time for me. It was hard to understand what I needed because for my whole life I had basically been taught that.
We were missionaries also when I was a kid, and we were there to serve the people we were living among. So I was just taught to erase myself.
@dinkumtribe My unfiltered reflections as I’m reading the book “Practicing the Way” by John Mark Comer. #burnoutrecovery #burnout #burnoutprevention #religioustrauma ♬ original sound – DinkumTribe ADHD family travel
Brian is an amazing guy, and a fantastic husband, and I’m very thankful to be married to him. But this was something he couldn’t necessarily help with, because I first had to know WHAT I needed.
Finding my feelings
I had been taught to ignore my feelings. I had been taught to ignore pain.
I had migraines five out of seven days a week for the first few years of our marriage. Brian started noticing that I was in pain all the time (even though I didn’t talk about it) and that’s why I started getting help. He encouraged me to pursue migraine treatment and supported me.
If you are married to someone with ADHD sometimes there can be an issue with them noticing those things. That might be the hardest part: sometimes ADHDers are just really oblivious. It isn’t uncommon.
@dinkumtribe So much effort, so little response…🤣🤣🤣 #communicationbreakdown #marriagetok #marriagelaughs #cranespotting #adhdfamilylife #adhdmarriageandrelationships #adhdfamilyissues #adhdspouse #dinkumtribe_daily #funnyhusbandandwife ♬ original sound
But that’s not always the case. Some ADHDers are actually incredibly sensitive to that, and they’re oblivious to other areas of life. So it really depends on who you’re talking about.
It wasn’t a fast process to understand what I needed, and what was appropriate for me to ask. It wasn’t a fast process to start understanding my feelings.
Professional counseling
One of the things I did that was helpful in that process was, I went to counseling. I went to counseling every two weeks for several years (because we couldn’t afford any more than that with babysitting or funding).
I was just trying to figure out where those feelings had gone, because the thing about buried feelings is, they aren’t gone – they just come out in other ways. For me that was coming out in the physical stress and pain in my body. So that took some work.
Brian was really helpful in that, because he wasn’t judgmental about the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted. It’s easy to get impatient sometimes, especially if you are a person who wants to fix things.
It can be very easy to be impatient with someone who doesn’t know what they actually want or need. So Brian giving me time to figure that out, and patiently waiting when I didn’t know what I wanted, was really helpful in the process.
Support groups
We’ve both been a part of support groups for the last 7 years consistently. We moved, or had to change support groups based on where we were more than once.
There are support groups specifically for neurodivergent families, neurodivergent couples…there’s lots of them on Facebook, there’s lots of them on other platforms. If you aren’t in a support group that understands what it’s like to be neurodivergent, you should find one because it will validate so many of your struggles.
Also people have really good ideas about how to handle things, and there were a lot of things that I needed to hear from somebody. Things like, “It’s okay if you don’t get everywhere on time – that doesn’t have to be a disaster.”
Or, “It’s okay if you are buying cheap combs every week because you lose the comb every week.”
Some of these things that we make into a big deal, they’re just not! They don’t have to be! You can find solutions for them, or you can just learn to roll with it well.
Gaining perspective
I think a big part of finding people who are going through what you’re going through is you realize that it doesn’t just give perspective about what matters and what doesn’t. You also get an opportunity to see your life through someone else’s eyes.
You see that they’re going through the exact same struggles. So areas that you may take personally in one scenario you realize it’s not something to necessarily take personally.
It’s not personal, it’s ADHD
This week something happened which in the past it would have been really frustrating. Brian had volunteered to call in medication to the pharmacy for himself and for our son.
(Side note: it’s not easy to get ADHD medication anymore! There’s good reasons for that, unfortunately, because of the crisis with opioids and pharmaceutical. You have to make quite a few phone calls to be able to get that medication refilled.
So Brian was on the ball in terms of taking care of his medication and then he needed to take care of my son’s medication. We had changed medications for him so the pharmacy needed to know which medication it was.
But in the process of putting his own medication and putting our son’s medication at a place where he would be able to remember it, Brian ended up losing our son’s medication container that had the information! So he had to call me to ask about it.
Things like that it can be really aggravating. But hearing it from another person’s perspective, hearing that they’re going through the exact same struggles, can be very helpful.
It helps me to recognize that this is par for the course with ADHD. This is how things go. It’s not personal, and it’s not something to beat yourself up over either. But also that there are strategies and ways to work through it.
Learning what ADHD life looks like
Something that’s been helpful and really important is educating myself on the fact that since my husband has ADHD, it does mean life is going to look different, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s life.
I think in our society we put a lot of emphasis on fitting in. We put a lot of emphasis on looking like everyone else – that’s something that’s highly emphasized in our society.
As much as we like to pretend we’re individual and unique, we also get freaked out when we don’t feel like we fit in. Or if we don’t do all the things that other people do.
Being okay with looking different, being okay with not keeping up with the Joneses… being okay with that has gone a long way for our family.
A practical example of lifestyle difference
As an example of that, one of the things that really I have to be careful about is how much noise I have around me. I have complex PTSD from childhood abuse and neglect.
With complex PTSD, noise can be a very big trigger. It can really overwhelm me, or it can make me very irritable and angry. So our dinners were really tough for me.
When we would have a family dinner with the eight of us around the table it was hard for me to engage in conversation, and even enjoy the process. We have kids and they’re loud! That’s what kids are – they generally are loud.
And when you have ADHD kids, you have three or four conversations happening simultaneously. Most of the other family members were able to follow it just fine, but that was really hard for me.
What’s wrong with us?
For a long time I felt a lot of guilt and shame around it. I wondered, “Why are our family meals so loud? Why can’t our kids all sit still around the table?”
In my family of origin everybody sat still around the table. We were afraid to do otherwise, honestly. There would have been anger and shame.
So it was really hard for me to adjust to that. I had to realize that this isn’t a moral issue, this is just a really big lifestyle difference.
No wrong answers, just different solutions
Understanding that helped me to realize that a lot of the issues that people have with ADHD behaviors aren’t actually a moral issue. There’s not a right or wrong answer.
There are societal conventions that maybe a lot of people fit into, but a lot of them don’t fit in. It doesn’t make them a bad person.
We weren’t a chaotic family or a bad family because our table was loud. Nobody was unhappy there, unless we tried to crack down on it too much.
Accommodating my needs
So for me, one of the things that I adjusted to and which I do a lot now is I bought some Loop earplugs which knock off the high pitched noises just enough.
I can still hear conversations, but I am not overwhelmed by the sheer volume of noise coming at me when we’re sitting at the table with all eight of us.
Or when we’re having multiple friends over, it’s going to be super loud and I will probably just walk around with Loop earplugs in all night because it helps.
Unconventional solutions
We also have some structure still at the table where we give each person the opportunity to share a highlight of their day. That takes up most of the conversation because there’s eight of us. We can’t necessarily just sit down and let things flow organically.
Or if we do, we have to recognize that flowing organically is going to look a lot like three rodeos happening at once, and that’s okay as long as people are being respectful and loving.
We also recognize that with our children, some might lock right in and be happy to run the conversational roller coaster in that case. But others might want to go and eat in a separate room, and that isn’t a failing of the family dynamic.
Lots of grace and flexibility
We work on cultivating that flexibility and educating one another – not only ourselves, but our children too. There’s a lot more grace now so that we enjoy having the meal together.
Sometimes things are more silly, sometimes things are more serious, but we’re having a meal together and that’s what matters. People feel valued.
Reducing obligations and mental load
Something else that’s really important if you find that you’re dealing with burnout is recognizing that you’re going to need to cut back on stuff.
None of us likes to do that. The number of things you’re going to need to say “no” to to give yourself space to heal and rest is going to be higher.
Since you’re part of a neurodivergent relationship or a neurodivergent family, it might be a long-term thing.
There will be some things that you probably won’t be able to take up because you are going to need extra space and time to do that. That’s something that we’ve had to adjust a lot of times.
Cruise ship illustration
We often talk about our family being like a cruise ship. If we are making a change to our schedule or routine, we can’t turn on a dime! We have to make tiny shifts little by little until we get to the right direction.
So while we can be flexible, and do things, and change plans quickly, we try to avoid that wherever we can because there’s a huge cost. It’s not just hard on our marriage relationship. It can be hard for our kids too.
That’s something we’ve had to get used to. ADHDers often love to be able to do things spontaneously and have fun. However a lot of times we just have to plan for it better.
@dinkumtribe @Walmart These swim trunks made the dad happy and the kids cringe.😅 What do you do when you’re planning a day at the water park but you forgot your trunks? Hope the local Walmart has some! #walmartfashion #familyroadtrip #waterpark #familytravel ♬ original sound – DinkumTribe ADHD family travel
Structured spontaneity
So that’s one of the things that we’ve done too. We do a lot more planning for fun in ways that work for our family. “Structured spontaneity” may not sound sexy, but it is a lot more realistic!
When things happen spontaneously, sometimes it’s a hit, but a lot of times it’s not in real life. Spontaneous explosions are usually not the best thing!
You want some kind of a plan. As with fireworks, you don’t know exactly how it’s going to blow but you know it’s going to blow, and you don’t want it to blow in your hand!
That’s kind of how it is with neurodivergence. It takes some planning.
ADHD struggles with transitions
Transitions are very hard generally for people who have ADHD, or for people who have anxiety. So learning how to do transitions well has been a big deal for our family. It does oftentimes mean that we need to either say no, or go slower.
For example, one of the things we love most about road trips is just coming upon something unexpected and taking time to explore it. So we try to leave room for that in our travel, but still we have some structure of when we’re going to be pulling in and being done for the day.
In some ways it puts a lot of weight on the partner who doesn’t have ADHD because ADHDers can lark! They can fly off and go do something fun and crazy but that’s the danger. So there’s a heavy weight recognizing that you’ve gotta be the “cat herder”.
That’s something you have to take into account. A lot of it is accepting that your life is just going to look different – not bad, but different.
Accounting for time blindness
Time blindness is a serious issue because five out of eight people in our in our family have ADHD. So it’s rare that I get a chance to just ignore the clock because there are five people who forget that the clock exists on a regular basis!
I don’t have to tell them to ignore the clock – I have to tell them there is a clock! So that’s hard.
I have to create times for myself where I don’t need to worry about the clock. We call those “white space days” on our calendar where we schedule nothing on some days. The whole point of that is so that I don’t have to be everyone’s internal timekeeper.
Learning to view time differently
It can really sound like a negative thing, but it’s honestly just the way things are. I’m thankful too because I spent eight years in Jamaica and that taught me a very different perspective of time to begin with. Being flexible around time is something I learned there.
People talk about “Caribbean time” and a lot of other places have “Island time.” It’s this concept that the event – the thing on the schedule – is not necessarily more important than the people. That’s a concept I often keep in mind.
Reducing time demands
It is hard because I get frustrated when it seems like I am the only one who notices that we are going to be late if we don’t get out the door the next five minutes. That part can be very difficult.
One of the ways I cope with it is, I find as many things as possible where they don’t have to have a hard start or finish time. When we schedule activities, we try to find activities that doesn’t have to happen right at a specific time.
When I’m planning I find as many things like that as possible so that I have options. Because I know that it’s going to take me a lot of effort to get everybody who needs to be out the door on time, out the door. That’s just how it’s going to be.
Scheduling time to decompress
So one of the ways I deal with that is avoiding those kinds of events wherever possible.
When I do have to push and get everybody out the door for an event that’s happening, or get everybody to something on time, I try to plan a lot of space afterwards so that I can have time to unwind. I need time to get that adrenaline feeling out.
Space and time for rest and regulation
One thing that we found for myself and for our family is a regular “siesta” period. We’ve done it for years. We had a nap time when the kids were younger, but we still have a quiet period in the afternoons most days.
And I’m not the only one who values that at this point. Most of our kids, at some point in the day, they need some quiet. They need some time to be able to reflect, or to be able to do something different.
With the amount of intensity that happens in an neurodivergent family it’s appropriate that there’s dedicated time in the day for quiet and space to rest.
@dinkumtribe #tiredbutcantsleep #mommyonthego #nomorecaffeine #homeschoolmomsoftiktok ♬ Sopa de Caracol (Re-Master 2022) – Pilo Tejeda
For our children who are not neurodivergent, home life can be extremely overwhelming because our ADHD children are very intense. Being around ADHDers can be difficult because often they’re loud, they’re fervent, they’re focused, they’re emotional and they talk a lot!
So having having a break is helpful for both groups.
Introvert vs. extrovert
Some of my burnout came from the fact that I am an introvert by nature, and I didn’t really realize that until we already had been married for probably 10 or 15 years.
The reason I didn’t realize it was because I was trained to be an extrovert by being a pastor’s kid and a missionary kid. My parents expected me to introduce myself everywhere, and to be friendly, and to put on a good face for the ministry.
I had taught myself to be an extrovert, but I am very much an introvert by nature. By the time we realized this, we had six children and we were in ministry and we were homeschooling. My kids were home with me all the day and Brian (the extrovert) was out visiting people.
How my personality played into burnout
So that’s been one of the things that I had to figure out with burnout. I needed to have time to decompress and that was a lot! It wasn’t just a few things, I had to be able to take the time to decompress.
It was a perfect storm because I would also get really overwhelmed with all the activity, with all the stuff going on all the time. It made it more exhausting for me than it might have been for somebody who isn’t an introvert.
Understanding your own personality, and how that fits into the equation when you’re married to someone with ADHD is a really important part of it.
When your needs are in opposition
Brian and I are very opposite in certain aspects of our personality. Brian had to learn to to learn that if I needed time away or time by myself, it wasn’t because I didn’t like him at all! It was because my nervous system was just overwhelmed.
I have had to realize too that he needs a lot of talking time and he needs a lot of time to interact with other people. It’s taken us a while, but he’s currently in a job where he does a lot of talking with people, so he can get some of those needs handled.
We’re we’ve worked on developing friendships that allow us to express these different parts of ourselves and those are things that have helped in the burnout. I’ve been learning to connect with other people who understand my introversion.
Now I’m also giving myself time to be introverted, like having regular time to work on my quilting. Sometimes I introvert by watching a movie before bedtime, or watching TV late at night by myself with nobody else there with me. That can be very helpful for me to decompress after a long day.
A lot of burnout was understanding who we each are and learning to work with what we both needed. Finding my boundaries resulted in me being able to express what I needed.
Balancing ADHD dreams with reality
Often Brian has a great idea or something he’s passionate about. I had to learn to say, “That’s a neat idea! However that’s going to need to happen later, not now.”
That’s been a blessing for Brian, because he’s always about, “This is a great idea – let’s go!” He can think five years out and it’s one of the things I love about him. It’s not bad, the visionary side of ADHD, but it’s going to get him into trouble if I don’t help him keep his feet on the ground.
So it’s been very helpful for Brian when I can say, “You know what? That’s not where we’re at at this point,” or, “Great! We can do that when this part is accomplished. That’s the step to this point.”
Frankly, that’s the type of detail and preparation that doesn’t enter into his neurodivergent brain. But all of a sudden now there’s a dopamine transfer to these other projects that he didn’t really want to do, because doing those will help him to get to the one that he really does want to do.
Not parenting your partner
That isn’t to say that it’s my job to make sure that Brian does what he needs to do. It is my job and responsibility to say, “I can do this. I cannot do that.” It’s everyone’s job to know their own limits.
It’s my job to be able to say, “Listen, I’m willing to do this thing, and I’d be happy to do it, but in order for this thing to happen, this other step is going to have to happen first.”
Those types of boundary conversations have been enlightening and helpful for Brian because it gives him the opportunity to see how his behavior impacts me, both positively and negatively.
So then he can ask himself, “What is my responsibility? What type of tasks can I do?”
The emotional cup
In our family we talk a lot about the amount of space that’s left in our cup. We use that analogy with our children quite a bit. Like when one of our kids is purposefully provoking their sibling, or purposefully provoking me.
Some ADHD people tend to provoke and tease when their brain gets bored, and they need the stimulation.
So it’s worth saying to the ADHDer, “I love you. However I only have this much patience, and if you use up most of that, and then you want me to do something for you, I may not be up to doing.”
Or saying “I’m not interested or able to help you with that because I just used up all my energy being patient with you the 20 times you decided to make that pig noise!”That’s kind of hyperbolic but it’s an example.
Letting each person do what they’re good at
Another thing I had to do to recover from burnout was learning to allow us both to feel free to do the things we were best at and letting the other person do the things that they were good.
For example, I don’t love to cook. I have a lot of hang-ups around it because of the way my family of origin handled cooking in our family. I don’t enjoy the process – it’s too intense for my brain to follow all the steps through like that. But Brian loves cooking!
For a lot of years, I did the cooking because that was the practical thing to do. Then a couple years ago when Brian had more time he took on the cooking. It was exciting and fun for him, and it meant that I didn’t have to do it.
So in areas where somebody may have a passion or an interest in a certain area of the household that works really well, roll with those! You don’t have to do all the things!
Don’t try to do it all!
If you are the partner who doesn’t have ADHD, find the things that your partner with ADHD is good at and let them do those. There’s going to be other things that you’re going to have to do to balance things out in the family.
Another example: Brian does most of the driving when we go on trips. He loves it! He would be bored out of his gourd if he wasn’t driving and had to be in the passenger seat.
I don’t love driving. I would never drive if I never had to, honestly. I will always have someone drive me. There are things like that where we figure out what the other person is really good at and we let them do that thing.
I’m going to be good at watching our time. I’m going to be good at anticipating what we’re going to need when we get to a certain place.
Brian’s really good at finding cool places to visit that I would not have thought of. Then we show up there and I think, “Oh man this is awesome! I didn’t know this was going to be so neat!”
You need to offload tasks anyway if you’re burnt out. That’s one of the biggest things you have to do is find things that you can cut. Don’t be afraid to use shortcuts that exist, and let your ADHD partner do the things they’re best at.
©️ Copyright Jennifer D. Warren and Brian A. Warren 2025.
