Here in North America we’ve become pretty conversant with ADHD as a culture. How it impacts kids at school, in the home, and so on. But it’s time to start the conversation around how ADHD impacts marriage. Did you know that your marriage can be a place that fosters a reduction in the problematic symptomatology of ADHD?

What is ADHD?

Just in case this is a new term for you, ADHD is a mental health condition normally diagnosed in childhood.

ADHD impacts the brain’s executive functioning ability, so that people with ADHD show reduced decision making ability, attention control, impulse control and memory. Impairments to concentration, low impulse control and difficulty regulating your emotions can also lead to social and communication problems in people with ADHD[i].

Here are the specific diagnostic criteria from the DSM, which is the mental health handbook for diagnosing disorders.

Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work or other activities

Often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities

Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly

Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores or duties in the workplace

Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities

Often avoids, dislikes or is reluctant to engage in tasks that require sustained mental effort

Often loses things necessary for tasks or activities

Is often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli

About 3% of the adult population are diagnosed with ADHD. A further 16% show sub-clinical levels of ADHD: they have some of the symptoms but not enough to meet the criteria for diagnosis[ii]. Up until fairly recently ADHD was thought to only affect children, so there are likely a lot of adults with ADHD out there who are currently undiagnosed and therefore unable to work out why they think and act in a way that's so different to other people.

Everyone gets a bit distracted sometimes, or acts impulsive and disorganized. But if these are common features of your daily life and they significantly impact the way you function, it might be worth booking a discussion with a doctor or mental health professional just to see if ADHD has been affecting you without your knowledge. The fact that ADHD is undiagnosed in so many adults means that this is a potential factor in marital distress that may be unrecognized in many, many cases.

How Does ADHD Affect Marriage?

Common Challenges

The symptoms of ADHD can create difficulties in marriage. Some of the more common challenges include[iii]:

Being forgetful and disorganized: failing to meet commitments or remember to do things

Inattentiveness to your spouse's emotional state and needs

Difficulty attending to or communicating effectively with your spouse

Emotional overreactions: saying or doing things impulsively which hurt the marriage

Then there’s the whole issue of perception or interpretation by your spouse. Your spouse may come to see your ADHD inability to stick to commitments or remember agreed on actions as a sign that you don't care about the relationship.

Further, ADHD also impairs communication and listening skills, reducing intimacy and potentially leading to conflict.

Marital Quality

Sometimes these issues can impact the quality of a marriage, for either the spouse with ADHD or the other. A study in 2004[iv] compared couples where one spouse had ADHD to control couples where neither spouse had ADHD. They found that marital satisfaction was often lower for the spouse with ADHD than in control couples. But people married to someone with ADHD did not differ in marital quality to the control groups.

So having ADHD may decrease your own marital satisfaction but does not necessarily impact your spouse as much. "The ADHD adults’ perceptions of the health of their marriages and families were more negative than their spouses’ perceptio...