ADHD and Relationship Overview: VIDEO

This is the current Preface to a book I hope to publish soon. It is intended to help those struggling with chaos in their relationship that may be caused by undiagnosed and misunderstood Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. I have had counselors identify my spouse as having a personality disorder, will never get better and I need to consider leaving. Video summary is at the end.

PREFACE:

For years, I witnessed the chaos that ADHD creates in a family when it goes unrecognized, the storm of forgotten appointments, unfinished conversations, and a fatigue no amount of sleep could erase. When diagnosis finally arrives late in life, it reframes every misunderstanding, every argument, and all the accumulated guilt. A revelation brings both relief and reckoning, relief that there's a name for the invisible barriers and reckoning with the years spent lost in confusion.

But the path to accurate diagnosis is often littered with professional misunderstandings that nearly destroy families. I've sat in countless therapy offices, heard story after story of marriage counselors recommending divorce, of therapists misdiagnosing personality disorders when they are truly seeing ADHD characteristics. The emotional intensity struggles with consistency and overwhelms with daily life get labeled as unchangeable character flaws rather than treatable neurological differences. I've watched as mental health professionals analyze "narcissistic traits" in people whose ADHD-driven forgetfulness and time blindness are misread as lack of caring. When someone can't maintain household routines, it's framed as deliberate negligence. When emotional dysregulation appears, it's pathologized as manipulation. Each misdiagnosis adds another layer of shame to already crushing self-blame, another brick in the wall growing between partners.

As someone who has walked alongside friends with similar challenges, I've wrestled with the frustration of wanting to help but not knowing how. The professional voices telling people to leave their relationships echo in every conflict. Are they enabling dysfunction by staying? Are they harming their children by keeping families together? The confusion is paralyzing.

Children feel these tremors—bewildered by a parent's unpredictability while simultaneously buoyed by the creativity and joy that same parent brings. They watch their family's cycle through hope and despair with each new counselor, each new approach that misses the mark entirely.

When proper ADHD diagnosis finally comes, usually from a specialist who recognizes what others have pathologized, it's not a magic fix but a doorway into a season of relearning, forgiveness, and fragile hope. Suddenly, "personality disorder" traits make sense as executive dysfunction.

"Narcissism" reveals itself as time blindness and working memory deficits. "Deliberate chaos" emerges as a neurological difference that has been shamed instead of supported.

In these hard-won years of helping families navigate ADHD, I have anchored myself in the wisdom of Ephesians 5. A call to mutual love, sacrificial service, and the stubborn belief that grace can transform even the most tangled stories. Faith becomes a lifeline when human wisdom fails. Through prayer, patient communication, and eventually ADHD-informed professional support, families begin to untangle the knots that undiagnosed ADHD has tied around marriages and relationships.

There are always setbacks. Reconciliation feels like work—sacred, everyday work. Families must learn to name hurts without weaponizing them, to seek help from those who truly understand ADHD, and to celebrate each small victory. They learn to forgive not just each other, but also the professionals who missed what should have been obvious, who nearly counseled destruction because they couldn't see past their own biases about how a "normal" spouse and parent should function.

These journeys are unfinished but marked by hope: hope that healing is possible, that families affected by ADHD can find new ways to connect, and that faith, grounded in love, can hold people together as they grow. Hope also that the mental health field will continue to evolve in its understanding of ADHD, particularly in women, so that fewer families will walk the painful path of misdiagnosis.

This book is for every family living in the tension between struggle and grace. It's for those who've been told their relationship is doomed because one partner's brain works differently. It's for those wrestling with professional and social advice that feels wrong in their spirit. It's for those who choose to stay and fight for understanding when everyone says to leave.

Thank you for welcoming these stories, drawn from countless families' experiences, into your own journey toward understanding, healing, and renewed connection. May you find in these pages not just information, but recognition, validation, and hope that love informed by truth can survive even the darkest seasons of confusion.