My partner Jeffrey Rediger and I are preparing to teach a Zoom relationship workshop HEALING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS January 4-5. (You can save $100 if you sign up before January 2 here.) We’re going to be sharing the latest Six Steps From Fawning To Freedom, with some prime teachings and practices from the book we’re writing together about the health implications of unbalanced, non-reciprocal relationships.
One of the women who signed up for the class, who identifies with being in an unbalanced relationship, sent me a private email to ask me if I’d address a big pain point for her. Her letter touched me so much that I want to write to all of you, since I suspect she’s not the only one with a neurodivergent partner or ADHD partner who struggles with what she’s expressed.
Let’s call her Tara and let’s call him Bryce. Tara has been married for many decades to Bryce, a neurodivergent partner who also struggles with ADHD symptoms. Because Bryce’s brain is different, he is neurologically unable to emotionally connect, and she’s frustrated with his constant failure to follow through and avoidance of “boring” household chores. Together these factors make it appear like Bryce is incredibly selfish, lazy, entitled, lacking in attunement, and doesn’t care about her, even though she knows he cares as best he can. Because of this, she rarely gets her needs prioritized or met. She’s struggling with that inequity and asked if I’d address it in the class.
She explained that Bryce was really “into her” when they first got together, but once they got married, he returned to making his work his #1 priority. She attributes this to a characteristic of adult ADHD, wherein a person gets motivated by two things – novelty and deadlines. She thinks this is why Bryce showed great interest in her during the dating phase, because she was shiny and new to him. With ADHD, it’s difficult focusing on projects that don’t interest him, such as household chores or boring parts of his jobs. This results in procrastination, forgetfulness, doing things at the last minute, and then defensively minimizing or denying that he’s dropped the ball.
He can also be quite insensitive and unsupportive of her and the family. To make her point, she told me a story about their son, who was diagnosed with an immune deficiency when he was young and very ill. At one point she was on the phone with the doctor, and her son got so urgently sick that the doctor wanted her to call an ambulance. She called her husband at work and told him the situation, expecting he’d meet her at the hospital. His comment was, “I’m eating lunch in the cafeteria. Can you call back when I’m done?” She felt utterly abandoned, alone, frightened, and dismissed.
Her struggle is that she really loves her husband, and she knows he’s a genuinely good person with a real disability. None of his insensitive behaviors are intentional, which makes things complicated. Nevertheless, his behaviors take a toll on their intimacy. Her feelings range from affection to frustration to hatred, depending on the day. When she took a class with me and listened to me talk about the red flags of narcissistic abuse and unequal relationships, it hit a nerve. She felt like “That’s me.” But short of ending the marriage, which she doesn’t want to do, she’s not sure how to balance out the relationship so she doesn’t feel so chronically activated.
They tried marriage counseling twice, with two different therapists ten years apart. She was told privately by both therapists that their case was hopeless, not only because he just doesn’t pick up on her cues, but also because he kept forgetting therapy appointments, failing to show up.
Bryce did try ADHD meds, but he had side effects that caused him to stop his meds.
Her main struggle is that the relationship is not well balanced, but she’s not sure if it’s fair to expect that it could be more equal, given that her husband is differently-abled and has a brain that doesn’t function the same as hers. She expressed that many people she knows are in similar situations, where one person is caregiving someone else with a disability, and the meeting of needs just isn’t equal and may never be so. But with autism and ADHD, the differently-abled nature of the relationship is more invisible.
How To Support A Caregiver With a Differently-Abled Partner
My heart went out to her. I started writing a response letter in my head, but decided that, before I did, I’d run her letter by my psychiatrist partner Jeff, who has never been formally diagnosed but meets a lot of criteria for both neurodivergence and ADHD.
Jeff’s first questions were about her husband. “Does Bryce have a trauma history? Was he rejected by his mother? Was he enmeshed with her? Was it safe in his home growing up? Was this man allowed to have his feelings when he was young? Does he let himself have his feelings now? Do others accept and tolerate his feelings? Does he feel safe to express feelings in his relationship?”
We asked Tara these questions. She said they both grew up in Canada and moved to the US in their early 30s with a very British, stiff-upper-lip type of upbringing. Her trauma burden is heavier than his, she explained. Bryce’s father was also on the autism spectrum and had all of the qualities of ADHD- procrastinating, hoarding, poor people skills, and such. His mom, a nurse, always seemed cold and miserable, but she wasn’t outright abusive. His home was generally safe and solidly middle class, with a younger sister and doting maternal grandparents who thought the world revolved around Bryce. He was bullied in high school but never really cared much about people or relationships. Like his father, an engineer, he was big into computer programming and building electronic stuff. Feelings weren’t well tolerated in his family, but he wasn’t abused or abandoned in any obvious way.
Jeff wondered whether her husband prioritizes work because, if he didn’t get the brain development and social skill sets to make him successful in relationships- because of childhood trauma, neurodivergence, ADHD, or some other reason, maybe he feels inadequate in the sphere of his home and prefers to avoid it. Maybe his empathic attunement, communication skills, and ability to love with an open heart were hampered by painful early childhood experiences, especially if his natural empathy was weaponized or if there was abuse in the home around expressing himself authentically or if his natural feelings were suppressed.
Maybe at home, he feels like a failure, like he’s not a very good husband or father, like he’s not good at attunement and empathy, like he’s always messing up and forgetting things and not getting things right as a family man, like his wife is always disappointed in him and hyper-critical. Tara suspects that Jeff is right and that his low self esteem and feelings of inadequacy might be a big part of his workaholism.
Tara wrote, “The disappointment from me is true, although I don’t think he notices. My belief is that, due to his ADHD, it takes so much brainpower for him to function at work that he is exhausted when he gets home and just wants to zone out. Also, he gets focused on his two interests, watching TV or reading, and loses track of time and doesn’t notice what’s going on around him. My best friend and I often joke that I could move out, another family could move in, and my husband would still be sitting on the couch in front of the TV, oblivious to the fact I was no longer there! It also doesn’t bother him to have unfinished projects and he is very comfortable living in a messy environment.”
Developmental Trauma, Neurodivergence, & ADHD
We know that people like Bryce, with underdeveloped social skills, often overdevelop their intellect and can feel quite good about themselves in the cognitive realm, flourishing professionally, lauded for their achievements and accomplishments. They might feel inadequate and inferior to others around things relationships, but they might be able to feel like a star at work. Jeff said that if this is the case for Bryce, he can totally relate. Before he met Lissa, he did that too- prioritizing work over his relationships. Only recently has he realized there are rewards in the sphere of relationships that work success can never replace. But working to develop those social skills after a lifetime of not really understanding how relationships work, feeling chronically confused and inferior to those who seem to relate easily is no small feat.
I appreciated hearing Jeff’s point of view, which helped me have a compassionate lens on what might be happening for Bryce. It made me reflect on something I’ve often wondered about neurodivergence, which is how much overlap there might be between early developmental trauma, when bonding with the birth mother fails to happen, for some reason, whether because of adoption, surrogacy, an infant in an incubator in the NICU, an absent, check out, traumatized, addicted, mentally ill, physically sick, dissociated, or overworking birth mother, or any number of other reasons. When that nurturing bond with the birth mother fails to develop, the infant’s brain and nervous system simply can’t develop normally. The ventral aspect of the vagus nerve, the part responsible for social bonds, fails to myelinate normally, and other aspects of brain development fail to happen.
If Bryce’s mother was always cold and miserable, and if his father was autistic, how would he have learned relational and emotional skills? How could his brain and nervous system have developed to respond to social cues relationally? Inadequate parenting is not the child’s fault, and it’s often not the mother’s or father’s fault or anyone else’s either. But without that early bonding, is neurodivergence part of the consequence of that kind of early developmental trauma? Is the same true for ADHD?
I’m not saying all neurodivergence or adult ADHD are the result of developmental trauma. But I am suggesting that developmental trauma might be difficult to differentiate from autism spectrum symptoms and/or ADHD. How do we tease such things apart, so we can hone in on the best treatment? I wonder about such things, but often get push back from autism activists who don’t like it when I suggest that their neurodivergence could be related to early developmental trauma. So I usually stay quiet about such things. But…Tara asked.
When Your Parents Didn’t Love You…
Jeff is one of those people who didn’t get any maternal love. Instead, he got the opposite- a sadistic mother, who, at 88, tortures him still. This Christmas Eve, she announced that he’s officially cut out of the will, disowned. Merry Christmas, son. We’re still reeling from this primal rejection, although it doesn’t surprise Jeff, since he’s been shunned and rejected by his family since he was a two year old boy.
Because he didn’t even have a grandparent to love him, Jeff didn’t learn how to bond, to engage socially, to pick up on social cues, to trust real heart connections, to learn discernment and how to tell if someone is safe or dangerous, to practice real empathy, to learn how to attune to what other people need, to recognize what he needs himself, to ask for vulnerable needs, like touch, softness, empathy, or to receive love and affection when it’s readily available. If you read about the diagnosis of autism or adult ADHD, it sounds a lot like Jeff. Like Bryce, his intentions are good. He’s not malicious or intending to cause harm.
But it sometimes feels like he’s trying to learn a skill set everyone else learned before kindergarten, which requires patience- my patience, which sometimes wears thin and I can lose it in ways that really hurt him. He feels embarrassed sometimes that he hasn’t mastered certain relational skills yet, and it activates a part of him that went to kindergarten and realized that all the other 5 year olds already knew the alphabet, and he didn’t. Nobody had bothered to teach him. Yet, if I’m critical of him, if I expect him to know relational skills he hasn’t mastered, he feels 5 years old all over again, ashamed to not know the alphabet, ashamed to not be good enough.
As Jeff’s partner, I can relate to a lot of what Tara wrote. There are a lot of needs I do not get met. I do not always get empathy when it would be appropriate. My partner can seem selfish sometimes, because he does get overwhelmed with his own traumas and it can make him seem self-absorbed and insensitive, even though he doesn’t mean to be.
But like this woman’s husband, he is also a genuinely good person, one with sincerely good intentions. He is not malicious in any of his struggles to show up as a loving family man. Through one lens, some of his actions might look unkind. But through a more trauma-informed lens, I can see how he suffers because he feels like he just can’t please me, like he just can’t get the social thing right, like he’s just never going to figure out what seems to come to more neurotypical people naturally. And he feels angry and sad and scared about that, because it feels profoundly unfair that relationships come more easily to some people, when the root of his social struggles are not in any way his fault. He wants to get straight A’s in relationships, the way he got straight A’s at Princeton and Harvard. But he feels frustrated and inferior, because no matter how hard he tries, he feels like he keeps coming up short.
So…I get all that.
And… I noticed when I asked for Jeff’s response to this letter, his empathy extended towards Bryce, but not towards Tara. So let me speak directly to her and any others who resonate with what she’s going through.
Care For The Caregiver
Dear sister,
I get it. Whether it’s because of childhood trauma or some brain difference, you love a good, decent man who hasn’t fully developed the relational skill set to show up for you and your needs. He seems to prioritize his work needs over your relational needs, and after you were told in marriage counseling that it’s a hopeless cause, you feel resigned and despairing. You don’t believe he’ll ever be capable of showing up for you the way you need because of his neurodivergence and ADHD. That leaves you with a lot of unmet needs, and that feels unfair and lonely. You have a right to feel that way.
I also sense from your letter that you don’t wish to leave your basically good, well-intentioned husband, that you love him, you understand him, you have compassion for him, you realize it’s not entirely his fault that he might behave in ways that feel selfish, and that he may not have the neural wiring for empathy or attunement to your needs.
I hear that. I get that. That makes sense you would feel that way.
AND…although I don’t know enough about your story to know whether your marriage counselor was right, I have a hard time believing this is a hopeless situation. Maybe it is, and you’ll just need to grieve what you’ll never get from him. If you’re trying to squeeze blood from a stone, and the stone isn’t very motivated to open his heart enough for it to bleed, your marriage counselor may indeed be right. Maybe he’s never going to be willing or capable of extending himself towards you and your needs, and you can’t control that.
If that’s the case, there may still be hope for improving the relationship. If you’re not already doing so, I’d advise you to start getting creative about how you can get your needs met elsewhere. Because no matter what, it’s not good for you to have so many unmet needs and the resentment will build up and poison you if you can’t get those needs met somewhere.
Find somewhere outside of Bryce to vent your frustration and anger. If it’s always aimed at him, he’s just going to continue to pull away from what he might perceive as incessant criticism, amplifying his already low self-esteem regarding relationships and possibly driving him to prioritize work even more so. You have a right to feel angry, frustrated, and fed up, but you might get more empathy if you share those feelings with your therapist or your bestie.
I’d also advise you to pull back on your caretaking of his needs. If he can’t extend towards your needs because of his autism or ADHD, you might need to let some of his needs go unmet, not because you don’t love him, not because his needs don’t matter, but because unbalanced relationships aren’t good for either party in the unequal dynamic.
Maybe you can find a close circle of girlfriends who give you empathy and are attuned to your feelings and needs. Maybe you have an individual therapist who can give you what he can’t. Maybe you have a male bestie who can give you some of that masculine attention in a more open-hearted way, but without threatening or destabilizing your marriage. Some people who really want to stay together even open their relationships if they can’t get their needs met in a monogamous marriage.
That’s what I mean by creativity. Maybe there’s a sports group you could join or a knitting club or a church or a volunteer organization or a writing class where you can get more social support. That might also get you out of the house more and get you laughing and playing with other people. And then yes, maybe he’ll come home from work and there will be no dinner on the table because you’re out with friends. And then it’s on him to process those feelings with his own therapist or friends.
Because that’s the other thing you do have control over. If there’s no hope that he can show up more reciprocally for you, you might just need to show up less for him, not as revenge, but as a way to rebalance the relationship, to make it healthier, to resent him less. That would mean putting some boundaries in place. Saying no sometimes. Learning how to tolerate his anger or disappointment or maybe even his total apathy if you’re no longer doing what you’ve enabled him to expect in this unequal dynamic.
He might not like that, at first, just like you don’t like not getting many of your needs met. He might protest or even act out, and that’s okay. Maybe he won’t even notice. As long as he’s not being abusive, he’s allowed to have his tantrums or his obliviousness. But over time, if you’re getting more needs met elsewhere, and you’re not resentfully prioritizing all of his needs, he’ll most likely settle down and get used to a new normal.
Then, with you having more of a life that doesn’t include centering him and his needs, and with him still prioritizing his work, he might actually realize he misses you. Will that make him want to prioritize you more? I can’t say. Maybe you won’t even need that, because you’ll have found a way to find social connection, friendship, meaning, purpose, fun, empathy, and joy elsewhere.
What won’t likely work is more of the status quo.
Will it help? I don’t know. Is this the right path? I can’t be sure. Take anything I say with a grain of salt and trust your wise beautiful Self as your primary lead.
Either way, give your hurt, sad, lonely parts that feel the injustice of the unbalanced relationship a big hug. What our parts need most is love from ourselves. I know it isn’t a substitute for external connection with loving, empathic people. But if we love ourselves first and attune to our own needs- and quit throwing our parts under the bus for anyone else’s needs, it can’t do anything but help.
When I read what I just wrote to Jeff and asked if it’s okay if I reveal all these personal details, he said he agrees and is fine to share his story if it helps others. But he wanted to say a few things to Tara’s husband, man to man. I’ll publish Jeff’s letter to Bryce in Part Two of this story. So stay tuned!
If you resonate with Tara and Bryce’s story, please consider joining us for HEALING THROUGH RELATIONSHIPS, where our students will learn more about unbalanced relationships and how to rebalance unequal relationships. These students will also be the first to learn The Six Steps From Fawning To Freedom, as a preview of the book that won’t come out until Spring 2026.
We start January 4 on Zoom, so please join us to start the New Year out relationally.
I’d love to hear how YOU’D advise Tara and Bryce. There’s so much wisdom in this community. Please share your wisdom here.
