How ADHD Shapes Our Connections: A Primer on Love, Friendship, and Communication
ADHD doesn’t just complicate relationships—it shapes them. From romantic partnerships to friendships, family dynamics, and workplace interactions, the traits of inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity ripple across every connection. Romantic relationships often bear the brunt, with ADHD symptoms leading to miscommunication, frustration, and even intimacy challenges. Couples may struggle with mismatched libidos, impulsive behaviors, or emotional dysregulation, but understanding ADHD’s role can transform these struggles into opportunities for deeper connection.
Family and professional relationships, too, are affected. ADHD parents often wrestle with providing structure or consistent discipline, creating chaotic home environments that strain relationships with children and partners. At work, impulsivity, time management issues, and difficulty following through on commitments can complicate team dynamics and career growth. Socially, the ADHD brain’s challenges with focus and emotional regulation can lead to feelings of rejection or isolation, making it harder to build and sustain friendships.
The science behind these struggles lies in the ADHD brain itself. Impaired dopamine regulation impacts empathy, social cognition, and emotional recognition, all of which play critical roles in relationships. Comorbid conditions like anxiety, depression, or substance use disorders further complicate matters, while genetic factors often ripple across generations, creating patterns of behavior that shape family and social dynamics. But the good news? With the right diagnosis, treatment, and tools, ADHDers can overcome these challenges and thrive in their relationships.
In this episode, Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright explore the intersection of ADHD and relationships, unpacking the science, the stories, and the strategies that foster connection. From structured communication techniques to empathy-building exercises, they offer actionable advice to help ADHDers and their loved ones navigate challenges and unlock the unique strengths ADHD brings to relationships. Whether you’re navigating romance, family life, or professional interactions, this episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking to better understand ADHD’s role in human connection.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on True Story FM. I'm Pete Wright and I'm here with Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Yes, it's all me all the time. We are doing a new... We're embarking on a new series today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yes.
Pete Wright:
We're diving into-
Nikki Kinzer:
An important one.
Pete Wright:
It is an important one. We're diving into relationships and how ADHD impacts relationships and not just the relationships of the romantic kind.
Nikki Kinzer:
The romantic kind.
Pete Wright:
No. We're talking about all kinds of relationships and that's what we're going to be talking about over the next few weeks. So we're excited to have you along for the ride.
Before we dig into this primer, a primmer on ADHD and our connections, head over to TakeControlADHD.com to get to know us a little bit better. Listen to the show on the website or subscribe to the mailing list, and we will send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can find us at Take Control ADHD on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. But to really connect with us, head over to our Discord server. You can jump in at TakeControlADHD.com/Discord. You'll be whisked over to our general invitation or login page.
And the pitch, y'all, the way we put food on our table and shoes on our feet is through Patreon. Patreon is listener-supported podcasting. With a few of your dollars each month, you help guarantee that we continue to grow the show and hang out for the long-term. You also get early access to every episodes via our Patreon feed, podcast feed where all the episodes are extra long and have bonus Q&A and all of that kind of good stuff, and our triple secret Discord channels in our Discord server that you don't get unless you're a member, so it's just there's a lot going on there. Do check it out Patreon.com/theADHDpodcast to learn more. And if you haven't picked up a copy of Unapologetically ADHD, our book, we encourage you to do so. You can find it at, but really, unapologeticallyadhdbook.com, that's where it is. It'll take you right there to the page, you can buy it wherever finer books are sold. We appreciate you doing all that. And now with all the pitching done, let us move to relationships.
Nikki, why did we want to talk about relationships? Why is that important to us right now?
Nikki Kinzer:
Why is it not important, right? It's everything. It's community. It's how we connect with others, it's how we connect with ourselves. It's such an important piece. And ADHD impacts our relationships. And like you said earlier, it's not just about the romantic kind, but also the ones that we have with our friends, our coworkers, our family members, the people at the grocery store, everyone.
Pete Wright:
Well, so I thought today, since this is the first episode of a series of conversations, that we might do kind of a high-level survey of the kinds of relationships and where ADHD plays a role in straining those relationships. So let's start with these personal and sort of intimate relationships, romantic partnerships. I think for a lot of people, when you talk about relationships, just the word relationships, you immediately think, "Well, of course it's your intimate partner relationship." Where does ADHD play a role?
Nikki Kinzer:
When I'm working with clients, when I'm talking to people individually, if they're in a relationship, it almost always comes up in some way or form, whether they both have ADHD or one has ADHD and the other doesn't. And it certainly does impact it because I think when they both have ADHD, there is a little bit more of an understanding of what's going on because the other partner... The partners can kind of understand, "Okay, this is kind of chaos, but we're in it together kind of chaos."
Not that it doesn't disrupt some things because ADHD shows up differently in everyone, but I find the most conflict is when you have one ADHD partner and you have one non-ADHD partner. That's where a lot of miscommunication, I think intentions are misread a lot. Sometimes we get what Melissa Orlov will say is, you get into this parent-child dynamic that we don't want to be in, is where I see a lot of it. And sometimes it's just not understanding what's going on with the ADHD partner.
Pete Wright:
Right, right. Well, and if you look at the entire bouquet of potential challenges that you might be living with with your flavor of ADHD, think about how those impact your work, right? Time, attention, distraction, all of those things play into your romantic relationship too, your intimate partner relationship. So the data reports adults with ADHD have lower satisfaction in romantic relationships, higher rates of relationship dissatisfaction and divorce among ADHD couples, challenges, as you said, in communication and conflict resolution, very difficult in ADHD relationships, symptoms leading to misunderstandings and frustrations, heightened emotional tension in ADHD, mismatched libidos, right? If you're struggling with a sexual relationship, think about how ADHD impacts that. Attention in a libidinous relationship is an important part. Pay attention to the here and now is hard for ADHD people. And on the other hand, you also have people with ADHD reporting higher risk of engaging in risky sexual behaviors because there is a dopamine search. There is a thirst for that kind of engagement.
Nikki Kinzer:
Impulsiveness.
Pete Wright:
Impulsiveness. Oh my goodness, impulsiveness. So very, very challenging in romantic partnerships. We've talked about romantic relationships before in the show. This is not the last time we're going to mention it, so here we go. Let's move on to family.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. So there's a lot of strain that can happen with that too. And again, we're looking at a mix of do the parents have ADHD? Does one parent have ADHD? Do both? Do all the kids have ADHD? Does only one kid have ADHD? Like there's so many different flavors here that can go on, but that's definitely going to take on some challenges in parenting.
I think with adults who have ADHD, it can be very difficult to help your child when you're struggling yourself. But yet you're the role model, and so there can be a lot of shame around that, like, "I can't keep it together. How am I supposed to help them?" Frustration. The difficulty in providing consistency when a parent has ADHD, and again, providing enough structure for a child or children that might have ADHD, it could definitely be a potential for creating a chaotic home environment. It could be messy, it could be disorganized, loud. What if you have the ADHD flavor of hyperactivity, raised voices, not necessarily out of anger, but you just are talking loud? My daughter talks loud and she's animated. So when she's talking and she's very passionate, she's like a, what is that person that does the orchestra?
Pete Wright:
Conductor.
Nikki Kinzer:
She's the conductor and she's big and loud. So there's just a lot of things there that could be happening. And especially with the time management and planning aspect of it, we have talked so much about planning in our book, but we don't necessarily... We didn't really hone in on the family aspect of planning, but that can be big. How many schedules do you have to manage? And all of the different activities and things.
Pete Wright:
Well, and there's an angle on these relationships. We talk often about when you're a parent and you're dealing with younger kids, teens. But I feel like we haven't really talked about the relationships at different places in your adult life. I am dealing with exactly that with my mom. I'm a guy in my 50s and I'm dealing with my mom in her 80s, and our relationship has changed pretty dramatically as a result of distance, time, ADHD, loss of my dad. All of those factors are having a new kind of impact on our life, especially because we live so far away. We live at great distance. What is the impact of distance with ADHD and my responsibility to stay on top of maintaining important family relationships when I'm distracted and impulsive and focused on what's right in front of my face and can't think about what is in Texas or Tulsa or Florida or North Carolina or Colorado, where all of my family is, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
That has an impact on how often I see those people, how often I'm invited to reunions, how often those things happen, and that's a new kind of relationship for me. So I think it's important to be aware of how we, as living with ADHD as adults, as aging adults, deal with these important relationships in our family and figure out where that strain is coming from. Because finding discipline and structure to maintain family relationships is... Man, it's hard.
Nikki Kinzer:
And remembering to check in and remembering to follow up-
Pete Wright:
Right. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
... and all of these things that need to happen.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So let's transition from family to social relationships and friendships, before we get into work relationships.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
Maintaining relationships with friends and the various circles of friendships that we have, where do you see challenge?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, what I see in working with clients with ADHD is that there's a lot of shame around not keeping in touch with people. So a text message might come through, but you don't respond to it right away. And then if there's too much time that comes in between, then there's this shame of feeling bad. So I think a lot of it comes around with maintaining the friendships.
Some of it can be social anxiety too, where they don't feel supported, so maybe they don't feel like they have enough friends, but it's hard to make friends, especially as an adult, it can be really difficult to find a community. So I think there's a lot of different kind of things that can happen socially, and I'm really hoping that we can, in our series, dig more into this because I think friendships are so important, but they're really hard to navigate and especially when you have ADHD. Like what is too much information? How much is too much contact? How much is too little contact? And what if it's a new friend? How do you deal with a new friend versus a friend that you've known your whole life?
Pete Wright:
Oh my God, it's the worst.
Nikki Kinzer:
All kinds of things. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Absolutely, it's the worst, and I think this, it's amazing how many social dynamics are at play and, in fact, amplified that were the same struggles that we dealt with in high school. The whole idea of, for us, it was how long do you wait till you call? But really text, message, whatever, it's the same stuff as adults, and it's the same sort of social inadequacy. It's the same sort of, I'm not going to... Probably, I shouldn't text them back because I'm just going to be a lousy friend anyway. It's like those feelings of just smallness that we carry around.
How we get over that and over our fear of knowing that our impulsivity is going to lead us to interrupt conversations or speak without thinking, knowing that we have challenges in maintaining attention in social situations and conversations, those kinds of things are just amplified over the course of age. And we already know that adults struggle, particularly men struggle making new friendships as they get older, and ADHD just makes that more challenging. So that sort of awareness of being able to build new relationships and be honest, upfront, and still enthusiastic about bringing new people into your life and entering someone else's life, huge. Huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and something that my daughter's been saying, and I totally relate to it, but it's like the social battery. How much social battery do you have left? And how do you pace yourself and how do you make sure that it's not offending anyone if you don't go out because your social battery needs to be recharged? And I can see that, especially with introverts, people that have that social anxiety. I am definitely one that I can only be in a social environment for so long before my battery is out. But managing that is hard.
Pete Wright:
Well, and this is interesting, again, from the perspective of us just being adults. Because the sort of demands on us of family and work are higher, our battery is already taxed. That means at the end of the day, how much juice do you have left for social relationships, when you've just been running full tilt to keep up with the day? Very challenging.
Okay. So that leads us to professional relationships, and that's something we have talked about on the show before. And this time, thinking about how our ADHD impacts the way we relate specifically to other people.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, and this is going to be with your supervisors, your co-workers, colleagues, clients, whatever relationship it might be. But there are definitely some challenges here. I see a lot of pressure that people will bring onto themselves wanting to overcompensate, wanting to really... That perfectionism gene just comes in really loudly because they really want to do a good job, but yet that can cause burnout because they're doing too much. Or they feel like they're not doing enough, so they do more in the evenings and the weekends to try to catch up.
And a lot of this is the pressure that they're putting on themselves of maybe they didn't do enough during the day, so I have to do more in the evening. Maybe they're not meeting deadlines, and so they feel that pressure of having to make up for it in meetings, if you have a lot of meetings. I've had some clients who tell me, "I'm in meeting after meeting, and it's just so exhausting, and how do you stay focused when you have ADHD and you're just meeting after meeting?"
And a lot of times these meetings aren't even necessary. What was the point? Do I have to be at this meeting? But yet, you don't really want to say that because then that makes you look bad. So all kinds of things with the workplace where ADHD can impact.
RSD, I think is a big part of the fear with having relationships on a professional level. If I say the wrong thing, am I going to be rejected? Am I going to be criticized? Of course, we have this beautiful annual reviews that we have to deal with that are just RSD triggers ready to happen. Those things, working with teams, collaboration can be difficult, especially if you're having any kind of communication issues. If you don't feel like somebody's pulling their weight or you don't feel like you're pulling your weight or just a lot of different things that can happen where ADHD... Executive functions, memory, getting started, following through, organization, planning, all of these things are executive functions.
Pete Wright:
So there's this emotional thing that goes on at work when you're thinking about relationships, especially around collaboration, and I just want to know if I'm alone where I'm told, "Okay, you're going to work on a team with this other person or these other people, so you're all going to work on different things together." And I would run into this really challenging wall where I wouldn't want to show... I would try to do everything myself because I wouldn't want to show anybody else what I was working on because of fear of rejection, that they would like to have... That I wasn't doing it right. So I would take on way too much responsibility and end up damaging my relationship with my co-workers because I would be living in fear that they would see my process and judge my process as a judgment of me, even if I knew the final work product is going to be amazing because I know how to do stuff, but how I do it is the thing I don't want people to see, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Because I wouldn't want to see how disorganized my process is. Does that make sense?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, right. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
You never want to show somebody how the sausage is made because it's sausage, right? So work relationships are hard, right? That's the bottom line. Work relationships are hard, and especially when you look at the worlds collide factor of how do your work relationship... If you're struggling with personal relationships, you feel like you want to have more friends, where do you find them, if not at work.
Nikki Kinzer:
And do you find them at work?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know. I was just thinking that, I was thinking about the connection between our friendships and how many of your friends came from somewhere that you worked.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then I'm wondering, do those friends... See, this is where I start thinking, do those friends stay long-term friends or are they... What happens after you leave the workplace here? Are you not friends anymore? It's very interesting dynamic there.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's a really interesting dynamic, and I think ADHD makes navigating that more challenging, especially because you're so focused on the stress, the RSD, the here and now, that when people leave workplaces, what is your responsibility? What systems do you have that help remind you that this person, even though you don't see them every day, can still be in your life?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
That's a really hard part, for me certainly. This is where we kind of try to bring it together and just remind each other, right? Us living in unity of ADHD, that the relationship part, this is my hypothesis, the relationship challenges that we have with ADHD are not about the relationships.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
They're not about people.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay, what do you mean by that? I'm agreeing with you like yes, I agree with you 100%, but what do you mean?
Pete Wright:
What does that mean? That understanding our relationship with ADHD is in fact possibly more important than understanding our relationship with another person because it's the impact of the things we know about our ADHD that are impacting our ability to have strong relationships. It is about the dopamine regulation, which is so important for social cognition and that frontal lobe part. It's about the things that we hear people struggling with in social situations. It's about how do you handle small talk? It's about facial and vocal emotional recognition for people who live with their flavor of ADHD, right? It's about understanding empathy. It's about being able to hear someone else talking and track what they're saying and then engage with it without saying the thing that's first on your brain. Right? That's really hard, and it's hard for all relationships in all of these categories, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And that's what I hope comes out of this series is a reminder of ADHD's function in those, in the factors that define solid relationships. And what are the tools that we use to help with our ADHD? Those are the tools that we use to help with our relationships. And sometimes it means medication, sometimes it means CBT, sometimes it means social skills training with a behavioral coach, sometimes it means getting an ADHD coach and helping to walk through the kinds of stresses that we have. So that's what I'm thinking about. How does that hit you?
Nikki Kinzer:
What you're saying is that there's an awareness of what your relationship is with ADHD. When you know the impact that it has on you, then you're able to navigate that a little bit better, when you are coming face-to-face with some of these struggles with relationships, because you can find the right tools, you can find the right support and help, and there's plenty of it. So I'm very excited to dig into this series and talk to some experts and figure out what we can do with this, because it's important. Community, connection, it's what makes us human.
Pete Wright:
For sure. And there's so many of us in the chat room who says, "Small talk? I have no problem with that." But in fact, that's a problem that a lot of people with ADHD have is too much small talk. Not knowing how to start small talk might be one thing, but sometimes the challenge is, and I, my God, you get me going on something.
I went to a Christmas party, and I'll not forget this. I could not stop talking about this person's divorce from seven years prior. I was so deep into that conversation, and I think in hindsight, he wanted out, and I had no ripcord to pull. It was very challenging. That's one of the things that I still think about. It was now months ago, and I'm still thinking about I can't stop my mouth, so that's why I'm a podcaster. It is what it is.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's all right.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's fine.
Nikki Kinzer:
He could have left if he really wanted to. He could have found a way to escape.
Pete Wright:
Right, right.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right.
Pete Wright:
Okay. This is great. Thank you for hanging out everybody. Thank you for listening, downloading, listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if you have some small talk to contribute to the conversation, do it at Discord. We're going to be in the show talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level, or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
