Do you wake up every morning in a great mood and immediately start wanting to talk about all of your great ADD-induced ideas? Are you full of energy and ready to leap from the starting blocks? Many of us with ADD are.
But maybe your partner isn't quite so lively in the morning. Does he or she wake up in a quiet mood? It's not that they don't like mornings, but maybe they're just not ready to hear about the exciting ideas you have planned, until he or she's had coffee.
You can look at this situation and find the disadvantage in this, which is that your ADD has you talking and talking in the morning, while your linear partner just wants you to shut up for a few minutes. The bright side of the ADD-linear equation is that you're usually in a good mood.
On the other hand, you can look at the negative in the way your partner wakes up in the morning and say, “You wake up sounding grumpy.” Or, you can see the positive side to this and say, “My partner wakes up not talking. That means he or she’s there to hear my ideas.” Most ADD people love a good listener.
But if your partner's behavior is irritating to you, look at that characteristic that’s annoying you, and ask yourself, “What’s the advantage to that behavior?” because there usually is one. Obviously, it doesn’t work to have someone with ADD who wants to talk someone’s ear off and somebody who wants quiet first thing in the morning.
Maybe you can make an agreement that you can’t talk to your mate about ideas, until after morning coffee.
But your ADD brain won't always remember that agreement.
That’s okay because the way it actually works is that about half the time, you will remember the agreement, and maybe you can just talk about mundane things until everyone's had coffee. Or, you may get your partner to remind you, “Hold on,” in as nice a way as possible, “remember, I haven’t had my coffee yet."
You may be grinding your teeth a little bit because your ADD has you wanting to interact right away, but you have to realize that your partner doesn't have ADD and moves in ways that may be mysterious to you. You have to realize that in their linear mind, your ADD behavior is pretty mysterious to them, too.
Another idea is to keep a pad of paper and a pen nearby so that if you have an idea you want to talk about, and it’s not time for that yet, you can use the pen to write your idea down, even if it’s in the middle of the night! You can capture your great idea so that you're not chomping at the bit to try to force your ADD brain to remember.
ADD-Linear relationships take some work, as do any other relationship combinations. If you're one way and your partner is another, you can come up with simple solutions to simplify your life and keep everyone involved happy. Again, it all comes back to systems that we've written about in previous articles. Once you find a system that works for the relationship, everyone feels better and the relationship thrives.
We'll talk more about realtionship issues in our next article...
