At the recent Family Therapy Association meeting I attended, the main focus was on ADHD. Presenters shared the latest findings and treatments for the disorder known as ADHD.
In one of the presentations, the speaker pointed out that that researchers have found links between adult ADHD and affairs. I thought “Wow!”, that’s something you don’t often hear about.
I’d never thought through the ramifications of that connection. Here’s what it means…People with ADHD are at higher risk for affairs than non-ADHD populations. What makes them at risk is that their ability to say “NO” is limited.
Their attention problems interfere with decision making. They act before they consider the consequences of their actions. This makes their choices more impulsive, including when faced with the choice of whether or not to cheat.
Their brain works against making good choices. No matter what their moral convictions are, their impulse control works against their better judgement. The consider the immediate gratification rather than the consequences.
In situations where you’re dealing with a cheater that has ADHD, the cheater would not be considering the consequences of their actions. They may not have wanted an affair, yet by not considering the possible consequences, or other options, they are caught up in them.
Those with ADHD are easy prey for exploiters who take advantage of them not thinking through their choices. There are always some people who take advantage of other’s disabilities. In the case of ADHD, they exploit their impulsive decisions.
Those with ADHD are distracted by the arousal. Any kind of arousal will do, since the mind often only knows it is turned on. Once their mind is turned on, the arousal can be directed to other areas.
Since affairs are highly arousing they keep the person with ADHD from thinking through their choice. They focus on the immediate rewards rather than the consequences. Their ability to consider cause and effect doesn’t work effectively.
Once the little arousal switch in their mind is flipped to the ‘on’ position, the arousal is easily sexualized. Since they focus on immediate gratification rather than consequences of their choices, they are an easy mark. The risk is high for ADHD and affairs.
The added dimension of ADHD and affairs means that executive functions like planning ahead or considering consequences are ‘hit and miss’. When the ADHD kicks in, the executive function part of the brain goes to the back of the bus.
The cheater with ADHD never intended for it to happen and also never considered the consequences. In such cases, the cheater doesn’t think beyond a week or two in the future. In such cases, they really didn’t think about the situation when it happened.
That means that some of those cheaters who are accused of lying may actually be telling you the straight up truth. They really didn’t think. Their distractability kept them from thinking.
When you have a cheater with ADHD, they may not have schemed and plotted out an affair. They may have had no intention of having an affair. They were distracted and aroused once aroused, they began making impulsive choices.
The presentation also pointed out that in cases where cheating is associated with ADHD, there is hope. In such situations, there are very effective medications that can help with the attention and distraction involved.
The medication can help get their thinking back, yet you’ll still need help with the affair issues.
Knowing that ADHD may be a factor does not take away the pain of the cheater betraying you. It still hurts. If ADHD and affairs are an issue in your situation, medication can help.
Medication doesn’t mean they’ll never cheat again, but it does mean that they can regain some self-control when faced with temptations in the future. The two of you will still need cooperative efforts in developing plans of dealing with such situations.
Here are some articles addressing the issue.
http://www.adderworld.com/blog1/2009/05/25/sex-love-marriage-affairs-and-adhd/
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/adhd/2010/09/sex-and-adhd-a-blessing-or-a-curse/
When an affair happens, you need the kind of help in the Affair Recovery Workshop, which addresses the brain connections involved with affairs and ways of changing them. The workshop shows how the two of you ways of working together in tackling the relationship issues behind the affair.
ADHD and affairs are not a good combination. The destruction that affairs bring combined with impaired decision making of ADHD make this a difficult challenge.
Best Regards,
Jeff
8 Responses
Although ADHD can cause distraction you have to look at the underlining problems of a relationship before you can blame a disorder.
There are alot of negative effects on adult add and relationships and cheating is one of the symptoms that need to be addressed before a lasting and loving adult relationship can be maintained.
John,
Thank you for your comments. The many issues in relationships do have to be considered. I had not seen the ADHD connection so clearly before, and wanted to address the issue with the readers. Affairs seldom have easy answers to them.
What about the issue of my CS having an affair with a single woman, half his age with ADHD WHO HAS BEEN SEEING A PSYCHIATRIST …for years? I know, I feel the same..my H should be seeing the psychiatrist KNOWING this info before beginning a PA with her…The texts and emails from her were SO excessive and over the top. Just seems like a classic FATAL ATTRACTION scenario.
Shall I mention this recent finding to our marriage therapist? Help! I am very concerned for my family’s safety…even though my H claims ‘i know her…she’d never do anything to us.’ Yet I found a document on our family PC whereby he sent her some research he’d done on adult ADHD….4 weeks before he told her he was going back to his family. The note was signed…”I love you, with my H’s name” apparently threy told each other ‘i love you during they 9.5 week EA/PA
My H dismisses her and the affair ‘as something that is in the past’ now … ad I am supposed to believe that. How do I start to believe anything going forward while more sordid info such as this latest revelation continues to surface…?
changedforever,
ADHD lovers present some potential risks. Your husband may be right about how she will never do anything, but that is a gamble. Those with ADHD often have trouble controlling their impulsive behavior. When such a situation is combined with the emotional powder keg of an affair there is a risk of acting out occurring. I believe talking with a health care professional like your marriage therapist is a good option. They would have more training in assessing the danger potential in such a situation. When your families safety is at stake, it is not worth such a gamble to assume that it will go away on its own. I would rather be safe than regret not having taken action and talked to someone.
hi. my husband is adhd and had a 1 year affair. we just recently found out about the adhd. we were going through a rough patch in our marriage. things have settled a bit since i found out about the affair bec i am not nagging him about it anymore. i want to know if he means it when he says it was just impulse and that he feels guilty. he did say then that he was in love with her. this is the first time it happened. i can’t trust him now. i can’t tell if he was really in love with her or maybe still in love with her. was it really just impulse? i feel he is just settling with me because he has been cold. my gut says he still thinks of her. i can’t trust him. what’s going on in his ADHD’s mind?
Tammy,
The ADHD mind is challenging to deal with at times. Has he taken steps to deal with his ADHD mind? There has been more research showing that the risk of affairs is high with ADHD populations, so your situation is something that is showing up more often. This population often acts without thinking, on impulse. The challenge is that not all ADHD people have affairs, so there does seem to be some self-control. Gaining an understanding of that will help understand what is going on in their minds and how they make choices.
Im in my late 20’s & have been engage to a woman with ADHD. We been together for 5 years. I guess some of the things she does are because she is so shy or don’t have the confident to believe in her abilities. 4 months to our wedding date and everything has change. she don’t want to live with me. she want to break our relationship. According to her, she is not good for me. I don’t understand it all.
I thought she was cheating on me. she said, she can never make me happy the way she want to. After she pack her bags and left.I was cleaning the house. I discovered she has been going to the doctor appointment every three months because she has ADHD. That last year appointments files.
Please help me get her back. What can I say to someone who is ADHD that has lost faith in her partner that I cannot handle her problems. I wish I would be more inform at the start . Please any advice about how to talk to her Without driving her away will help. How do i get her to even go and see her doctor. She is now staying at a hotel because she said she don’t want to hurt me.
I love her dearly for 5 years. it would be sad for me to let her go let this. Now that i know she need me to be there for her more than ever. Please share some advice knowledge of what I should do.
keeleyone,
Thank you for posting your question. Dealing with ADHD in relationships if often challenging. The attention issues often short-circuit and interfere with many relationship dynamics. With the short-circuit and interference that happens, you will need to have consistency and stability. For this reason, one thing to avoid in an engagement situation such as yours is sleeping with her. That level of intimacy will form attachments and bonds that will complicate things exponentially. It adds even more instability to an already unstable situation. It adds a dimension of frequent break-ups and getting back together. This kind of dynamic makes achieving consistency and stability more difficult.
ADHD populations often test relationships. When they ‘test’ them, it is their effort at finding stability. They will test you to find out if you really do love them at their best and at their worst. You need to be consistent and stable in each extreme.
Besides stability and consistency, they will often ‘project’ their issues into you. This consists of them seeing how you handle the problems they are facing. When this happens they are finding out how you handle them. If you do not handle these projections well, they often feel more insecure. In some cases, if you handle the issues too well, they may become scared, since that means that they will have to face them as well. With dangers at both extremes of handling things too well or not handling them well, it makes for a difficult situation to navigate.
Achieving the stability in a marriage is hard enough. You may want to consider whether or not you really want the ‘whole package’ that you will be dealing with in the even the two of you marry. Many times couples think “I can handle this”, but after many years of crises, they get to the point where they have had enough. Consider what a lifetime of such crises will look like, and how they will play out when both she and you are older. You are not facing an impossible task, although you need to take a serious inventory of the relationship and if you are up to the task before moving forward.