The short story of it all is, I fucking suck at them.
My family circle?! It is a dot.
Boyfriends? All toxic relationships and I’m certain I was just a sex gap until someone else came along. Dates? If they manage to get me out for the first date, most have been disasters. Funny, oh painfully funny, but disasters non the less.
Best Friends? You’d have better luck playing Where’s Wally
Friends? I have some beautiful and patient friends who are very understanding, and I mean no offence to them nor am I attempting to suggest they’re not enough. However, the issue of quality over quantity is more that it’s not a choice and losing friends seems to be a vicious circle.
In relationships, the hyperactivity symptoms of ADHD can be disruptive and difficult to live with. They can lead to unresolved important family conversations and can prevent partners and family members from feeling truly relaxed and secure in their relationship.
ADHD CLININC
Although every partner brings their own sets of baggage into a relationship, a partner with ADHD may often have the following issues:
- negative self image
- lack of self confidence
- feelings of shame
These issues may at first be masked by their ability to shower their beloved with romance and attentiveness, a benefit of the ADHD symptom hyperfocus. This is the ability to intensely concentrate and become fully engrossed in an activity.
Healthline
But that hyperfocus inevitably shifts. When it does, a person with ADHD may seem to barely notice their partner at all. This may make the ignored partner wonder if they’re really loved. This dynamic can strain a relationship.
The partner with ADHD might constantly question their partner’s love or commitment, which may be perceived as a lack of trust. This can drive the couple even further apart.
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN?
Well, depression. In a nutshell.
What I desire is in direct conflict to what I have or think I can ever achieve.
I want to be loved
… but I cannot even do that for myself. What is it Ru Paul says “If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”
Not to go against Mamma Ru’s wisdom, but the challenge for me is not loving other people; I can give it away in the boatload.
I loath me. I annoy me. I hate spending time with just me. On top of that I’m not the one who is ever going to have someone call me beautiful and I only have to think about a slice of cheesecake to gain half a stone.
How the hell can I get a bloke to even tolerate me, let alone love me?
I want sex
Okay, so I want sex on my terms and not ‘just’ sex. I feel the need to clarify because whenever I have ever mentioned this to entrusted people I’m told sex is easy to get. Firstly, experience has told me this very much isn’t the case. Going out with my Liverpool based ex-best friend I have two very distinct memories. The first, while she was married, was her telling any bloke that approached us that we weren’t interested. Yup, clam whammed by my own best friend who would then go on to shame me for being single.
Fast forward to 2021 and we’re both single. But because she’s recently divorced, I’m meant to be the wing-woman, distracting the friend and not going anywhere so she can get his number.
Even with dating sites, I know being a part of someone’s spank bank is easy to achieve and I have had the 2am “come to mine right now” as a first message on Tinder from men wanting the ‘fattie’. This isn’t what I want (I don’t want someone who will encourage me to stay fat) and I do not want to settle.
All the easy to get is that people assume sex is about the orgasm and it really isn’t. I want the connection, the communication, and the fun. Going for the aim of ‘just sex’, you get none of that and, as a woman, there’s little chance of a happy ending either.
As it stands, I’m too old to be out in a club to be taken home as leftovers. Equally, the whole being able to talk to men making in near impossible to flirt let alone anything that remotely resembles a conversation. I’m fucked. In the most opposite meaning of the word.
I want a relationship
It’s been 7 years since I last went on a date. That same date became my last ‘boyfriend’. I do not have the energy for the first date routine, anxiety and the exhaustion of it not amounting to much.
I want a someone who makes me laugh, and more importantly has a laugh that I could listen to forever. The routine, the partnership, the security and openness.
Given that anytime I have anything resembling feelings for a bloke, I know he will see me fancying them as something offensive, as they should. What follows is a shame cycle for cursing the man with me wanting them yet wanting nothing more than for them to at the very least, want to be the Esmeralda to my Quasimodo. That, dear reader, has only happened once. Seriously, in my history of admitting my feelings I’ve been laughed at, told they’re not wanting a girlfriend (only to say yes to someone else less than an hour later), told to go and die, told they were having a laugh by flirting with me and informed me that telling them was a firm of sexual harassment.
The last one said, upon being told I thought he was beautiful, funny and wonderful but knowing I wasn’t good enough just wanted us to be friends. (Yes, I asked a man to be my friend and it keeps me awake often) His response was to say he was flattered but that we should only talk about work… to which he promptly ignored every single work query I had and voted the man who shouted ‘no one likes you’ to me , and caused me to request a move, as a ‘leader of the future’.
I’m dreading the next time my heart is captured by a bloke that will be just as repulsed as all of the above. It’s painful because I don’t have the rebound capacity of a Hollyoaks character, my RSD makes it really hard to bounce back at all and I’ve pretty much written off ever telling someone I like them again.
So, over the last 7 years and partly due to living alone through Covid, I’ve learned to tolerate myself and my own company. Is it lonely?! Oh fuck, it’s painfully lonely. However it is far less painful than the alternative.
I Wanted a Family
That can’t seem so shocking?! I’m a woman and I bleed once a month as a reminder that I’ve once again failed to achieve what my body was built for. It also stands as yet another social check point, I’ve failed to reach in this game of life.
Once again, other people have reminded me that there are ways and I don’t have to make it so hard on myself if it’s what I want. Well, it’s not just having a baby. I’m not that person who is biologically driven. I want a family, not an isolated womb goblin to fuck up in completely different ways to how my parents did.
What I wanted was the social norm; the man, the kids, the happiness. The ‘insert holiday here’ table and photos to look back at with fondness. I just wanted some love to call my own.
Friends
Who didn’t grow up watching Friends and hoping for a life like that?
It’s not that I haven’t had friends, or still have friends. It’s just that I’m not very good at keeping them.
Part of ADHD means I’m someone who overcompensates. I’m a giver and unable to say no. Until I’m exhausted, and I reign in. On top of that, there’s the standard miscommunication and emotional deregulation that massively pisses people off and just as quickly as they’ve appeared in my life, they’re gone.
TIPS
- If you are new to my life, I will always be petrified you’re going to leave me.
- I cannot get rid of the thought that I am a monster and that’s why I’m unlovable.
- If I fancy you, please understand I don’t want to repulse you. If I ever tell you or you find out, know that I’m not expecting a positive response, but please don’t tell me to die, laugh at me or remind me of how ugly I am.
- If you’re a friend, I adore you. If I bail on plans, it’s because me not being there will improve the event and I know you’ll still get to go.
The Queens of Geekdom 