We meet every other week for 90 minutes either in Menlo Park or online in California.
ADHD couples counseling is not about pointing fingers or deciding who is to blame. It is about understanding the patterns that ADHD can create in a relationship, often beneath the surface: missed cues, overwhelm, emotional intensity, forgetfulness, resentment, or feeling unseen. Our goal is to help you reconnect with the part of each of you that wants to show up with care, honesty, and presence. Together, we can begin making your relationship feel less like a place of pressure and more like a place where both of you can feel understood, supported, and proud.
You love your partner but trusting them is getting harder and harder. You’re exhausted from trying to have the same fights over and over again. You tell them what you need and how important it is. They tell you they understand and will make it happen this time. And then it doesn’t, or even worse, it’s almost finished. And when you control your anger and try to talk about it they just shut down and mumble an apology. You wonder if they even care, if they even see how hurt and tired you are.
Maybe you are on the other side. You try so hard. They ask you for something and you agree and you have every intention to do it but the day gets away from you, overwhelms you, or you just forget. You know it is the ADHD but that just feels like an excuse and you feel like a burden. You’ve stopped trying to do anything because everything just feels like it is wrong. You love them but you just feel like you make them miserable.
And affection just feels like another battleground. One of you just needs some affection and the other just needs some space. Forget about actually having a great time and enjoying sex, that is a luxury. You just want to enjoy each other’s company again.
ADHD is hard. It’s hard to have and it is hard to live with. Trust, respect and love depend on the very aspects of memory, recall, and frustration tolerance that are difficult with ADHD. And no matter how tolerant and understanding a partner is, they can’t be a caregiver or the one who does everything. So how do you overcome these problems?
We don’t start with another planner or blame or a cycle of tools that are just not going to work. We start with a safe place to discover both the joy and spontaneity and fun that an ADHD partner brings to a relationship. We start with changes that are real and practical and bring back trust. And we start slow.
I know how much the quick intensive or the fast fix feels seductive. Who doesn’t want to solve all their problems in a weekend? But decades of habits, resentments, hurts, rejection, and defeat don’t go away overnight. They take persistent and loving experiences to heal and move beyond. You and your partner can be amazing together. Let me help you bring back the joy and wonder you had at the beginning.
Yes. ADHD can affect much more than attention; it can shape communication, follow-through, emotional regulation, household responsibilities, time, planning, and intimacy. In relationships, these patterns can sometimes become painful: one partner may feel criticized or overwhelmed, while the other feels alone, dismissed, or overburdened. Couples counseling can help you understand ADHD with less blame and more compassion, while building practical ways to work together rather than against each other.
ADHD can create misunderstandings that are easy to personalize. Forgetfulness may be experienced as not caring. Emotional intensity may feel like overreacting. Difficulty starting or completing tasks may become a source of resentment. Over time, couples can fall into cycles of criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, or parent-child dynamics. Therapy can help name these patterns, separate the person from the problem, and create new ways to communicate, repair, and share responsibility.
In every relationship, someone has a strength or a weakness that affects the relationship. This is true whether ADHD exists or not. However, with ADHD, this often becomes entrenched and builds on old patterns of defeat and rejection. This isn’t insurmountable. But it does have to be addressed seriously, realistically and with sensitivity from all involved. The first step is acknowledging that it exists. The next is that it isn’t fair and never will be. And finally, let’s dig in and change it.
Definitely not. Your job is to bring yourself to therapy with the most open heart and mind you can muster. Full stop, that’s it. During therapy, I hope you learn something new about ADHD and I will provide lots of resources if you are interested in them but nobody is a diagnosis and your “job” in Couples Counseling is to be open, not to become a therapist to yourself or your partner.
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