Not everything is ADHD and I do not mean that as an insult or invalidation of you.

Some people intuit that “spirit of adventure” means NOT planning every detail, worrying only about essentials, and rolling with the punches. The opposite of “spirit of adventure” is having controlling expectations, task lists, and arbitrary deadlines, over what is supposed to be a pleasurable day.

I know that I am “wear bathing suit, toss towel in bag, head to beach, figure rest out” type of person. My pleasure of beach day is ruined by 2 days of pre-planning, a day of driving around for supplies, 2 hours of packing, carting coolers of shit to a spot we’re now chained-to, and so forth.

When planning the activity overwhelms the activity… maybe you’re not the one with the issue.

Hey! I got my diagnosis the same age as you are now.

I think giving those struggles a name and knowing what to Google for when looking up help, that is adding adhd to search, made things a bit easier.

Plus knowing I’m not lazy and incompetent is nice. My brain works in a way which makes daily life as most people have it tricky is all.

For me when I get tasks thrown at me while doing something, I just stop. That doesn’t work for me at all.

I need all tasks upfront, then I make a list and order how I’ll do them, hopefully. My partner and I both know this and adjust accordingly. But we’ve been doing this since way before my or her diagnosis.

We both found out in our mid thirties we got adhd. I got diagnosed when I was treated for depression. When reading up on it I basically diagnosed my wife and she got properly diagnosed a while after.

TLDR for your issue Imo In the end it doesn’t matter if it’s an adhd thing or now. Talk it out and find a way to distribute tasks which works for both of you.

Yes, totally, thank you for this. Read it to my spouse. Good luck to you both! I stay up late with a list to do next day stuff if necessary, could be useful for hiking. Significant other says staying up makes me cranky anyways haha but it helps me

Well I hadn’t thought about it that way but now that you mention it, it explains a lot…

Yeah mate, that’s bang on. I was diagnosed at 35, after years of struggling with exactly what you describe. The guilt of ‘losing’ my adventurous streak, the quiet blame for holding someone else back. The shame is real, feeling like you’re never as much as you should or could be. It’s what leaves so many of us late diagnosis types scarred and withdrawn.

The turning around point was the diagnosis. Learning why you are experiencing all of that makes all the difference, gives you a frame of reference to deal with it and improve things. Start healing.

Importantly, even if the doctor says you’re ‘normal’, ie no ADHD, it doesn’t need to change your approach. Recognising who you are and how your mind works can come from a professional, or it can come from you. If I had been taught as a child to recognise my own patterns and deal with them in my own way, I’d have been much happier despite being undiagnosed. Everyone’s fucking weird, some of are just weird enough to get a doctors note (and meds) to go with it. Give yourself some slack, treat your mind with the care it deserves.

Depending on how my wife tries to do the task stacking, I’ll try to send the message by abruptly stopping the task I’m doing and switching to the new task. It’s a fairly quick realization when there’s a sink of half washed dishes when I go to start laundry. She’s gotten much better at it over time though.

Managing time and priorities is absolutely huge. You can get better at this stuff but you will probably never be great at handling competing demands on your time. I use a lot of phone timers and task lists to help me stay on track but ultimately I will always struggle. The difference with having a diagnosis was also a game changer in terms of how I felt and losing the shame of not being able to cope. On the other hand it also radicalised me and made me resentful of how I was being treated. I had long suspected that there was something unreasonable about the way people expected me to behave and now I knew why.

I began defending my choices and setting boundaries. Ultimately this destroyed my marriage but I couldn’t go on pretending to be normal and if she can’t accept that, it’s her loss. I think it was a co-dependent relationship. We tend to attract people that seek to control us (not usually consciously or maliciously but, yeah) and this is a recipe for burn out. At work it has been much better, my employer makes allowances for me and work relationships have improved dramatically. They give me tasks where I can play to my strengths and make a positive difference.

In short, getting a diagnosis has been an absolute game changer. The medication is a significant component of the recovery process but it shouldn’t be viewed as a silver bullet. Meditation and learning about the condition has been huge. I can accept who I am, stop hating myself and have compassion for myself.

Whatever happens, I hope you two can get back to hiking without the madness. There are tons of ways to address it tactically that others have gone into, so I won’t make any additional suggestions but I can say that as a diagnosed adhd-haver I can super duper relate. I hope you get the diagnosis outcome and support from your partner that you need.

Look up the kanban method. It’s really commonly used in software engineering because there’s always so many tasks to do and very often we discover other tasks to do while in the midst of another task—natural task stacking. I’ve taken to using it in my day to day life and it’s the only way I’ve found that actually keeps some sanity to the chaos. Also, it improved my family relationships when I finally got everyone on board with it.

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Hi there, I’m still in the process of finding a therapist but strongly suspect I have ADHD. Task stacking is really stressful for me as well. In addition to that, there are a lot of places and things in our flat that represent unfinished tasks that I have to ignore to get started with anything at all.

Write things down. When she starts giving you tasks stop and open up your notes app. Ask clarifying questions if necessary.

This sounds a lot like problems my fiance and I have had. She’s diagnosed, I’m still working on that. She also has OCD. She gets stressed very easily when preparing for a trip, and used to get worse and worse approaching her strict departure time, which has caused some conflict between us, as I am habitually late to things.

We’ve been able to work it out, by just having a conversation about how we get ready. Now I try harder to hit her target time, and she allows a little wiggle room. It’s taken a lot of stress off of us both, making the whole process easier. It’s still a chaotic mess, but at least we’re not fighting about it anymore lol

The one that I’m having now, which I’m very curious to know if anyone has also experienced, is an extreme amount of frustration and stress when my spouse starts “task stacking” with me. She’ll ask me to do something around the house, or with our kiddo, and then while I’m in the middle of doing that thing, she’ll ask me to do another second thing, and then a third, and so on until either all of the tasks are finished or I politely ask her to stop piling work onto my plate.

So relatable that on a worse day I could cry lol. The point I’ve struggled to make is that even if it’s not all things I’m expected to do right now that stacking a list up like that blocks me from doing any of them.

It sounds like your ADHD diagnosis is helping you with some introspection! I think you should discuss this with your wife so the two of you can come up with some strategies that will help you both get back to an activity that you both enjoy together.

You may be irritated at “being told what to do” because of Opposition Defiance Disorder, which is often comorbid with ADHD.

Or maybe you’re hyperfocused on your own morning routine and getting irritated at being interrupted when your wife asks you to do things.

But to me, this sounds like a communication issue more than an ADHD issue.

Is your wife asking you to take care of things related to the hike? “Can you fill up the water bottles? Can you pack the snacks? Where should we go today?” These are all things that could be planned/prepped at a different time, like the night before. Maybe doing so would be less stressful.

Or is your wife assigning you to-do list items unrelated to the hike? “Can you wash the dishes? Can you call X this week to ask about plans for Y?” Again, these assignments could be discussed or completed at a different time or in a different way (i.e. shared list with to-do items she could add for both of you.)

If it’s the latter, why does your wife feel like she needs to assign you tasks in your household? Is there a chore imbalance that could be addressed? (Is your ADHD otherwise affecting your shared household management tasks?) Is your wife more of the “project manager” and she’s the one keeping track of what needs to get done every week? If yes, please for the sake of your relationship, look into the concept of emotional labor. I’d also suggest looking into Fair Play Life. Potentially you and your wife could reorganize how responsibilities are split so that she no longer needs to ask you to do things, and thus you stop getting annoyed at a growing to-do list of assigned tasks.