Looking for further guidance and support on ADHD Women's Wellbeing? Check out my resource library here or search for any topic you need on the Podcast here.

Whether you've been with your partner for years or you're navigating dating after a late diagnosis, ADHD changes how we love, connect and show up in relationships, and this episode is entirely about that.

Welcome to this week's summer compilation episode. Rather than a single conversation, I've pulled together some of the most resonant clips from three different episodes on ADHD, love, intimacy and relationships, because I wanted to bring all of this into one place for you.

We begin with Lisa Rabinowitz, couples counsellor, certified Gottman and PACT therapist and author of Why Won't You Stop Interrupting Me? Lisa talks about how blame rarely helps either partner, why neurodivergence is often present on both sides of a relationship, and how working as a team rather than against each other can genuinely turn things around.

Then we hear from Sara-Louise Ackrill and Bontle Senne, AuDHD therapists, writers, and advocates and co-authors of The ND Lovers Club. They talk about psychological safety, masking in relationships, self-disclosure, and why understanding yourself is always the foundation before you can truly connect with someone else.

And we close with Dr Angela Wright, a trauma-trained clinical sexologist, sex medicine practitioner and menopause clinician, who talks honestly about how hormones, the nervous system and ADHD all intersect when it comes to desire, intimacy and what changes in midlife.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why neurodivergence is often present in both partners, even when only one has a diagnosis
• How to move from blame to teamwork in a neurodiverse relationship
• Lisa's concept of the "talk nook" and why having a dedicated space for connection matters
• Why psychological safety is the foundation of intimacy for neurodivergent people
• How masking and people pleasing quietly erode intimacy over time
• What self-disclosure in relationships and dating really looks like for ND women
• Why so many neurodivergent women are reconsidering traditional relationship structures
• How hormones and perimenopause affect desire, arousal and connection
• Why the ADHD brain's need for novelty and dopamine can complicate long term relationships
• How the nervous system underpins sexual arousal, and why feeling safe comes first

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Welcome and introduction to this week's compilation episode
• 03:30 - Lisa Rabinowitz: why both partners are often neurodivergent
• 05:47 - Moving from blame to understanding in a neurodiverse relationship
• 08:00 - How couples come back from the brink with awareness and teamwork
• 10:15 - The three legged race: working toward the finish line together
• 14:48 - Focusing on strengths and creating the talk nook
• 16:29 - Sara-Louise Ackrill and Bontle Senne: psychological safety in relationships
• 20:53 - Why masking is survival, not a quirky personality trait
• 23:27 - Self-disclosure: what to share, when and why
• 28:27 - How perimenopause and diagnosis collide in midlife relationships
• 33:04 - Celebrating the traits neurodivergent women bring to relationships
• 34:33 - Dr Angela Wright: dopamine, novelty and desire in long term relationships
• 37:00 - How hormones affect arousal and what changes in perimenopause
• 41:22 - The nervous system, safety and why emergency mode kills desire

Links and Resources:

• Find my popular ADHD workshops and resources on my website here.
• Follow the podcast on Instagram: @adhd_womenswellbeing_pod
• Get my book, The ADHD Women's Wellbeing Toolkit (also available in ebook and audiobook) here
• Join the More Yourself membership community here
• Visit Lisa's website: counselorforcouples.com
• Connect with Lisa on Instagram: @rabinowitzcounseling
• Get Lisa's book: Why Won't You Stop Interrupting Me? Simple Solutions for ADHD Couples
• Visit Sara-Louise and Bontle's website: builttodiverge.com
• Get their book: The ND Lovers Club: How Neurodivergent Women Lust, Like and Love
• Visit Dr Angela Wright's website: spicedpearhealth.co.uk

Kate Moryoussef is a women's ADHD lifestyle and wellbeing coach, author and EFT practitioner who helps overwhelmed and unfulfilled newly diagnosed women with ADHD find more calm, balance, hope, health, compassion, creativity, and clarity.

Foreign.

So.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of the ADHD Women's Wellbeing Podcast.

And today, I'm absolutely delighted to say we're doing something different.

We're doing a bit of a summer series, and as you know, we have got the most amazing amount of episodes in guests and experts, and I don't want these to go missing.

And so I'm going to be taking a little bit of a break from interviewing new guests.

But what I've done is curate some fantastic episodes on different topics because I really want to kind of create a bit of a roundup on some of the best conversations I've had.

I think the ones with the most brilliant aha.

Moments and insights.

And I want to deliver these highlights.

And also for myself, I go back and listen and learn from my guests, and I want you guys to do the same.

So each week we're going to have a different theme, and then we're going to bring it all together in one place.

So today we're going to be learning and listening again and again, you might be a new listener here and don't want to go through the whole back catalog.

And so this episode is going to be about relationships, ADHD in relationships, pouring our time and energy into our relationships, but doing so with a more neuro affirming lens.

Now that we understand ourselves, or maybe our partners and friends, family members, we're going to be honing in on understanding our own wants, our own needs, desires, and even those triggers that, you know, you're bringing to the table, but also how best to show up and how your partner can meet those needs when those triggers and issues and emotions do become a little bit more intense and reactive.

So this, none of this is about perfection.

This is not about saying, right now we have an ADHD diagnosis, everything's going to be perfect.

Absolutely not.

But I really hope that these clips will allow you to think about how your emotions are showing up in your relationship and the way you love and what your needs might be and why you just can't stand certain things that your partner does, and also what those hormones and the hormonal changes can really mean for connections and our sex life.

As we enter a new phase, it's really important we hone in on things like sensory differences and our working memory in our executive of functioning and all the things that might come into play when it comes to creating more loving relationships.

We're going to begin with Lisa Rabinowitz, and I really love this conversation with Lisa.

And in this clip, we talk about how to figure out your communication styles and your relationship and why often ADHD people tend to attract other neurodiverse partners.

It's very interesting.

And how working together as a couple, we can bring our relationship back from that point where it feels like maybe there's no return, that we get better understanding of who we are, we both are, and our desires and our needs and how to show each other and ourselves that compassion.

And Lisa compares managing a relationship to a three legged race.

And it takes teamwork, collaboration, and you just can't push ahead of your partner.

But the most important thing is working on ourselves because that's one area that we can control.

And I really love her idea of looking at your partner's strengths and focusing on the positive in the relationship that you have and finding that gratitude.

Because sometimes that is where we come back from the brink.

When I came into the field it was this person is the ADHD person and this is the non ADHD person.

And sometimes it is really hard because the person who's at been the non ADHD person thinks they are non adhd.

But I see a lot of neurodivergence and they haven't been diagnosed and they're the, they feel like I'm the organized one, I'm the one that has the routine just like you describe.

But frequently and again like you said, generally it could be on the spectrum just showing up in a different way.

They are attracting each other.

And I would say very rarely do I actually see a truly non ADHD partner with a ADHD partner.

Interesting.

I don't, I'm not seeing that.

That's so interesting.

I'm looking around as well and I'm, you know, again, it's qualitative research as opposed to, but for the many clients I've had, my family, myself included in my relationship, it's across the board that it's almost this sort of magnetic desire to.

Yes, obviously the physicality.

And then once you get past, you know, the physical attraction, there's the, well, that person's really good at waking up in the morning and I'm not so good.

So we sort of help each other, but that person is not so sociable, but they need someone else to bring them out of their shell a little bit.

And we kind of complement and work with each other.

But I wonder if you agree that as life gets harder, children involved, neurodivergent, children involved, stressors, life, life, everything.

And then all of a sudden that those communication styles is a breakdown and, or maybe like you say, that other person isn't willing to recognize their own neurodivergence.

And there's sort of like a bit of blame going on of like I'm the normal one and you need to sort your shit out basically.

And it's kind of like the neurotypical in inverted commas is saying these are all your issues and you need to sort that.

What do you do in that situation?

Right.

So that happens frequently.

And what I try to point to is if we put blame on one person, they're not going to stay in therapy.

They're not.

And I have people coming to me all the time with other therapists.

You know, I was the one to blame.

I was the one that was bad.

I didn't do this right.

I should have done that more.

I'm not good enough.

So I what's called level the playing field.

You have your challenges and you have your challenges.

And that's why in the book I specifically I have 15 challenges for, for the ADHD partner and I really wanted, I have to tell you to come up with 15 for the non.

I called it non ADHD partner.

I only came up with 8.

But again, in any couple you can see a mix.

You might find yourself over here and you might find yourself over here, but usually there is some differences.

So you each have your challenges and that's how I look at it.

I don't want to do the finger pointing.

That's not going to be helpful for anybody.

So it's.

We have a communication challenge.

We are two person system.

The two of us are responsible.

How are we going to work out the situation?

It's where a lot of tools come into play and it feels very different.

They'll frequently tell me like this feels very different because when it's the blame game, it's not comfortable, it doesn't feel fair, it doesn't feel balanced.

I'm going to say though, if somebody really has a true deficit in emotional regulation or really the ADHD has not been dealt with or it could be addiction.

Right.

It could be an addiction that's not dealt with or trauma that wasn't dealt with.

We want people to get coaching, individual therapy because otherwise we're not going to be able to show up in therapy and effectively work together as a couple.

Yeah, I'd love to give my listeners hope of.

Have you had couples that have come in and you think, oh my God, these guys are like, this is the crux point and you've seen things turn around because they've understood how to relearn communication skills.

Oh, 100% every day, all day.

So I have many people who are, I call it on the cliff.

Like we're about to go off the cliff and we're in deep trouble or we are off the cliff and how are we going to pull it back and get away from the cliff?

And frequently it's because they don't know how to work together.

Like in the beginning it was easy.

I love your spontaneity.

That's so much fun.

Day to day spontaneity.

No, no.

Like we have a routine, we have 8 o'.

Clock.

Like let's get going.

No, we can't stay in bed till 10.

Right.

And so these things that were so much fun that we loved now eventually become.

I don't like and maybe I really, really don't like.

And they're becoming a problem.

It's really nice to be creative right now.

We have to do this right.

And stay in the lane and that creativity's better go out the window because that's just not how we're doing this now.

What do we do?

And so it's first, like you said, we need understanding and we need a diagnosis of if we haven't had one, then we need true understanding.

Like what does it mean for me?

Because what I'm going to look like is different than anybody else, then to bring that, I mean, both people need to have that awareness of if one person happens to be the one struggling with adhd, what does that mean?

How is it impacting?

Again, not blaming, but we need to understand and we need awareness and, and then we can say now what?

It's not a divorce sentence.

It is a learning opportunity.

We're going to do something different.

And when we slow down, which is sometimes really hard, then we can practice.

What are we going to do next time?

Because it's going to happen again that we didn't get up at 8 o' clock when we said we were supposed to or we didn't pay the bill that we said we were going to pay.

Like there's certain things that we can predict and now we can start planning and preparing, working together as a team, a team and not against each other.

It's a very different feel.

Yeah, that's really, that's really good to hear.

I mean, I'm just thinking when you're talking, you know, so many of us have had family trauma.

There's been divorce, marriage breakdowns, chaos, dysfunction due to undiagnosed adhd.

And that can impact family, families.

We're looking at addiction, we're Looking at financial, you know, array, so many different things here.

And I think now that we have awareness, we collectively and I, I think I'm going to speak on behalf of many of my community.

We want to break cycles and we look back at the family dysfunction and we see a lot of heartbreak and difficulty and hardship and people not really enjoying lives, not thriving.

And they kind of think, I don't want to be like that.

I want my kids to grow up in calm, regulated households with more fun and happiness and laughter.

And I think what you're saying is like, it is possible, but we have to recognize actually what are those difficulties?

And I wonder, is it okay for the partner to be a scaffolding for the person who's got ADHD or neurodivergent?

Like, what point does that partner have to sort of say, you know what?

I, I have to pull away from being the scaffolding and you have to be more empowered here.

I think it goes back to what, what we both mentioned earlier, which is self responsibility.

First, we need everyone to be showing up.

Now.

It's okay if you have trauma in your history, addiction in your history, ADHD in your history, all of that in your history, whatever it is.

But let's get the help we need.

And as we're getting the help we need, right, we're going to get the support.

We need a support.

We need a support system, a community.

I mean, this your information to be able to get out to people.

Like, I'm not alone.

Because so often people feel like I'm the only one suffering.

Nobody else gets this.

No one else is going through this.

No, you're providing this place where people are like, oh my gosh, that's exactly what's happening in my house.

So it's so reassuring.

And so what we're going to do is make sure everybody has what they need to show up.

And again, that's not always going to be perfect.

We are not looking for perfect.

Perfect is in the movies, that doesn't really exist.

So we're going to need to see where we are and then work from there.

What's one small step?

What's one small thing?

And unfortunately, a lot of times we have been doing the scaffolding for 10 years, so thinking that it's going to end today is not realistic.

And so that's gonna.

You're gonna feel like a failure.

Your partner's gonna feel like a failure if you're like, I'm done.

I'm not doing this anymore.

I know, but you've been doing it for 10 years.

So now how do we start rolling it back, start shifting slowly.

But we have a goal in mind.

We're trying to get to X place and we're going to take one step together and one step together.

We are in a three legged race.

We are only getting to that finish line together and so we.

My partner can't fall.

My partner falls.

I'm not dragging him there going, I made it to the finish line, that's great.

But your partner's way back there.

So what are we going to do to take one step forward today, this week?

And that's why I like to try to really break it down into small, small pieces.

Small pieces.

What's one thing that we can start doing?

And a lot of times it's about empowering people.

When people feel empowered like I can do this, then they're willing to take the next step and it really snowballs forward with gentle loving encouragement and empowerment.

Yeah, I love that you forgot that.

And you didn't do that.

That's not going to do it.

Yeah, it's not going to do it.

Yeah, it's so nice to hear.

I like that analogy of the three legged race because like you say you've one goes down, you know that we all go down type thing.

So it's just, it's that new dance, I guess it's learning a new dance, isn't it?

Or how to do life.

How can the non ADHD partner in whatever capacity they are in a different spectrum or neurotypical, meet in the middle with their ADHD traits which we know aren't going anywhere, like it's part of us.

And the ADHD traits can be so amazing.

Like you say you talk about strengths.

How do we then work with the strengths and start celebrating them?

So I slow down and ask couples every day, let's focus on a strength.

Each day we're going to sit down and actually I, we're probably going to talk about this at the end but I'll just mention it now.

There's a free giveaway and in that free giveaway tells you different exercises to do together and one of them is setting up a place together where you're going to sit and talk.

And I give a lot more instructions than that.

But that is very foundational in my book that you need to have a space.

This is your space and if you need fidget toys, if you need pillows, you know, all sorts of scented things, whatever you like, I want you to make up a space.

A space.

This is your conversation space.

Your connection space.

I call it the nook.

You can call it whatever you want.

Uh, it's not supposed to be the bed.

You'll see that in the book.

The bed is a place that other things happen.

This is a place where we are going to talk.

And I know in some people's homes it's not a perfect place.

In some people's homes they do, they have, you know, like, oh, we don't really use this room so much or we don't use this couch very often.

Let's sit over here, whatever it is.

And you're gonna sit down.

And it takes one minute, trust me.

We spend lots of time talking about the negatives.

We can spend one minute and, and say something and do something positive.

And what does that look for every.

Look like for every couple?

People can do all sorts of different things but focus on the positive.

That is what we're gonna do.

Again, it's such a small step.

But when we start seeing the positive, we see it over here and over here and over here.

And when we see the negative, we see it over here and over here and over here and over here too.

Yeah.

So our choice.

Okay, so the next clip we have Sarah Louise, Akril and Bontley Sen. And in this clip we talk about addressing how much we invest in maintaining a healthy relationship and facing up to these hard conversations that many of us are fearful of having.

We know there's RSD in the mix for sure.

So having a conversation that might trigger reactivity or emotional responses or even just putting ourselves out there on the line can feel really scary.

And why they are seeing more neurodivergent people looking to alternatives to the standard societal norms of dating that perhaps we don't want to stick to.

I mean, I literally just wrote a post before we came onto this conversation, interestingly about I wonder if therapy and marriage counseling or anything, anything like this should be as mandatory as like an mot.

You know, like we pay our mortgage, we have to do an mot we have to do certain things because it's been demanded from us.

But actually we should be investing in our self development and our mental well being the same way as we invest in all the other things.

And think about the prevention side like the prevention of marriage and partnership breakdowns.

Think about that knock on effect, like being able to grow together as a relationship I think is profound.

Especially when you want to, you want to have a long term relationship and you want to kind of grow together.

Sara, I was wondering maybe what kind of like advice that you have with regards to someone listening now who does want to have more of these open conversations.

I know that you are a therapist and, like, how do you, I guess, work with couples who are coming?

I don't know if you do work with couples or not.

I don't see couples.

I see individuals, um, mainly because of being autistic.

I find all the dynamics in one space quite overwhelming.

Yeah, but what I would say is your podcasting.

Buntle.

As a sex coach and a writer, I'm a therapist.

It's easy for us, in a way, to talk about this stuff.

And I'm always surprised when I speak to clients at how hard it is to mention this stuff.

But I also know it's hard.

It's easy to coexist with a partner, to be dating or to live together, and to sort of be parallel to each other's lives.

It's hard to look them in the eye, especially when you're autistic.

It's hard to look them in the eye and go, you know what?

This isn't enough.

This isn't working.

I need you to touch me.

I need you to do that.

I need you to never clean your teeth right before kissing me.

I know it's really hard to look someone in the eye and be that blunt about sex.

And it's great to learn that it's not an optional extra.

It's an essential part of our being.

Whether you're spiritual or not.

It's our life force.

It's our energy.

It's, you know, if you want to talk about chakra health or whatever, like, you know, we all relate to the fact that you can't just.

You can't just cut your sexual energy out and act like it's not happening.

But I know that it's risky to address it.

My tips would be things like if you're having to constantly mention that you're neurodivergent, then you're not feeling psychologically safe to just relax and, and be neurodivergent.

So there needs to be some discussion around what being neurodivergent even means to start with.

And I think that psychological safety is really, really important.

You might also want to make a decision as to whether you want to be with a neurodivergent person specifically.

I actually find a great refuge in friends and partners who come from some kind of minority background of a.

Of any kind.

Because I feel that what people of minority backgrounds have in common is they know what it's like to be othered in different ways, and they know what it's like to not feel psychologically safe and to be on hyper vigilant and hyper alert all the time.

So my advice could be, you know, do you want to be with someone who's neurotypical and not getting it?

They might be neurotypical and getting it.

I'm not saying don't date neurotypicals, that's not the point.

But they need to get.

I think the psychological safety and the fact that masking for us is a survival instinct.

It's not a cute and quirky mask that we put on and off like this chameleon image.

It very much is survival.

It's, it's keeping us alive.

Masking is fundamental and I think if someone doesn't understand that you've got real issues in the relationship way below the level of having sex with them.

Yeah, I think that psychological safety is so validating and so important to hear you say those words.

Like, again, it's the articulation of something like, oh, that is what I'm not feeling.

I'm not feeling understood.

I'm not feeling like someone is taking an interest in, in what works for me.

Like you say, if I drop this mask and I'm authentic, like, will I still be accepted and will I still be loved and will I still be that person that they want to be with and being able to know that we're held and we're in it, we're, we're in a safe space and we can start being a bit more articulate with our needs.

Well, as Buntla says, nobody goes into a relationship with nothing.

Right.

We all have something that the other person needs to get used to or tolerate or compromise over, et cetera.

And I think that it's important that people either get comfortable with themselves and what they, how they want to show up as an nd person in a relationship.

But you don't always have to label things.

You know, if you're someone who isn't into labels, you, you're self diagnosed, you don't really want to medicalize your conversation with your partner.

You can say, this is giving me the ick.

I'm not keen on that.

You know, you can say, I'd rather you didn't.

You don't have to say, I have a sensory sensitivity.

You know, you can phrase it how you like, but unless you do the work, you accept yourself, you learn about yourself, you learn to self advocate, you can't really communicate with another person.

So it really is an inside job before establishing the fundamentals with the others.

I went on so many dates where I'd be like, well, I'm actually autistic.

And they'd be like, right, well, I'm guessing it doesn't affect too much because you've got a business and you seem fine kind of thing.

And that was so offensive.

But then I was thinking, what did I expect them to do with that?

You know?

Now when I see dating profiles and the person goes, I've got adhd, I'm like, cool, but what do you want the person to.

That doesn't really tell them anything about you in a way, like when you're self disclosing.

I would say this even in the workplace.

To what end are you self disclosing?

So sticking on a dating profile, I'm adhd, or telling your partner I'm going to get diagnosed.

That is one thing.

And that could be serving a purpose.

But what are you trying to achieve by saying it?

Because if it's for.

In my case it was.

I'm going to put it out there now because in three dates I'm going to become a clingy, horrible emotional mess and you're going to think I'm an idiot and not want to see me again.

Then I was like, well, maybe that's the bit I need to look at.

Why in three dates time am I going to be a clingy, emotional.

Oh, because I will have unmasked and I'll be sick of it by then and then they won't like me for who they thought I was.

Right, okay, we'll deal with that then.

But just telling them, oh, by the way, I'm autistic or I'm ND isn't really mitigating for the complication further down the line when I stop masking.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

Are you seeing a difference or a change in mindset or an evolution from say our generation, and I'm mid-40s, to a younger generation, you know, even in early 30s, are they advocating for themselves?

Are they more empowered with it, being able to have these conversations?

Or is this still sort of like a generational female pattern that we're seeing of where we are struggling?

We are, you know, even, you know, 20s, 30s, that we're still finding it hard to step into this sort of place of self authority?

Well, I see people who are 16 and I see people in their 70s.

Okay.

And I think what makes the difference is when they found out and how they go about processing their life presently and retroactively through the lens of neurodiversity.

Whether they are 16 or 70 actually is not what makes them more or less good at accepting advocating, as you might think it would.

You might think it was generational.

I think it's more about the fact that we are where we are today in society and this is how we view it.

And here are the people of all the different age groups now dealing with that.

It's more of a societal thing, rather a generational thing, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I think obviously it's going to change geographically as well, because what is true in the UK may not be true in, you know, Ghana.

But for me, I'm definitely seeing that women in their 20s, 100% are still trying to do whatever they can to please their partner because they just kind of don't know any better.

But a lot of people are going into their 30s and opting out of the system entirely.

So just going dating's not really worth it.

Everything is expensive.

I don't really feel like I'm going to have a wedding.

You know, what is the point of this?

I'd rather be with my friends because my friends actually have much longer relationships with them.

I can count on them.

I can't really count on dating.

So that's been a trend that we're seeing all over the world.

Right.

And it is as women become more financially independent in their 30s as well, that now people are just going, you know, I don't think this is really worth, you know, the juice is not worth the squeeze.

Yes.

And take that as as you want.

I think.

Well, we didn't have that one in the book.

You did come out with some quarters when we didn't have that one.

That's the name of your next book.

I love it.

Yeah.

But yeah, I agree with you.

I am hearing similar as well.

You know, especially you see the rise of women having children on their own, you know, using sperm donors, choosing that they would rather parent and do it on their own rather than kind of settle for someone who is not right for them or that they have to change or mask.

And I feel like that is maybe an interesting way that it's going.

But I wonder, is that also detrimental to being able to learn how to evolve and grow together as well?

I don't know.

I think that, you know, neurodivergent people often have different understandings of what relationship means and are often much more open to things like ethical non monogamy or, you know, polyamory, etc.

And so maybe you don't want to grow and learn with this person.

Maybe you're going, this is a two year thing.

We're going to both enjoy it and have a great time and be intimate and be friends and then leave.

Right.

You can decide to do those things.

But I think I'm not sure that people are missing out on things if people don't have the emotional intelligence and the emotional availability to do those things with them.

Right.

Because I'm not really seeing lesbians not dating.

It does seem to be a very heterosexual thing and it's a little, you know, and the men are trash.

We don't really need to go into that kind of discourse.

But I think it is women who are looking at that and going, it's not worth it.

And it's not just from the perspective of it won't be fun.

We have a part in the book where we talk about, you know, how do you know when it's time to leave?

Because neurodivergent women have a much higher likelihood of being in situations where there's domestic violence or there's psychological abuse or coercion, gaslighting.

And so you begin to not trust yourself at all and keep on staying in these situations where someone is bringing down your confidence and your self esteem and not helping you move forward.

In that situation, you're never going to grow with that person.

Right.

You are going to in fact keep on shrinking.

So there is a certain point at which I think people have to go like, is this relationship serving me?

If this person was my friend, would I put up with this behavior?

If my friend was with this person, what would I advise them?

You know, depersonalize it in some way, take yourself out of that context.

Because otherwise you may end up kind of sleepwalking into a relationship, thinking we're going to be together, we're going to grow together and then hanging on to it because you want that dream of the 40 year wedding anniversary or whatever.

Right?

Yeah.

I think what's interesting is that a lot of women who are getting these, this awareness, this, these diagnoses in midlife, it's colliding with menopause, perimenopause, and that they're both awakenings, aren't they?

You know, if you're, you know, nd or not, you are going to have this shift in this change of chapter during perimenopause.

And it's like we're peeling away layers and becoming someone else.

And then we have this understanding of our brain and our nervous system and hormones and everything that comes with this.

That's, that's, you know, that We've had, but just didn't know what it was.

And I. I see this in my community a lot, that women are just going, saw this.

I'm out.

I'm not with this person anymore.

I'm changing my career.

I'm moving.

Like, things are changing because I've settled for so long.

It's like a big eruption.

And so, yeah, I think it's exciting, but it's hard as well.

It's very unsettling.

And it's like everything has to break down to be rebuilt again.

Are you seeing this as well, Sara?

Well, I was just going to say settling is a big thing with autism, isn't it?

Because it's better the devil you know.

It's a routine of sorts.

It's really hard to break a routine, even if it's a painful and an abusive one.

Even Buntler mentioned abuse.

We're far more likely to have coercive control and other forms of domestic and intimate partner violence in our lives.

We're also more likely to be in poverty, and we're more likely to have complex trauma and to bulldoze over the red flags of real distress and difficulty in our life because it's become so normal.

So for all of these reasons, you can see why we might stay and we might even think, well, God, a good sex life is a bit of a luxury, to be fair.

I'm, you know, I might as well just be here and at least I'm.

Safe, you know, as you're talking about this, it also made me think for a lot of my friends who got divorces in our early 30s and continued kind of doing the divorce thing into mid-30s, late 30s, early 40s.

The one awakening that we're happening as often because it comes with diagnoses, is we're learning that all the things we thought were faults aren't false.

There's not bugs in the code, right?

These are how your brain work.

You don't have a choice about some of it.

And honestly, there are some really great things about being in relationships with people who are neurodivergent, right?

And I think that as women are more accepting of themselves and their symptoms, they're going, these aren't really symptoms.

They're kind of just traits.

And you can take them or leave them, but I'm pretty great, you know, I am creative.

I believe in justice.

My heart is so huge.

I will do anything for you.

I'm super loyal.

All I want to do is solve problems.

You know, love, sex, all of these things, right?

Can make you A fabulous partner.

And I think a lot of women that I've met certainly are just like, if he didn't see that, that's him.

Amazing.

I love that because when you look at the books, when you, when, when we were writing our book, I was like trying to find books on this stuff.

And it was all about how your male Asperger's partner is a nightmare and you deserve a medal for being with him.

Or, you know, how an Asperger's male partner will be cold and unloving and potentially even borderline narcissistic, abusive and, and that was it.

It was a.

All about men.

It was very disparaging about Asperger's men and it was never about ADHD anyone.

It wasn't about women, non binary people, trans people.

It was just quite depressing.

And you know, I think that we live in a society where you're either sick and not functioning or you're well and functioning to a degree.

And we don't know enough about the social model of disability and the fact that loads of us are just in the middle somewhere, dealing day to day with just being different statistically.

But I just want to say that when we talk about neurodiversity, there will be a lot of people going, oh my God, you know, everyone's on a spectrum.

Everyone's getting diagnosed.

I keep reading the paper.

Everyone's got a label.

We are not all on a spectrum.

Neurodivergent people have a brain structure that is intact like neurotypical people, but they have a markedly different brain activity.

So how we view the world, interpret the world, perceive the world, respond to the world, conceive of the world is a hundred percent different.

Different to our neurotypical peers.

So something that involves connection and intimacy and vulnerability and sex and sensory like obviously we're going to process it all through those lenses, but they are differences and we are wonderful people.

You know, we're not, we're not good or bad because when you're a divergent, it's just, we are, you know, we're on a different kind of mainframe.

You know, we're a, we're the PCs in a world of Apple Macs or whatever, you know, but we're just different.

We're just approaching stuff differently.

I really loved what Sara said about accepting and celebrating the differences in how neurodivergent people show up in relationships.

And I think that's key, is that when we get this understanding of ourselves and this diagnosis, we have to lean into the acceptance and then begin Celebrating because we may have had a lifetime of criticizing and feeling shameful.

And we are going to finish off with Dr. Angela Wright.

And I absolutely love this conversation with Dr. Wright.

And if you want to listen to the full conversation, please do go back and listen to it.

And in this clip, we started by looking at how dopamine seeking and ADHD can interplay with your relationship and sex life.

And Angela shares with us why you should bring some compassion to your view of your sex life in midlife.

You know, we shouldn't just kind of get rid of our, our desires and our wants just because we're hitting midlife perimenopause.

And why you actually might need more novelty in your relationships.

We've got to remember that we are dopamine seeking, novelty seeking people with adhd.

And when that boredom kicks in, we might need something to help spice things up a little bit.

With adhd, there's a lot of dopamine seeking as well.

And so I guess if you've been with a partner for a long time and you were talking about different sex drives and seeking, you know, other sexual partners and then having shame and not understanding why there's boredom or needing that novel novelty, is that something that you hear a lot about?

Yeah, loads.

And you know, again on the back, the backdrops, the sex is biopsychosocial.

That's what we're taught.

We're taught that there's a body based bit, there's a psychology based bit and a social aspect of it.

And I think socially, a lot of women, we tell them that they are probably not supposed to be as interested in sex as men are, not initiate it as much, not like doing the weird stuff, you know, that they're sort of meant to be partners first and foremost rather than necessarily, necessarily people that initiate or write the story for it.

So I think you've got that element of people perhaps feeling slightly embarrassed that they've always masturbated a lot or they've always had specific sexual interests that perhaps are not things that they felt confident about or we see a bit more kink, more novelty.

And I do see more people acting out, I suppose is the word that I would use.

But it doesn't always mean that they're doing that for dubious reasons.

There's a lot of stuff that keeps us in long term monogamous relationships and makes it difficult to say that we're not happy or to leave those relationships.

But I do see quite a lot of women who are a bit bored, a bit disinterested.

And are maybe starting to find themselves behaving in ways that they don't quite understand what their drivers are.

And they feel a lot of conflict over the drive to do something, but also their values or their moral ethical frameworks.

Yeah, God, absolutely.

There's that justice sensitivity, there's that need for stability.

But like you say, there's like looking for novelty and interest and, and self.

Esteem and rejection sensitivity and all of that stuff.

And you're aging, you're changing.

So if people are offering you attention and interest, you know, all of these things make it really complex.

I think you've got to have like an incredibly compassionate eye when you're talking to people, people at this stage of life.

And actually sex is, we're not taught that sex is quite novelty driven.

Jack Morin wrote a book about the erotic and said that the erotic equation is attraction plus obstacle equals desire.

And like that speaks to the ADHD brain, doesn't it?

You know, if you really, really want something and you can't have it, can you think about anything else?

But actually when you're in a long term relationship and you've got somebody on tap that you've slept with, you know, probably a thousand times and you've run out of novelty, these are all the drivers that sit underneath someone saying to me that they've lost interest in sex or they find themselves attracted to other people, other activities, you know, solo sex.

It's really complicated.

Yeah, it is.

And it's so important just to, to state all of this and then would you say that.

I'm thinking for women, the psychological perspective, if you are feeling connected with your partner and you're feeling understood in your own body and you have that, you have that validation.

Do you still think the hormone site though?

You kind of have to blend the two, don't we?

Because sometimes we just don't understand why we're not feeling in the mood or why our mood is low or why suddenly our husband is driving us insane and he's not really done anything different, he's just, or the chewing or the snoring or the, all the things that so many women are experiencing midlife, like the tolerance level is gone down and we don't want to be like that.

Would you say that's, that's when we need to start looking at hormones again?

I think it does all sort of blend together.

So you've got your, you know, your body is your tool.

Your body, the sort of soup of your hormones affects how you receive incoming stimulus.

You know, whether that's Sexual stimulus like touch, it feels different in the absence of hormones.

You don't get such a lot of blood supply to the genitals if you haven't got estrogen going through your system.

And so the feeling of being aroused feels different.

You know, you won't feel as full and sort of wet as you get aroused as you will do when you're full of hormones versus when you're not.

Sex gets painful, you get negative consequences like urine infections or, you know, funny smells, funny discharge.

Orgasms diminish.

So you've got the tool of your body that does often do better when you have your hormones replaced.

You, you know, you can.

I'm always conscious of people listening who can't have hormones, don't want hormones.

It's not that you can't have sex and have a good sex life without them, it's just a little bit easier if you have access to them.

You've got the brain bit of hormones, which is, you know, how easy is it for you to fantasize, to think about sex, to respond to a cue to feel spontaneous hunger, or to respond to the view of someone you find really hot, you know, naked and actually feel something.

I get so many women that sort of say, you know, Keanu Reeves could walk through the kitchen naked and I just wouldn't give her monkeys.

And that is often it can be to do with the hormonal part of things.

But then you've got your attention and your nervous system.

And those bits are also really, they're not separate from hormones because they're affected by them, but they're also affected by lived experience and what's going on and how you're feeling and how much stuff you're juggling, how many plates you're spinning and the nervous system, the sympathetic fight flight side of your nervous system and the parasympathetic rest and digest bit underpin sex and they underpin sexual arousal.

So if you're in permanent emergency mode for some reason or another.

So this week I spoke to somebody who had a big postnatal mental health issue and she's never really come out of emergency since partner didn't respond to her very well, didn't feel very safe and held, and ever since she's been a bit cautious about herself and her own coping skills, a bit hyper vigilant, and she's lost her desire.

Because you don't feel desire often unless you're in that sense of safety.

Because physiologically, back on the plains when we were all trying to only procreate when we had the right environmental conditions and there wasn't a lion coming to attack us.

The state of our nervous system affected whether we ovulate.

It affects whether you can get an erection as a guy, whether you get arousal, an erection of clitoris as a woman.

So if you're in permanent emergency, unless you're regulating through sex, which you pointed out, some people do regulate through masturbating or through having sex, but for most people, the physiology is just not switched on correctly.

And midlife is a menopause is a bloody nightmare for that.

Because most of us are caring downwards, carrying upwards at difficult point in our life.

Bodies suddenly become completely unfamiliar.

Can't get the help we need because people don't listen to us.

We're bored of the same old stuff with partners.

And like you say, the sensory stuff that they're doing is just like tipped us over the edge.

So it's not one bit of it.

It really is.

I sit down with people and we just go, right, what's your jigsaw puzzle look like?

Where's the first big piece that we can put in?

Okay, it's oestrogen, but actually you probably need to work out this and this and this, and, you know, you go through it bit by bit.

So I really hope that you enjoyed this compilation episode and if any of these episodes kind of piqued your interest and you wanted to go back and listen to the specific episodes with those guests, please do go, go and search for them on any of your podcast channels.

Just put in the name and just go through my podcast and remember, I have lots and lots of resources on my website as well.

So please don't feel like you are alone or unsupported this summer.

Head to ADHDWomenswellbeing.co.uk.

You'll see everything there as well as the podcast.

Now, I want to remind you, if you go onto the podcast page on my website, there's a search bar and you can put in any topic you're looking for.

So whether it's hormones, anxiety, burnout, rsd, perimenopause, you put it in the search bar and all the episodes will come up there.

I'm really proud of this feature because it kind of feels like a bit of a resource library for everybody.

So do go and check that [email protected] and next week we're going to be focusing on identifying the struggles that come up with ADHD and neurodiverse families, as well as our children and really understanding all this through a different lens, so I really hope to see you there.

Thank you so much, and take care,.

Sam.