It was a Sunday afternoon in 2007. She and I were sitting on the couch, watching a movie on television, having just eaten a snacky lunch in the same spot. She was talking over the movie, and between the two, I wasn’t catching much of either.
I can’t tell you what the argument was about, but apparently I said something without thinking that really set her off – and when I tried to get her to disclose the details of the argument later, she only became angrier. That “pretending I didn’t remember” only made it worse.
Over the next few weeks, this degenerated into a series of skirmishes and passive aggression, with the conflict itself never being addressed at all. In the end, a long-term relationship was in ruins – for no good reason.
To this day, I don’t know what why she and I were arguing, or why we would come into conflict in the middle of a weekend movie on the couch. All the same, this same pattern has played out in my life twice since – and both times, I had no clue what started it, what it was about, what was said, or why I couldn’t make clear that I couldn’t discuss it if I didn’t know what we were discussing.
Since that Sunday afternoon, more than a decade ago, I’ve done Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and I am far better at attending partner dialog under overstimulating circumstances. I tend to only experience brownouts when it’s late and/or I’m really fatigued, when mindfulness is next to impossible. All the same, it has happened – and I wasn’t able to adequately convey that I had no clue what had happened, let alone discuss how to fix it.
At face value, it should be glaringly obvious: I wasn’t paying attention. Memories don’t form, or at best form very imperfectly, when attention is divided or absent. When we’re listening to two conversations at the same time, do we remember either of them well? When watching television, are we able to also listen to a podcast? Attention and memory are inextricably bound together.
Schoolteachers understand this well. When two students attend class every day and the teacher presents the material clearly and thoroughly, and one student aces the following exam and the other one tanks, it’s almost always because the second student wasn’t paying attention – and thus did not remember the material that was taught.
When an ADD adult zones out and thus has fuzzy memory at best about some incident that really ticked off their partner, it’s still their fault, because they weren’t paying attention. But, of course, the ADD adult has little or no control over their own attention – that's the entire point.
Could she have turned the TV off and made certain I was refocused on her issue? Probably, but then, so could I, and as a matter of respect, it was more on me than on her to take that step – but too often, the ADD partner is too self-conscious to take such precautions. That’s a weakness, and should be confronted (I’m working on it).
It’s obvious that since the formation of memories requires attention, a deficit of attention will result in poor memory, but what exactly does that mean for the ADD adult? and what can be done about it?
German neuropsychologist Anselm Fuermaier and his team at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands did a series of studies on ADHD and its effects on memory:
“Memory functions of adults with ADHD,” he wrote, “have been widely neglected in research for a long period of time. This is surprising, as many patients with ADHD report to often lose things, to not follow through on instructions or to be forgetful in daily activities. This is even more surprising considering that some of these behaviors are indicative of the presence of ADHD as outlined in international diagnostic criteria.”
In other words, so deeply intertwined are ADHD and memory difficulties that the latter can become a red flag that uncovers the former.
Fuermaier’s research determined that ADHD memory difficulties are different-in-kind from run-of-the-mill memory lapses. They are the result of executive function interruptions, which disrupt both the creation of a memory and its later retrieval:
“Even though adults with ADHD report to encounter considerable memory problems in daily life,” Fuermaier reported, “these problems are most likely not caused by forgetfulness but may rather result from impairments of encoding (at the time when information is learned) and retrieval (at the time when stored information is recalled).”
More specifically, Fuermaier pointed to two essential components of memory: prospective memory, which is about performing an intended task in the immediate future (keeping appointments), and source memory, which refers to the information collected and stored at a particular time and place in the past. His research found that attention deficits affect both kinds of memory adversely.
“In the light of these results,” he concluded, “we believe that the detrimental effect of executive dysfunctions on memory is so important that it should be considered in behavioral-based interventions which focus on planning as well as structuring and organizing information. Hence, memory functioning of adults with ADHD might be markedly improved by treating disorganization and planning deficits.”
How does this help with the problem of partner conflict? Knowing what we now know about ADD’s effects on our memories, it’s easy to see that when a brownout triggers a conflict, memories of that argument aren’t going to be well-formed; that’s ironic, because it’s a cascade of misfortune – the fight itself was accidental, and the fallout becomes worse, because of the memory fail.
In fairness to the angry partner, “I don’t remember what we were fighting about!” does sound like an excuse; it sounds evasive, and the partner naturally feels that it’s all being put on them. And that piles anger upon anger, making a mess-that-shouldn't-be a true crash-and-burn.
The thing to do is to present this truth about ADD and memory to your partner preemptively – or, if it’s offered in hindsight, that a calm and unburdened moment be chosen to share it.
“Something you should know about me is that when I zone out, I don’t remember what was said or what happened while I was zoned out. If that happens when we’re talking – even when we might be arguing! - I might be looking right at you and still not having anything register. If you ask me later, I will tell you I really don’t remember, and you can believe me. I hope you’ll be patient with me and fill in the blanks, and I’ll do my part to help resolve our disagreement.”
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