"We can have an amazing sex life!”
Let’s consider a very positive, encouraging fact about adult ADD: its various features can sometimes combine and work together to wonderful effect! Physical intimacy is one such area.
What are the ingredients of a really great sex life? Setting aside what Cosmopolitan might say, men and women generally agree on the big ones.
Connection: we flourish in physical intimacy when we feel a strong, deep, authentic connection with our lover;
Desire to please: we do best in bed when we are as interested in meeting our partner’s needs as we are in having our own needs met;
Novelty: sex is best, and our bonds are strongest, when our bedroom life is filled not just with sexual relief, but with fun, creativity, and the sharing of new ideas.
If these three components are present in the bedroom, then all else is within reach: technique, frequency and other considerations are much more easily managed when this foundation is in place.
That said, often we start out with a new partner from a place of true disadvantage.
We ADD adults are not known for our self-confidence in general. And self-confidence is pretty important in the bedroom. Nor do we have a well-grounded sense of our own lovability, which can inhibit a connection that would otherwise blossom. In both cases, an ADD consequence that is not sex-specific can diminish our intimate experience with our partner, affecting our presence and our ability to bring to the moment what we truly wish to.
The ADD adult, then, could have strikes against them going in.
Another common bedroom issue for the ADD adult is the initiation of sex. The ADD partner wants sex, and is fully present when it occurs, but will not initiate.
The reason is obvious: ADD adults are hypersensitive to rejection. The problem is, this creates a problem for their partner.
Melissa Orlov, an expert on ADHD issues in marriage, tells of a wife who was frustrated with having to always be the one to initiate sex with her husband. This wife had “fallen into a classic ADHD relationship trap,” Orlov wrote. “She [was] equating [her husband’s] inability to initiate (an ADHD symptom) with his feelings for her. She has asked him to overcome his symptom in order to prove he loves her…yet the symptom rules here until such time as he identifies it as a symptom and puts specific behavioral habits in place (such as setting aside time in the calendar to plan a date at the instant he agrees with her that he will plan it). In order to succeed in changing this pattern, he needs a specific support structure that he doesn’t currently have... In the meantime, he agrees he’ll ‘try harder’ to remember to do this… and nothing changes, because his ADHD symptom remains unaddressed.”
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy would help here. So would an ADD coach.
There are, then, two conversations here – one that takes place at the outset of a new relationship, and one to course-correct an out-of-balance relationship.
At the outset:
“Being with you is going to be so much fun! I want our bedroom life to be filled with fun and excitement and creativity. If I seem to be holding back, it isn’t you! It’s my uneasiness about myself. I’ll get over it quickly if we both commit to connecting and enjoying each other to the fullest. I’ll be there, and I’ll be really enthusiastic, if you can help me get there. I want to be a present that you unwrap.”
And where initiation is concerned:
“A problem I’ve had in the past is initiating sex. I want it as much as I ever did, but I have trouble being the one to get things rolling. This has nothing to do with you at all! Or with sex either, for that matter – it's about my sensitivity to rejection. I take it too personally when someone tells me No. I’m working on that, and I really want to pull you into bed! But it might take me a while to get there. Can you be assured of my desire for you, and work with me?”
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