shows a seven-fold increase in adult prescriptions for ADHD medication over the last ten years, with figures doubling since 2019\/20.<\/a><\/p>\nMany women are only diagnosed with ADHD later in life, because the tests to identify the condition were designed around how the condition presents in young boys. Women are also much better at ‘masking’ their symptoms, developing complex coping mechanisms that help them to appear organised and ‘functional’. However, these masking habits can be exhausting \u2013 and ultimately unsustainable \u2013 which can lead to anxiety and depression.<\/p>\n
I was diagnosed in 2022, aged 45, just eight months after James \u2013 a professor of physiology \u2013 discovered he had the condition. Two years later, I was also diagnosed with autism.<\/p>\n
Despite our late realisations, both of us were textbook cases for ADHD, and I can now see how it affected everything from my personal life to my career as an executive administrator for a university.<\/p>\n
Apart from distractibility, symptoms include emotional dysregulation (meaning you respond disproportionately to certain events), impulsiveness, sudden intense hyperfocus and anxiety.<\/p>\n
![\"Samantha](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/101440127-15022511-image-m-67_1755799807069.jpg\")
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Samantha says:\u00a0Today we both strongly feel that every couple \u2013 regardless of whether they have ADHD or not \u2013 should do what we’ve done: talk honestly about their sexual needs, wants and fears<\/p>\n
Yet until James’s diagnosis, which prompted me to check whether I had it, I thought I was just perimenopausal. While I’ve had symptoms of ADHD all my life, the hormonal changes of midlife made them so much more pronounced. But doctors just thought I was depressed and suggested antidepressants.<\/p>\n
Considering all this, it’s perhaps little wonder that multiple studies have shown that relationships where at least one partner has ADHD are twice as likely to end as those where both partners are neurotypical. Often, the partner without ADHD feels like they’re having to ‘parent’ the other.<\/p>\n
Other research shows that people with ADHD are more likely to lose their virginity early, have multiple sexual partners and engage in risky sexual behaviour \u2013 for example, unprotected sex or having sex while under the influence of drink or drugs.<\/p>\n
Those with ADHD also find the dopamine ‘rush’ you get from connecting sexually with someone particularly intoxicating \u2013 though not in the way you might think. Because rather than needing the ‘high’ of a dopamine release like a neurotypical person, we need the sensation of dopamine to relax us, to quieten an overactive mind.<\/p>\n
I know the frantic nature of my brain has certainly made me seek out instant sexual experiences to calm myself \u2013 which doesn’t always equate to good choices.<\/p>\n
Research shows people with ADHD are also more likely to have an affair and I can identify with this. With the exception of James, I have been unfaithful to every man I have ever been with, including my first husband of eight years. Just before we split in 2008 he told me I was so addicted to the thrill of the initial ‘honeymoon period’ that I would never be happy.<\/p>\n
His words made me miserable, but there’s an element of truth to them.<\/p>\n
My ADHD and autism combined makes me feel like I’m two different people: one person wants stability (the autistic side), while the other wants novelty and excitement all the time (the ADHD side). I never wanted to have affairs, and I hated myself for it, but I still couldn’t stop.<\/p>\n
While those with ADHD need a certain amount of routine to keep us on the straight and narrow, too much is a nightmare, because we equate it with something being a ‘chore’. And yet committed long-term relationships \u2013 indeed, many sexual relationships \u2013 inevitably fall into routines. And so, to get the ‘excitement’ my ADHD brain craved, I found myself searching for ‘new’ sexual experiences with other people, be they colleagues or chance encounters.<\/p>\n
Often I had affairs with people I wasn’t even attracted to \u2013 many of whom I thought of as friends, but with hindsight I can see were just using me \u2013 and I felt deep shame about this.<\/p>\n
My behaviour was also driven by my incredibly low self-esteem, something I know now was due to the burden of my undiagnosed neurodivergence.<\/p>\n
Since childhood, I have felt different from other people, with tendencies to overshare and become attached to people very quickly. I’ll often come home after an event feeling excited because I think I’ve made a new friend\u2026 but then they never call me or message, and eventually I realise they were probably just being polite.<\/p>\n
This also meant that, before meeting James, I never had the confidence to tell partners how I wanted to be treated in the bedroom, so would endure sex that simply didn’t do anything for me.<\/p>\n
Many women will be nodding their heads in recognition at this; what woman hasn’t put up with unsatisfactory lovemaking?<\/p>\n
But for me, it was on another level. My sensory issues meant I’d focus on every little sensation or movement that was too much, too little \u2013 or just plain wrong for me.<\/p>\n
Matters weren’t helped by the fact I have also struggled to enjoy foreplay. To those with ADHD, something taking too long often equates to being ‘boring’. I can never calm my brain enough to really get into foreplay. So in the bedroom I’d just ‘go for it’ \u2013 which any woman can tell you doesn’t guarantee a pleasing experience.<\/p>\n
Because I never gave a partner a chance to adequately turn me on, sex was at times painful and dispiriting.<\/p>\n
All this would eventually mean I didn’t want to have sex with that person any more \u2013 but didn’t have the confidence to end the relationship. I feared being alone more than anything else. Though I didn’t yet know why I was ‘different’, I couldn’t believe anyone would want to be with someone like me.<\/p>\n
So I wouldn’t end things until I’d already found my next partner and embarked on an intimate relationship with them. But then the initial partner would find out and all hell would break loose. I hated myself for this, feeling intense shame and guilt.<\/p>\n
When I met James in 2008 \u2013 I was working as cabin crew for Virgin Atlantic, and he was a very nervous passenger! \u2013 my first marriage had just broken down. We instantly connected.<\/p>\n
But for all my desire for James, I felt overwhelmed and depressed when we moved in together six months later. I struggled with the transition and lay in bed staring at the wall, trying to come to terms with the end of my marriage. It took me three months of therapy before I could get back to work.<\/p>\n
Things were further complicated by the fact I was now in a relationship where both of us were struggling with our undiagnosed ADHD.<\/p>\n
And James’s neurodivergence has led him to behave in ways that hurt me. ADHD means you can exhibit hypersexual behaviour due to a lack of impulse control. In the first year James and I were together, he struggled to adapt to the boundaries of a new, serious relationship.<\/p>\n
He was still sending highly flirtatious messages to women online \u2013 which I discovered when he left them up on his computer screen. It was devastating \u2013 but my pain gave him a massive wake-up call and he’s never behaved in that way since.<\/p>\n
People with ADHD can suffer from cognitive inflexibility, where they find it hard to move from one task to another, or process two strands of thought at once.<\/p>\n
This presents a problem in all areas of life. Once, when James’s boss called him while we were making love, his mind instantly leapt to this new, immediate task… and he pushed me off to answer the call. It’s hardly romantic.<\/p>\n
There’s also emotional dysregulation, when someone overreacts to a simple event. James was once fitting a dishwasher at home when he snapped the hose. He then lay on our bed crying for three hours, until I told him just to order a replacement. Times like these are very draining.<\/p>\n
There are some perks to James’s ADHD, though. Like many people with the disorder, he’s uncomfortable when the focus is on him, so he’s a giver, not a taker. This means that in the bedroom he’s very focused on my pleasure \u2013 so much so that he says his own orgasm is nice, but not key. I can’t imagine there are many husbands who would say the same thing\u2026 It also meant I finally had the space to talk honestly about my previous issues around sex and foreplay.<\/p>\n
Things have hugely improved for both of us since we finally received our diagnoses.<\/p>\n
At the point James was diagnosed in 2021, he was a full-time academic. While he adored his job, he was finding the mental burden of juggling so much intense, and combined with my own ADHD struggles \u2013 which were exacerbated by the menopause (my sleep was terrible and I had zero libido) \u2013 it was a tough time for both of us. We were desperate for a solution.<\/p>\n
Then a friend of his, who had just been diagnosed with ADHD himself, suggested James should look into it too, as he could see similarities to his own behaviour.<\/p>\n
When you go through testing for ADHD diagnosis, the assessors don’t just speak to the individual in question but to those close to them. I quickly realised that all the questions I was being asked about James also applied to me.<\/p>\n
With James beginning to research ADHD further following his diagnosis, it soon became obvious I also had the condition.<\/p>\n
But unlike James, who instantly accepted he had ADHD, it took me a while to get used to it. Now that we know I’m also autistic, this makes sense \u2013 it was a big change.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t until I managed to get an HRT prescription and still couldn’t function ‘normally’ that I admitted there may be something else at play besides my hormones \u2013which was confirmed after I underwent ADHD testing a year later.<\/p>\n
James was so incredibly supportive, and eventually we both started accepting the parts of ourselves that we had always hated and hidden. We had attempted to mask our ADHD symptoms all our lives \u2013 but now we ‘unmasked’ together. It took about a year for us to fully go through this process \u2013 but it’s led to a deeper emotional connection than either of us could ever imagine.<\/p>\n
We’ve needed that connection because people with ADHD can also suffer with time agnosia \u2013 a type of time blindness. Nine months can feel like two weeks, an hour can feel like a few seconds.<\/p>\n
This can lead to periods of sexual drought, where you don’t really comprehend how long it’s been since you’ve had sex. James and I are in the middle of a drought at the moment; it’s been almost a year since we made love. I’m not concerned \u2013 it’s happened before and it always comes back.<\/p>\n
For all the complexity, our shared neurodiversity has brought to our private lives, there is also an element of it being a blessing.<\/p>\n
James is so wonderful to me, and genuinely wants to understand what’s going on in my brain. Being diagnosed together also gave us the mechanism to talk honestly about sex.<\/p>\n
I feel incredibly lucky that we found one another \u2013 and for the first time in my life I have no desire to be with anyone else.<\/p>\n
Sam is writing a book on ADHD and productivity for Quercus books, to be published next year. She is married to James Brown, co-author of ADHD Unpacked. Together they are trustees of the charity ADHDadultUK and co-hosts of The ADHD Adults Podcast.<\/p>\n
As told to Maureen Brookbanks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How many women can say, after 15 years of marriage, that they still have truly urgent lovemaking sessions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[97,519,59,102,104,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-84288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-dailymail","9":"tag-femail","10":"tag-gb","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-nhs","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Samantha](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/101440129-15022511-image-m-64_1755799763715.jpg\")
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