Sorry, I Missed This: ADHD and sex

When you have ADHD, it can affect every part of your life — even sex. ADHD impacts how we show up in relationships. And it can be easy to forget it’s with us in the bedroom too. 

ADHD sexpert and psychologist Dr. Ari Tuckman visits the podcast this week to talk about the connection between ADHD and sex. Listen to this foundational episode as we set the scene to cover more in-depth topics on sex in future episodes. 

We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at sorryimissedthis@understood.org.

Related resources

• Sex, intimacy, and ADHD from ADHD Aha!

• Ari’s book, ADHD After Dark

• Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski

Timestamps

(03:45) Why is ADHD and sex an important topic?

(07:24) What Ari learned from research for his book, ADHD After Dark

(10:33) ADHD and responsibility 

(12:47) Avoiding a transactional sexual relationship

(14:55) Intentionality and ADHD

(17:39) What can we do to help?

(25:10) Ari’s main takeaways

(26:45) What do I do if me or my partner is really excited about sex, but one or the other of us struggles to remember it exists?

(29:54) What do I do if I get distracted during sex?

Episode transcript

Cate: Hi everybody, and welcome to "Sorry, I Missed This," the show where we talk about talking and all things ADHD, relationships, intimacy, and communication. It's me, your host Cate Osborn, but you might know me as Catieosaurus. 

And today I'm sure many of you are going to be excited to hear me say this. We're going to talk about the connection between sex and ADHD. So, if you don't want to hear this kind of content, grab a fruit snack on the way out. And today I'm joined by Ari Tuckman, author of "ADHD After Dark" and ADHD sexpert. 

Today I'm going to be asking Ari the question: How does ADHD affect sex? Now, before we get into it, I do want to say that that is a huge, broad question. So, please know that this episode isn't going to cover everything. This is just to give us the foundational 101 course, so we can get into bigger and more specific conversations later on in the season. 

After I got my ADHD diagnosis, I got really curious about ADHD and the way that it was showing up in my life. For a really long time, I had struggled with sex, I had struggled with intimacy, and I struggled with how that showed up in my relationship. And then it turned out, "Oh well, it's absolutely related to ADHD" because ADHD doesn't change whether you're making a sandwich or, you know, getting down and dirty in the bedroom.

And so, I went back to school and I started learning more, and I decided to become a certified sex educator. And I remember very specifically one of the first classes that I ever took. The professor was talking about what happens when intimacy gets interrupted. And I remember I was sitting there and I was thinking about how many times that had shown up in my own life. 

You know, the neighbor starts mowing his lawn, or the ceiling fan is clicking, or I suddenly remember in the middle of it that, "Oh my gosh, I forgot to turn the laundry over, and now it's going to get stinky in the washer or whatever."

And he said to this huge class of people, he said, "Don't worry about it. The moment isn't precious. It'll come back just, you know, just jump right back into things and, you know, you can just tell your clients that. The moment isn't precious." And I remember sitting there and just realizing how different my experience with sex and intimacy is compared to other people's. 

And it was one of the first times that I really felt alone, and I really felt different because I thought the moment is precious, the moment is absolutely precious, it is precious and it is fragile, and it could be ruined by something as silly and as inconvenient as the neighbor mowing his lawn. Or it could be something as big as, you know, my depression is really popping off today, and I'm just so sorry, but I can't get in the right headspace to feel sexy, to feel beautiful, to feel like a desirable partner. 

And for so long I thought, "Wow, I must be the only one." And then I started doing what I do. I started learning more. And the more I learned, and the more I talked, and the more I read books — like Ari's, who you're going to hear from today — I started realizing that, "No, this is a really important conversation that we need to have because I'm not broken. There isn't something inherently wrong with me. It's just that I have to learn how to navigate both sex and intimacy and ADHD at the same time." 

And so today, I'm so excited to bring you Ari Tuckman. He's written this fantastic book about ADHD and sex, and we're going to have some really interesting, really vulnerable conversations. 

Ari, welcome to the show. 

Ari: I am super psyched to be here. I've really been looking forward to this. 

Cate: I'm super excited that you're here. Ari, I have a really important question to ask you. Just right off the bat. You are the author of one of the only books that exists on sex and ADHD. Why? 

(03:45) Why is ADHD and sex an important topic?

Ari: Why did I write it or why am I sitting here with you? 

Cate: That's how I would say it. Yeah. Why? Why sex and ADHD? Why relationships and ADHD? How did you get here? Why this book? 

Ari: Sure. So, obviously relationships are an important part of most adults lives. And if you have ADHD or if you have whatever, it's going to impact how you show up in your relationship. And one of the things that I found was that couples were talking about it, you know, how does ADHD impact their relationship? How does ADHD impact their sex life? But it felt like clinicians weren't talking about it, presenters and authors weren't talking about it. 

And yet we were sort of missing this really important point of intervention that if we can help couples have more fun together, enjoy each other more, it makes it easier to deal with the just stupid, frustrating, boring, adult, responsible things of life and to still stay connected, to still enjoy each other and to be able to kind of move forward and deal with whatever comes next. 

Cate: I think it's really interesting because just right off the bat, I think that we tend to conflate a lot sex in intimacy, like sex and intimacy, are the same thing, but they're not. There are two very different things, like sex is one thing and intimacy is another. And while sex is a way to develop intimacy, intimacy in itself is its own thing, right? 

Ari: I have to admit, this is a total pet peeve, right? When people say, when we were intimate, I was like, oh, you told each other your deepest, darkest secrets? Is that right? 

Cate: Right. 

Ari: And it's exactly what you're saying is that they are not the same. And they do get conflated and like, they're both good and they're both important, but they're not necessarily the same thing. 

Although, obviously where they sort of begin to overlap is that sort of feeling of safety, the ability to sort of ask for what you want to be able to go with your partner and give what they want, whether that means something vulnerable, that perhaps is something sexual, that maybe you don't feel comfortable, I don't know, posing as your Facebook status, as well as other things, right? Of that kind of intimate connection and feeling. I don't know, just feeling like you have a good teammate here. 

Cate: I mean, for me, my ADHD impacts every moment of every day from the minute I wake up to the minute I attempt to go to sleep. So, why do you think that sex and intimacy are so frequently left out of the conversation when it comes to, like you mentioned earlier, clinicians and that kind of thing? Like, why aren't we having these conversations? 

Ari: I think it's because people don't feel comfortable talking about sex. And clinicians, unless you're actually trained as a sex therapist, don't get any, get very little on sex, including couples therapists, which is weird... 

Cate: Really? 

Ari: That couples therapists don't get a lot. Yeah, yeah.  

Cate: Yeah, I'm not going to go too far off a tangent, but that fascinates me. 

Ari: I know, you know, it's just Americans are weird about sex, right? On the one hand, we're completely obsessed with it and it's everywhere. Also, don't talk about it, you know. It's a bit of both. 

And it's hard because if you can't talk about it with your partner, it becomes rather than being this good thing that's supposed to make us feel better about each other and more connected and being a good well, it becomes another thing that kind of pushes a couple apart, right? It's another discontent. It's another missed opportunity. It's another disappointment or another place where, like, "I can't really be myself here because I don't trust how you're going to handle this."

(07:24) What Ari learned from research for his book, ADHD After Dark

Cate: It's also interesting that we're talking about not talking about sex in a conversation about sex, in which you wrote a book about sex, in which you talked to a lot of people, especially like in the ADHD community, about sex and intimacy. What did you learn from that sort of like research that you did? 

Ari: So, the book is based on I put together this much too-long online survey, and I had like 3000 people fill it out, who were folks in a relationship with one ADHD partner. And there's a lot of really interesting things that came 3000 people filling out who were folks in a relationship with one ADHD partner. And there's a lot of really interesting things that came out.

But I think one of them that stands out is there were lots of very happy couples out there where they're happy in their relationship, they're happy in their sex life, and they didn't feel that ADHD was this big, terrible thing that you can't be happy with. 

Yeah, granted, there are lots of unhappy couples in this survey as well, and certainly some of that was related to ADHD and some of it was not. But really, I think what it comes down to is feeling like, again, you have a good teammate that I am putting in good work, you are putting in good work, and that the folks who felt like their teammate was putting in effort were more likely to put in an effort themselves, which totally makes sense. 

But also a couple other really interesting things that came out of it is the folks who felt that their partner was putting in good effort, were more likely to be sexually generous when they themselves were not in the mood. They're more likely to share sexual fantasies, and they also had sex more often. And I think it, all of that completely makes sense, right? 

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: That there's a sense of fairness, there's a sense of justice, there's a sense of, I don't know if you're smart, reward good behavior. And I think that counts for a lot. 

Cate:  I'm interested in sort of the work, like the effort, right? Because like, we're not talking about like, sex is the work or sex is the effort. We're talking about, sort of like a holistic life overview. Right? 

Ari: Right. Exactly. The specific question I asked was two questions. "How much effort would you say you yourself put in into managing either your ADHD or your partner's ADHD?" And then the second question was, "How much effort do you feel like your partner is putting in?" And I would make a pretty obvious guess that the amount of effort putting in in one place probably tells us about the effort you're putting in in other places. 

So, it's sort of a thing of feeling like you're working together, and that means sort of educating yourself about ADHD. Maybe it means, you know, seeking out like a therapist or prescriber or coach or something, but also for the non-ADHD partner to kind of be involved. It's not just "You go deal with your ADHD thing over there. Let me know how it works out," but themselves being involved in it. 

And I think that that's really important because kind of like anything in a relationship, if you feel like this is all on the other person, they just need to, you know, do some things different, and then boy, will we all be happy around here. You're basically giving away your power, right? What you're saying is, "I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope you do it" as opposed to, "No, I have influence here. I'm part of this team also, and I want to have a positive influence on what happens next." 

(10:33) ADHD and responsibility 

Cate: If we follow that thread too, it can be very unsexy to feel like you're taking care of your partner or you're handling all of the responsibility. So, like, how do we as people with ADHD, like, how do we step into that responsibility and make sure that our relationships aren't being impacted by our ADHD as much as we can? 

Ari: This is where every single couple has to negotiate, right? Any two people who live together have to negotiate things. And I think on the one hand, it's very reasonable for the ADHD partner to say, "I want to see you put an effort on managing this," right? 

"When you are forgetful, when you don't do things, it puts pressure on me, and I feel like I have to step up and do it or it doesn't get done. And by the way, if at the end of the night, I'm just exhausted and pissed at you for it, I'm not jumping into bed with you like that. That's not happening, my friend."

Equally, though, I think for the partner with ADHD, you know, as an equal decision-maker in the relationship should have the ability to say, "I understand that for you, you want things certain ways, but I kind of live here also. So, let's find some ways to work for me too. Like here's a simple example. I know what makes you nuts that I leave my keys and wallet, like right there where we come in. But like, seriously, if you put it in the drawer, you might as well throw it in the trash because I'm never going to see it or find it."

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: "So, I need you to go with me on this one, because, by the way, we both hate it when I run around like a maniac in the morning and can't find my keys." So, both people should be able to ask for what they want. And then, of course, the art of relationships is how do you negotiate that out in a way that not only comes to a decision that feels pretty good but also hasn't like scorched earth the relationship at the same time. 

Cate: Well, I think it comes back too to that idea of teamwork. Like, we're in this together. We're working on not just our sex life, not just our intimacy, but we're working on our relationship as a whole. And so, building those skills of negotiation and communication and all of that, like it starts with, "Hey, can we have a bowl for the keys by the door?" It doesn't have to start with the, you know, super intense ask in the bedroom. 

(12:54) Avoiding a transactional sexual relationship

It can be very easy to start equating sort of a transactional relationship to sex, right? "You clean the kitchen, I'll have sex with you." 

Ari: Sure. 

Cate: "You remember to put your keys in the bowl, I'll have sex with you." And that's also absolutely not what we're looking for either, right? 

Ari: Definitely. And I'm glad that you sort of picked up on that is that it should not be transactional. It should not be tit for tat, but rather like, what would it take to earn this kind of generosity? What would it take to get, to give this kind of generosity? Meaning, this is something I freely choose because it feels good to me. 

Cate: One thing that I see a lot in relationships is it tends to go in sort of "We're thinking about sex all the time for like this hyperfocused period, and then we forget about it for another six months or whatever." How do you contextualize pleasure in that conversation with someone who is maybe always sort of like dopamine seeking? Like that kind of thing. Like where do you run into trouble? Where do you not? That was a question, I think. 

Ari: And it's absolutely right. That can definitely be a thing if you're sort of seeking it in times or places or maybe with people where let's just say it's not advised or there is more risk there than you want, or maybe you're not thinking beyond the next moments and maybe what are the consequences later. So, like it does get tricky there. 

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: But I think also in a couple, there's definitely this kind of idea — it's not always true, but it's often true — that kind of those with attention deficit tend to marry those with attention excess. It's like if you're like super organized, you married some guy with ADHD, like there's a reason why you picked him. Like you weren't assigned to him. 

So, there's clearly something that this person provides to you that is a real positive, right? It is a good thing in your life, right? And there's a balance and a complementarity or whatever. So, I think that that sort of focus on the more immediate kind of pleasures of life, so to speak, I think for some people, like they need more of that push. They will tend to be more about getting things done and being productive, and they need someone to help them smell the roses. 

(14:55) Intentionality and ADHD

Cate: Well, I'm curious to hear you talk about intentionality and ADHD, especially when it comes to sex and intimacy. How do we mindfully and intentionally create those moments when we can tend to be more forgetful? Or we can tend to be, you know, the person who forgets to put our key? I don't know why I keep coming back to the key is in the bowl, but it's that's a whole other episode anyway. 

Ari: Yeah. I mean, I think it is about being intentional. You know, if you want to have a better sex life, you need to work in your relationship. You want to have better relationship, you want to work in your sex life. And particularly for some folks, and I don't know, honestly, I'm talking about those guys who are like, "We're fine. I don't know why we're talking about this," right? 

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: This sort of angle on them, is it "Look, you say you want to have a better sex life. You say you want to have more sex with your partner. OK sounds good. I can get behind that. This is one of the ways to get there: putting in the effort to manage your ADHD or if your partner has ADHD, putting in the effort to be more sort of present for them and helpful in ways that are actually helpful, that is going to help you have more sex." 

I sort of joke that my book on ADHD and sex and relationships is the only book on ADHD your husband is actually going to read, you know? So, look, as a psychologist, we get motivation where we can, but if it's motivating, that's great. I'll take it. And you know that it might be one of those things of "If we're looking at fool around tonight, then cleaning up the kitchen right now as we get up from dinner makes that much more likely to happen." 

This thing of like, "Oh, OK, so I just got to check my email, but, like, as soon as I do that, I swear, honey, I'm going to come back." You know, and like, let's all be honest, nobody's putting money on that. Like, nobody's going to take that bet because history doesn't support it. 

So, it's not just about getting the kitchen cleaned. It's about really being honest with ourselves about like, "I know the sequence of events that follows is if I don't do it now, I'm going to get caught up in other things. I'm going to come back later. I'm going to say, 'This will be quick. It'll only take me 20 minutes' and then it doesn't," you know? So, that's some of the intentionality I kind of call it, like not lying to yourself about the things that, you know, we're kind of not really going to work out. 

Cate: There's a raw vulnerability to that, to know yourself well enough to know if I go to check my email, I'm going to wind up wallpapering the office, which is a real thing that once happened to me. A big part of intimacy is just that. It's being able to look at yourself and say, "Yeah, you know, I do get distracted. I do forget about sex, but like, that's OK." 

Ari: Yeah. 

Cate: "It doesn't mean that I'm broken. It doesn't mean that there's something wrong with me. It means that this is how my brain functions." 

(17:39) What can we do to help?

We've talked a lot about the impact of ADHD on relationships and sex and that kind of thing, but what do we do about it, Ari Tuckman, author of the book on sex, relationships, and ADHD? 

Ari: Yeah.

Cate: How do you sort of mitigate these challenges? How do we mitigate these problems, and how do we support ourselves? How do we support our partners? That was a ten-part question. I expect an answer to all of them. Go. 

Ari: OK. So, first where it begins is for both partners to really understand the impact of ADHD, right? And it's not just the sort of easy, obvious things, but it's some of these other things in the way that it impacts not just the one person, but also how does it sort of tend to create certain kinds of dynamics. 

You know that if one person, if they're not sort of getting things done in the way that their partner hopes they would, it's easy for the partner to feel that pressure to step in. 

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: Which then creates a bit of a chase. It creates a bit of, "It doesn't matter what I do. Is never the right thing." So, to understand that this is not who you and I are, this is the dynamic that has made us into caricatures of who we are. 

Cate: So, knowing that that first step of understanding entirely ADHD, I think there's the sense of being seen. Like if your partner understands ADHD, you understand your ADHD, you know where it's coming from, you know why those problems are happening, that kind of thing. And besides all of the wonderful resources available on Understood.org, how would one go about doing that? How do you learn about ADHD if your partner just got a diagnosis or you're wanting to know more? 

Cate: Yeah, I think I mean, some of it is what you said, right? It's starting with some trusted vetted resources like at Understood. But I think it sort of begins the conversation that, you know, in the sense of talking to your partner about like, "Yeah, right here. This totally rings true for me. I can absolutely relate to this." Like, don't reinvent the wheel. Other smart people have come before you. Borrow from their wisdom. So, you get there a little bit quicker. 

And to really kind of work together on this and to see it as a joint project. I mean, it's just like one of those things, right? Someone has dietary restrictions like, "Oh, you don't eat bread anymore? OK, I guess I'm not eating a lot of bread when we're together either." Or "Your job makes you wake up earlier than I would like to? Well, I guess you're waking me up in the morning also. I suppose that's part of the package deal," right? 

For all the good you get in a partnership, you also give some things up. That's just like the way life works. But hopefully, you get a lot more good than what you're giving up.

Cate: One thing that I found to be really helpful was sort of leaning into the idea that everybody feels this way because it turns out nearly 99.9% of the time, I would say, well, everybody feels like this. And my husband would go, "No, they don't. What are you talking about?"

And so for me, discovering how ADHD like really was impacting my relationship, a lot of that came from me just sitting down and saying, "Here's how it feels when I have to take out the garbage," or "Here's how it feels when I'm looking at a mountain of dishes. Here's how it feels when I walk into the bedroom and there's laundry all over the floor."

And those were like the first conversations where I think we really started developing that vulnerability and that sort of radical honesty about, again, like everything you've been saying, like, "This affects our relationship. This affects how we're moving through the world." 

Ari: You will each have your own experience of it. And it's not debatable, right? There's no right answer of how a pile of laundry feels, but we tend to sort of see things through our own lens. And, you know, intimacy involves being able to sort of honestly and vulnerably share "This is what this experience is like for me," and for your partner to really be able to hear it, and then vice versa, that you can hear their experience and recognize they are not the same thing and that that's OK. 

Cate: Yeah. 

Ari: Now, if it's something like a pile of laundry, like, I don't know, maybe there's some feelings, but also like, who cares? It's just a pile of laundry. But when it's some other thing, like a particular sexual act or a particular sexual interest, right? That's a lot harder to hear. Like, "Wait a second, what do you want to do? Why do you want to do that? Why does it mean that you want to do that? What does it not mean that you want to do that?" Right? 

And then we get all these ideas and all these feelings and where we get lost in it. This is the real work of relationships. To be able to sort of stand in two places at once, like "This is, for me what this feels like. And also at the same time, I recognize that for you, it feels different or it means something different, and I can make my case and you can make yours. But at the end of the day, we each have our perspective that we have."

And finding a way to be OK with that, without editing yourself too much and without kind of one way or another, kind of pushing your partner to edit themselves. 

Cate: So, the first thing that you said was, "So what do we do about it?" was: We learn about ADHD. So, what is the next step after we have learned about ADHD? We understand ADHD. We're talking about it in our lives. What do we do next? 

Ari: So, I think then the next thing is to understand how it plays out in your relationship. And again what is that dynamic? And I think then, you know, step three is to really begin to take some steps, right, to say, "I recognize that this is the impact it has. But also I would prefer our relationship to be a bit more like this. You know, I would like to be a bit different in this relationship." 

So, for example, the partner with ADHD might say, "You know what, I want mornings to be better. Like I really hate those stressful, crazy mornings. So, I am really going to make a commitment here to manage the mornings more effectively so that it isn't, you know, a bad way to start the day."

Maybe for the non-ADHD partner to say, "You know what? It does make me a little bit crazy when you leave stuff around. Also, I don't want to be always chasing you, right? Like that's not who I want to be. I don't want to be nagging you all the time. And it's going to take me a few deep breaths, but like, I don't want to be stressing out all the time about, like, shoes in the living room and all the other stuff that gets left around. 

Sometimes I'm going to say something about it when I need to, and sometimes I may just put a few things away, but I don't want to be the person who's stressed out all the time about this stuff." 

Cate: Who do I want to be? I think it's such a powerful question, because if you start looking at it from that other standpoint of, "Well, I want you to be this," that's where it gets into very dangerous, unhealthy territory. 

Ari: Yes. 

Cate: But that idea of "How do I want my mornings to go and how can you help me in this? Can I ask you for, you know, can you make me a coffee because you get up earlier than me?" Like those simple asks. I think that's just such a brilliant way of phrasing it. Gold star, A+, Ari Tuckman. Good job. 

OK. So, we're learning about ADHD. We're recognizing how it shows up in our relationship. Are there other steps that we should take after that? 

Cate: So, some of this was about kind of managing the business stuff of life a bit better, like the responsible things that we need to do, but also to really make a point of enjoying each other and having time for each other, which means time to be sexual, but it also means time to enjoy each other in non-sexual ways. 

And again, not let that be the last thing that happens, which means either it doesn't happen or it gets the least of your time and bandwidth and energy. 

(25:10) Ari’s main takeaways

Cate: Ari, this is all so fantastic. And we have talked about a lot of stuff this episode, and I'm so grateful for you and for your time. But if there's a few sort of major points that you want our dear listeners to take away from this conversation, what would they be? Give us the bullet points. 

Ari: I think the first thing is for both partners really, really understand ADHD. Now, if you're relatively new to the diagnosis, you've got a lot to learn and you're probably going to be overwhelmed. But just take a breath and keep going. But even if you've been around a while, I think there's always more to learn, right? To really kind of make a point of learning it, to keep learning it. 

I think the second thing is to recognize that some of this is not ADHD stuff, it's just relationship stuff. And that two people living together, trying to create a life together, there's going to be disagreements. There's going to be things you don't see the same way. That's OK. You just got to be nice and respectful about how you manage the differences. 

And then I think the third thing is: Don't let the fun stuff be the last thing that happens, right? Really make a point of enjoying each other, of enjoying time together because you need that also if only to charge you back up to deal with the rest of the stuff that you need to deal with in life. 

Cate: So, last thing I want to do, Ari, is Cate's Comment Corner mailbag. We haven't decided on a name for it yet, but it's going to be great. 

Ari: No, you did. That's awesome. It couldn't get any better than that. 

(26:45) What do I do if me or my partner is really excited about sex, but one or the other of us struggles to remember it exists?

Cate: But so, it was really interesting. So, I put out a call for emails. I asked the ADHD community, I was like, "Hey, give me your questions, give me your comments, give me your stories."

I got so many, I got so many emails, Ari.

Ari: I know. 

Cate: But two of the topics that kept coming up over and over and over, and there were literally hundreds. So, I'm not going to say like Greg from so-and-so, but the first one is, what do I do if me or my partner is really excited about sex? But one or the other of us struggles to remember it exists. What do you recommend, Ari? 

Ari: Yeah, so this is a very common thing. Desire discrepancy, as it's called, is the top complaint that draws people to couples therapy or to sex therapy. So, the conversation to have is what can the higher desire partner like, what can they do to help the lower desire partner be more in the mood? How can they approach them? What are the things that would be helpful? 

And for the lower desire partner to really kind of think about or like, I don't know what does get me in the mood? What hits the gas, also what turns me off, what hits the brakes? And let's really kind of begin to see what we can do here. But also let's have some real kind of thought and conversation about how much sex or whatever do we want to have, right? Because there's no right amount, there's preferred amounts, but there's no right amount. 

So, how much sex does the lower desire our partner actually want to have? Let's also expand the definition of sex, right? So it doesn't have to be like the full production sometimes maybe something smaller. We talked earlier about earning and giving generosity, you know. So like what other ways can we sort of, you know, have this feel like a good thing? 

But I think to really take the time to have that conversation because the best way to kill desire is to make it feel forced, or to make it feel out of obligation, or to make it feel like if you're going to be upset if I'm not interested, so I guess I have to be interested, which is not interesting. You know, sort of really take your time and take it seriously and have a whole bunch of conversations about it. And to be really sort of honest and vulnerable.

Cate: It's really interesting for me because I am on the asexual spectrum. And so, I always like to be like, "Yeah, I talk about sex on the internet for my job, but also I am definitely more asexual than not."

And so, like, those identities are so important and so valid as well. And so one of the things that I always like to say is take sex off the table for a little bit. Don't make it about the sex act, the full production, like you said. Make it about just connecting. Just have time with your partner when maybe it's like a back rub or massage, or you're watching the Netflix show that you've been meaning to binge like it doesn't have to be about the actual act of having sex and or orgasm. 

Like a lot of times that mismatched desire is coming more from a mismatched wanting to connect. Like one person wants to feel connected and the other person is struggling with it. And so, I don't know, like that's my hot take is you don't have to have sex if you want to be intimate and connect with each other. That's OK. 

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. What are the other ways that you can do it? 

Cate: Go eat French fries.

(29:54) What do I do if I get distracted during sex?

So, the second topic that I got so many times was "I have ADHD. I start having sex and it's great and it's amazing and awesome. And then the ceiling fan starts clicking, or my neighbor starts mowing his lawn and I get super distracted. How do I stay in the moment?" 

Ari: So, first of all, you don't have to have ADHD to get distracted during sex, right? This is a thing that can happen. So, the first, biggest, most obvious advice is: Nobody freak out. Getting distracted a little bit like is not in and of itself is not a big deal, right? It's reading a bunch of meaning into it. It's starting to spiral about it. It's getting anxious about it. Either "Oh my God, I'm distracted" or I "think my partner is distracted." Let the insecurities commence. 

So, to just recognize like, "Oh wait, this is a thing that happens. What are we doing again?" And that's it, right? You just sort of try to bring yourself back and to focus on — and this will tie back to the last question — that it's about enjoying the moment. Or as Emily Nagasaki says, "Pleasure is the measure."

Don't make sex a sort of performance test or have a specific... I mean, if you're trying to get pregnant, then in that very specific circumstance or certain very specific outcomes you want, but otherwise, like this is about us having fun. It's about enjoying ourselves. Maybe it's not exactly the way, you know, you thought it was going to go, but it can still be good in some other way. And again, if you don't freak out, than maybe it's easier to get back to the original plan anyway. 

Cate: Ari Tuckman, you have been incredible and amazing, and I'm so grateful for your time and your insight. Do you have anything else that you would like to say to our wonderful listeners? 

Ari: I think what I would say is keep coming back. I know this is going to be an awesome podcast. Cate is a wealth of knowledge, and she's hysterical and caring and wise and, yeah, just keep showing up. I know there's a great lineup of other people on the way. 

Cate: It's going to be so amazing. And just so I don't forget, a couple times, Emily Nagasaki's incredible book "Come As You Are" has been referenced. We will make sure that there's a link so you can find it. 1000 out of ten. It's one of the best books. 

Ari: She has a new book called "Come Together" talking about couples and long-term couples and sex. So. 

Cate: I have ordered it. I haven't read it yet and I'm so excited. I'm so excited. And then lastly, I should probably also ask this, Ari Tuckman, where can people find you and read your amazing book and learn more about you if you shill, shill for yourself, Ari, go. 

Ari: Yeah, so AdultADHDBook.com that's my sort of books and podcasts website. I've got all sorts of information and recordings and all sorts of stuff, so that would be the place to go. 

Cate: Thank you for listening. Anything mentioned in the episode will be linked in the show notes with more resources. Have a question, comment, burning story you'd like to share? Email me at SorryIMissedThis@understood.org. 

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. Learn more at Understood.org. 

"Sorry, I Missed This" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes in the show. Ilana Millner is our supervising producer. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. 

For Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. I'm your host, Cate Osborn. Thank you so much for listening. Remember to be kind to yourself. Remember to be kind to others, and I'll see you again soon.