Help! I’m in a parentified relationship!

Romantic partners often support and help each other out with different things. And with ADHD in the relationship, there might be some extra support needed here and there. But what happens when that support crosses the line into parentification, or taking care of your partner like they’re your child? Or the other way around, where your partner is responsible for taking care of you?

Psychologist Lesley Cook (@lesleypsyd) visits the podcast to talk about how to notice parentification happening in your relationship, and the resentment that can build when it goes unnoticed. 

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

Related resources

• Lesley’s TikTok, @lesleypsyd 

• A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD by Sari Solden, and Michelle Frank

Timestamps

(03:03) What is a parentified relationship?

(05:37) When an ADHD partner is the “parent” in the relationship or takes on too much responsibility

(07:33) Are parentified relationships typically gendered?

(08:48) Fairness versus equity in relationships

(11:44) Weaponized incompetence

(14:49) What happens to a relationship when it’s parentified for too long?

(17:19) Notice, shift, repair

(18:45) What to do when you notice yourself taking on too much responsibility for your partner

(21:08) People pleasing, and the need to fix things

(22:46) How to ask the right questions to your partner

(24:07) Noticing your ADHD at play, and using it as an explanation, not an excuse

(28:02) Setting an example as a parent to kids

(32:24) Lesley’s parting advice

(33:00) Where you can find Lesley and credits

Episode transcript

Cate: Hi everybody, and welcome back to "Sorry, I Missed This," the show where we talk about ADHD and all things intimacy, relationships, and communication. It's me, your host, Cate Osborn. Today we have an amazing show with psychologist Lesley Cook, who does a lot of work with ADHD and neurodivergency. If you are on ADHD TikTok at all, you might recognize her as "lesleypsyd."

One of the hardest things for me to admit about my ADHD is that I do struggle with stuff. I struggle with basic tasks like doing the laundry, loading the dishes, remembering to pay bills on time. And most of the time I do OK. Most of the time I manage to get by using my systems and structures, and sometimes those systems fail. Sometimes I just forget to do the thing, or because of my related things like depression and anxiety, it just makes it a lot harder.

And so, sometimes that means that my partners wind up pulling a little bit of extra weight, right? My partners wind up supporting me in different ways, and that's amazing. But one of the things that I've noticed through my life and in the lives of a lot of people with ADHD who I've interacted with is that sometimes that support can cross a line. It can cross a line into parentification. And when we talk about parentification, it in and of itself is like, yeah, you don't want to be doing that. But the aftereffects of parentification — resentment, guilt, shame, embarrassment, all of those things — those are the things that really start to impact relationships.

And so, I want to kind of warn you that this isn't like a really deep, serious conversation. We talk about pirates — there was a whole riff that we went on about pirates. But this is one that I think this is a very real topic. And so, I just wanted to say that if you're listening to this in the car with someone else, I know, at least for me, I came out of this wanting to have a real discussion with my partners and like we worked on stuff coming out of this conversation.

So, I just wanted a heads-up that this might be a conversation starter. So, you know, just know that going in. But anyway, I hope you enjoy this episode. I'm so excited to bring Lesley Cook to the show. She's one of my dear friends who I've been making content with for several years now. She is so smart. She's so fantastic. And so, without further ado, welcome to the show.

I'm so excited that you're here. For those of you who don't know, Lesley is also a creator on TikTok. This is actually how Lesley and I met. And the Internet often assumes and insists that we are, in fact, sisters. We're not. But the Internet seems to think so. So, this is my recording with my big sister episode. Welcome to the show.

Lesley: Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I think it's like the longest-running bit on my TikTok.

Cate: Yeah, I think so. People are like, "Are you two related?" Like "No. We're just two women with brown hair."

Lesley: Yes.

Cate: And glasses.

Lesley: Yes.

(03:03) What is a parentified relationship?

Cate: So, today we are talking about a topic that is really interesting from both a relationship standpoint, but also from just a standpoint of ADHD. I'm sure you've heard it talked about on the Internet, specifically TikTok a lot, but we're talking about parentified relationships, what they are, what they look like, how to avoid them, and what to do if you maybe find yourself in one. Let's start with the 101. Lesley, can you talk to us about what a parentified relationship is?

Lesley: Sure. So, there are relationships that are supposed to be parentified, right? When you have a parent and a child. So, someone who is responsible for the caretaking of the relationship and then someone who is a participant, but they're really a receiver of the relationship. But sometimes that dynamic can occur in actually partnerships, where a romantic partnership or even a friendship could end up with one person being more responsible and the other person being the receiver.

Cate: This is maybe not the way to start this conversation, but what's so bad about that?

Lesley: Right. That's the first question I always have too, because in some relationships and you know, we can talk about ADHD to start, since we're all in that club together, you will have what would look to someone else like an uneven partnership. Like maybe I don't do as much of the cleaning and the pickup and maybe I do really rely on my partner to remind me to take my medicine at night.

But even in those relationships where it is perhaps uneven, the level of responsibility for caretaking is still there. There's people putting in and taking out. So, when you reach the level of a parentified relationship, that means that it's actually become more taxing on one person. And we leave the realm of just shared but different responsibility and into the realm where someone has the responsibility and the other person just doesn't.

Cate: Who usually ends up on one side of the equation or the other? Because I have a sneaking suspicion I know the answer.

Lesley: I'm going to answer it in the conventional sense, and then I'm going to add a little tidbit at the end. So, typically, in general, us ADHD folks, when we find ourselves a human who has the opposite strengths and challenges as we do, number one, we could be so excited. But two, those are the relationships that can kind of slide into parentification.

So, if the very like, we'll use air quotes here, if the functional partner is able to do some things very easily that are very challenging for us, it may start as a loving caretaking task that I will just take up more of this labor because I know it taxes you. It's where that leads that. Sometimes we can end up in that parentification.

(05:37) When an ADHD partner is the "parent" in the relationship or takes on too much responsibility

What I will add is that there is a different dynamic when you have two people who are disabled to various degrees or perhaps to people equally disabled by something like ADHD, you still can have parentified relationships where the ADHD partner, or otherwise disabled partner, has become the parent. And that's a very interesting case.

Cate: Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because it seems like there's very specific pairings that happen, especially in relationships with ADHD, and it's either like another neurodivergent partner or not. And I'm wondering about like how those look and like what the differences can be, especially when we're talking about something like someone who is also similarly disabled, but now they're also in this parentified status.

Lesley: I think one of the exciting parts, if you will, of ADHD is that we can develop subspecialties in things. So, it's not uniformly disabling. I'll give you an example. For work, I am incredibly organized in terms of data files and everything's color-coded and efficient. Don't ask me where that goes when I leave the office, but it is there in the office and that is what counts.

As a result of that, places that I've worked that are paperwork heavy, sometimes I would get leaned on very heavily to do that task for others. Even though I'm a disabled individual in that area, I have this like sub hyperfocus that can help me harness that. That can happen in families or in couple relationships.

So, if perhaps one of the ADHD partners is not that great at physical space organization, but they're incredibly emotionally present and really good at keeping someone else feeling positively about themselves through challenges, there could be an opportunity for them to become parentified in that role, where they are been responsible for making sure that the other person feels OK through their challenges. And that can be very taxing.

(07:33) Are parentified relationships typically gendered?

Cate: Is the parentified role, does it wind up being gendered?

Lesley: You know, I'm going to give you the best answer I can, which is in general, because of the way that neurology and socialization like mash up, yeah. So, typically femme-presenting people socialized as women, or people identifying as women, tend to be pulled into that role more easily. There's a wonderful book called "A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD" by Sari Solden — it changed my life. She talks a lot about how the roles of femininity and womanhood, the social roles, really pull on the ADHD partner to kind of hyperfocus on their partner and how that needs to be balanced if that's going to occur.

Cate: Number one, amazing book. Number two, we will link it in the show notes, dear listener. So, if you want to check it out, you can find it there. But yeah, and I see too there so much conversation around like the division of labor in a household like who is managing what. And it's like if I'm being honest, I have a very specific set of skills. Like I'm also really great at like the admin stuff, but I'm like, I'm not, I'm a great cook, but the task of cooking is overwhelming to me. And so, my partner usually winds up being the person who feeds me, right?

(08:48) Fairness versus equity in relationships

And I realized that I was like, "Well, that's not really fair because now is like his job to make sure that I'm taking care of myself. And that's not fair." And I think, like when we're talking about this idea of parentified relationships, there's like that idea of fairness. But fairness and equity are not the same thing. And I'm wondering if you could talk about how fairness versus equity shows up in a situation like this.

Lesley: So, and unless I have them reversed, which sometimes happens and that is OK, fairness is where everyone has the same things, but equity is when everyone has what they need.

Cate: Yeah.

Lesley: So, in ADHD relationships specifically, we often do not meet the criteria of fairness. There is often a huge discrepancy between the types of labor, the labor itself, the time it takes, and the other person. But equity is about energy exchange.

So, for instance, like you referenced earlier, all the like the social media posts and the funny things about the division of labor and men and women. But if you came to my home, you would see that actually I fit most of those air quotes again, male stereotypes. I'm the messy one. I'm the one that leaves the door... I'm looking at my bathroom and the doors are open on all my cabinets.

But there is equity here because when the other person feels that the scales have tipped, there is a process and I hope we'll get to that, I'll kind of lay it out, that they are able to have an exchange with me to say, "I feel now out of balance," and then we rebalance it. And that is where equity lives in that exchange of energy between two people. Rather than this like fixed idea of we all have the same tasks.

Cate: Or that the tasks have to stay the same.

Lesley: Right.

Cate: But in terms of navigating that, I do, I really want to hear about this process that you go through. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Lesley: Yeah. So, a lot of work in the areas of ADHD and other versions of neurodivergence, we start with something related to noticing, which is something that comes out of mindfulness practice. You'll find it in all kinds of different ways of being and ways of knowing, but it's about noticing what's happening without judging it first.

And so, let's say we have a couple who feels like they are often bouncing between a parentified relationship and something that's more equitable. The first task that I would have them practice is just to notice when it's out of balance. Once we notice it, our second step is to accept that happens sometimes and it's not evidence that we're doing anything bad or wrong.

So, we notice, we accept, then we shift towards something that works better for us. And sometimes that is even something we have to write down and revisit and look at it together. And then we repair. So, we make some kind of effort to communicate that we care about the fact that it tipped, but we know that's not a sign of anything bad. And we're just going to refocus on what we know works between us.

(11:44) Weaponized incompetence

Cate: Another topic that comes up a lot online, like when we're talking about relationships and how parentified relationships can impact us negatively is the idea of weaponized incompetence. Can you tell us, like, your version of what weaponized incompetence is?

Lesley: Yes, absolutely. And I think this is a really important part of this puzzle. So the idea of weaponized incompetence is that someone is asked to do something or expected to participate in some way, and they do it incompletely or poorly on purpose so that they're not asked to do that task again. It's a version of manipulation. Sometimes it's very conscious and sometimes it's a pattern that was learned a long time ago, probably through observation of another parent. But the core thing that separates it is that it is not in good faith. And the desired result is that they're left alone and not asked to participate again.

Cate: And the example that I always really like to use is, you know, you ask a partner to put your clothes in the dryer and they don't turn it on, and so they sit for three days or they do, and they put it on super, super high heat and now all of your clothes are shrunk and ruined or, you know, "Hey, can you put my clothes in the washer?" But they were all the dry clean ones and now they're ruined. In those cases, like once, OK, yeah, you know what? Sometimes something happens. I've done that to my own clothes.

But when it becomes a repeated pattern of like, "I just don't know how the dryer works." Like, "Well, YouTube exists. You can probably figure it out. I bet that there's a video of a guy teaching you how to use this dryer on YouTube." But so, can you talk a little bit about how that weaponized incompetence can, like interact and build on a parentified relationship?

Lesley: Sure. So, I think going to the Internet is a great example, too, of what someone can do instead of leaning on that. But there are so many other things like you could write yourself a list of what to do and post that. You could make an effort to review the steps with the person the next time. And so, let's say you have someone or a couple that is already drifting towards this idea of parentification, so for the purposes of this example, we'll say "As an ADHD partner, I feel unsure that I'm going to do a lot of things correctly. And so, I hang back a lot and I really rely on my partner to give me specific instruction. And that over time leads to me really hanging back on most things."

And then we'll say, "I'm asked to do something that I then also don't want to do. There is a layering that can happen where I'm genuinely afraid that I'm going to mess up. That's true. But I also then could be engaging in an additional behavior that is kind of designed to push that person away from asking me." That can make it really hard for that first partner to determine what's happening here.

And I see that a lot in couples work where someone will come in and say, "I honestly don't know. I don't know. If this is the level of disability my spouse has, oh my gosh, I want to be here with them." But something feels wrong about this, like it's happening so many times. So, I think they can become fused and blended and they have to kind of be separated apart if we're going to make change.

(14:49) What happens to a relationship when it's parentified for too long?

Cate: So, OK, so we're at that point, where like, "Oh my gosh. Like we are sort of falling into these behaviors every so often." But how are they affecting relationships? Like what happens to the relationship when we live in that sort of parentified space for long enough?

Lesley: The easiest way I think, to think about this is that the parentified partner often feels like a parent, and so, parents have a different feeling towards a child when that child is not meeting expectation. It's not a feeling of a partnership.

You'll have less touchy-feely love feelings in those moments. You'll have probably a decrease in that sense of empathy. You might notice that you're becoming more irritable with your partner. You might notice that you're taking on even more things because you just don't even want to deal with having to explain it. It often results in reduced intimacy, both physical and emotional, an increase in irritability, and often a feeling of isolation or loneliness between a couple.

Cate: I love that you specifically said loneliness because that's something that I see so often in the work that I do are these partners who are like, "I'm living with this person. I see this person every day, but I'm lonely. My emotional needs aren't getting met, you know, to some extent, like my sexual needs aren't getting met. And it's frustrating because now, you know, if I don't do all of these things that I have been doing, then the whole house falls apart and then I have more work."

And so, then it becomes this like really toxic cycle of the parentified figure just, you know, basically carrying the whole household on their back with, you know, what feels like little to no recourse. So, I'm curious like what are, what are the recourses? Is a word that I think is a real word. But what do you do? What do you do in those situations?

Lesley: Yeah, I think the first thing we do as couples, and this is on either end, so maybe it's the person who isn't parentified also that's noticing that like, "Oh my gosh, I'm starting to feel like a kid in here. Like I can't do anything without asking permission." The first thing we do is name it and we name it with empathy. So, we approach our partner, sometimes this can be through things like texting if it's too emotionally flooding to do it in person. It could be leaving them a voicemail, it can be in person.

But basically what we're going to say is "I've noticed something happening. Did you notice that?" Like getting some information from the other person. When we jump right into fixing, sometimes we're skipping really understanding what's happening and we have to figure out how we got here before we can determine like where we want to go.

(17:19) Notice, shift, repair

Cate: How do we do that? How do we figure out how we got here?

Lesley: So, my partner and I have been together for a very long time and so on and off at different times, our relationship and the task orientation has changed dramatically. This is recent too. Within the last 3 or 4 months, all of a sudden I realized that I was rushing home from work — he has a work-from-home job — I was rushing home from work to get my dinner started and I was calling him on the way to say, "Hey, it's 6:00. Make sure you don't forget that he needs to start homework."

And so, all of a sudden, I noticed one night that I was completely obliterated. Like, I didn't want to cook. It was peanut butter and jelly Uncrustables for everybody. That's what was happening. They're delicious, by the way.

Cate: Girl dinner.

Lesley: And so, because we have enough rapport and practice doing this, like notice, shift, repair, I was able to say to him "I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I am responsible for dinner time regardless of what's happening in the world. And if I don't say anything, it won't happen." Is that, and the question is the key, because you don't want to lob it as an accusation. You want to say, "I'm noticing this. Have you also noticed that?" And he was able to say, "Yeah, I noticed that. That's weird. What the heck do we do about that?"

And so, then we had a long conversation about like, "If we don't like it like this, what do we wish it looked like?" And then we started getting there.

(18:45) What to do when you notice yourself taking on too much responsibility for your partner

Cate: I want to talk about specifically admin tasks, things like scheduling the doctor's appointment, you know, making sure that meds get refilled, all of this stuff. Because I know I get so frustrated with my partner who shall not be named because it's like, "OK, hey, like you have two weeks left of your Adderall. Have you refilled?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to. I'm going to." And then it's like, "Hey, it's been another week," because I'm keeping track of the time. Because when my partner winds up being like, out of Adderall, it affects my life and it affects like, our household and that kind of stuff.

But it's like, "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I'm fine." And so, but then I'm like, I get so mad. I get so frustrated because I'm like, "Just make the phone call." And then I'm like, well, I know that he struggles with those administrative tasks and I don't. So, why don't I just make the phone call? Because in that way I can make sure that like, he's got his meds, but then it's just like, what do you, what do you do? What do you do in that situation? Help. Help, Lesley.

Lesley: I don't know if you're going to like the answer because I certainly don't like my own answer.

Cate: I bet it's talk about it and don't do that.

Lesley: Yeah, so there's a couple of things. And this is so common. This is so, so common that we just don't talk about it enough. There's a couple of things. When we're working with differences in neurology and strengths and challenges, we really want to always ask things as questions rather than assuming the responsibility. That's how we end up in a parentified relationship. So, you're having a really hard time refilling your medicine, and I am feeling anxious about that. Would you like me to help you do it?

If the other person says "No, I want to do it," the best thing we can do is let that happen and let that happen in a way that we don't build resentment. Because when it falls apart, because it will, we just come back together and say, "Did that work? Me asking you and you saying no. Did that work for us? No. Next time it happens. When I ask, 'Would you be willing to just let me try?'" So, we're going to do these mini-experiments. That's how we really combat like I was saying about resentment, that's how we combat resentment from building is we treat these things like experiments and we see how they turn out.

The other part is getting ahead of it. So, sometimes in partnerships, we wait until there's like really intense feelings to talk about it. And the best time to talk about it is when the Adderall has been refilled. So, we're on like, max brain available. And so, those are the two of the things I would recommend.

(21:08) People pleasing, and the need to fix things

Cate: I'm curious how people pleasing and that kind of need to fix also plays into this larger conversation about parentified relationships. Because I don't want to speak for you, but I know for me, like I deal a lot with rejection sensitivity, i deal a lot with people pleasing. I deal with that need to like "Something isn't right and I can fix it right now. And so, I shall." And then I'm exhausted and I'm a little bit resentful and I'm a little bit frustrated. So, what do you, what do you do about that there, Lesley? What do you, what do you got?

Lesley: Well, first, you can speak for me because this all sounds, you know, like it's in my wheelhouse, too. When we think about parents, parents are responsible for making sure that an outcome occurs. Partners are responsible for making sure that they are walking through life with their partner as a support. So, partners are safety nets. Parents are bosses. So, it's kind of this internal evaluation of where am I on this boss-partner, you know, seesaw.

And the key is there is no optimal outcome when we're done. That is also how we can arrive at parentification. Like once we fix this issue, it will never happen again because I was so good as a partner that I fixed it. That's a parent. A partner is someone who's going to right the ship with you no matter where it goes. And we're exchanging energy.

Cate: So, you should be more like a pirate relationship, not a parent.

Lesley: That's right.

Cate: It's the dumbest thing I've ever said on this podcast.

Lesley: Shipmates, you know.

Cate: Welcome to "piratified" relationships with Lesley and Cate, argh.

(22:46) How to ask the right questions to your partner

Can you talk a little bit more about just like asking the question like but like without resentment, without anger. Like, how do you find the right question to ask? Like, how do you even begin to sort of notice like these patterns happening?

Lesley: When we're parentified, when we're taking a parent role, we're directing. So, we're solving problems before anyone has a chance to encounter them, we are giving direction. It's often very positive and supportive, but it's draining. Questions are an opportunity for us to partner with someone, so some of the good questions always start with "I noticed that. I noticed that our account was overdrawn. Do you want to sit down this week and look at what happened?" That's a great opening question.

"Would you have time for me to sit down so we can talk about this?" Or, "I'm super stressed at the end of the day, and I think I've taken on too much with the kids' homework. What do you think you could fit into your schedule this week? What piece of this do you think you could take?" Another good question is just asking someone's perspective. "So, I'm feeling overloaded in this area. What do you think? Is there an area you're feeling overloaded in?" It's really just opening it up.

And then what'll happen is, as you share, you'll probably have these points of synergy that come together where you're both like, "Oh, there it is. That's something we can do together." And then you just explore it.

(24:07) Noticing your ADHD at play, and using it as an explanation, not an excuse

Cate: Something that I am again curious about is how so much of the literal on the piece of paper that they check off at the doctor's office, symptoms of ADHD, are things like trouble finishing tasks or like doing the big part of the project, but leaving the small pieces behind. Like I have shelves that I've been building at my house for like two years that remain yet unfinished. All I have to do, all I have to do is put on like the trim. And I'm like, "Well, the shelves are up. These shelves, shelves works. And for whatever reason, I'm just struggling so much with finishing it.

So, my question then is when we realize this, when we notice that these things are happening, I don't want to say because of our ADHD but can be related to symptomatically our ADHD. Is there a good way to navigate that conversation while not necessarily relying on the excuse of, "Well, I have ADHD, I can't possibly finish the shelves because I know I need to finish the shelves?" For the record, Chris, I promise I'm going to finish the shelves.

Lesley: Yeah, there's a great way and it's really just a thought shift. So, instead of saying, "I can't do it because I have ADHD," we flip it and we say, "Because I have ADHD, it's harder for me to do this." Leading that way means that then there's a second half of that sentence, which means there's something for us to do then. And sometimes the thing to do is ask for help. Sometimes the thing to do is hire out. Sometimes the thing to do is redo our division of labor. But just that shift is important because how we think about ourselves often frames how we then behave and how we relate to our partners.

So, for example, if I say to myself, "Because I have ADHD, I struggle with mess, that is one of my biggest struggles. I am 40-something years old. It's not going to stop. I am going to create messes periodically." If I say "I have ADHD, so I make messes," that's the end of the story and my partner then has to deal with it. "Sorry. That's just the way it is." If I flip it "Because I have ADHD, it's harder for me to manage my messes," it leaves room to say "And so, I could use support here and I need to work on this part of it here."

Cate: The very re... like very recently, shockingly recently, I realized that for me, when things get too cluttered, it just, is so noisy and it makes it so much harder to like focus. And, you know, and I work from home most of the time, so I'm just sort of like in the same living area. And so, my partner and I, we started clearing at the end of the night and we just sort of looked around the room and we're like, "Does this feel good? Does this room, as it is right now, feel like how we want the room to be?"

And so, now every night we just reset backwards to that rather than trying to like, "Oh we have to like clean every single day." It's like, no, like just make sure the coffee table is cleared, make sure the stuff goes back in the basket, whatever. And it's been life-changing.

Lesley: I love that because I feel like you could use that in all the ways we were talking about before. So, when you're saying "Dishes. How does this feel? Does this feel good the way that it's running? And if it doesn't, then that's our signal to rework something." That's such a kind question that allows us to say, "No, it doesn't feel good" in a way that is not perhaps offensive to the other person or cause that RSD to creep up on us.

Changing how we speak about something can often then change how we feel about it going forward, as long as we make an effort to like practice that like a skill. And by the way, that's a fantastic parenting strategy for anybody who's raising kids with ADHD. And you see them struggling, you can use that same thing with them. Like, you know, how do you feel about your room? Because they may look around and say, I feel comfortable and you may look at it and be very concerned for their well-being, but they're not beyond what they can tolerate.

(28:02) Setting an example as a parent to kids

Cate: I do have a question about parentified relationships when you are a parent and how if you are dealing with literal, actual parentified relationships, parent and kid, but then there might be twinges of parentified relationships also happening with your co-parents. How do you navigate through that in a way that teaches those kids who are currently in a parentified relationship, how to you know, how to, and what to say like a void, but you know what I mean? Like what's the responsible parenting way of handling this? I guess is the direct way of asking that question.

Lesley: Yeah. One of the best things we can do for our kids, regardless of their neurology, is to show them how we deserve to be treated and how others deserve to be treated in our presence. So, we don't have to have quiet secret conversations about care tasks. We can use the language we're talking about to talk to our partners openly before things get really challenging. So, if you're feeling out of balance, using something like at the end of the dinner, asking everyone "How are we feeling about how dinnertime is going lately? I'm feeling like it's a little off." And letting them see that model that we can talk to our partner in a way that is respectful.

I think the other piece, just to validate that this happens sometimes, is that we can become quite triggered by our partners if we're really struggling with something with a child. So, if a child is very dysregulated and our partner does something similar, it's possible that we could really lash out in a way that seems out of proportion or unusual.

And so, if you're the receiving partner of that, try your best to be kind and also ask like, "What's happening here? This is unusual." Because we do want to keep that separate. It is possible to have that bleed over and then we can start treating children as partners and our partners as children. We don't want to end up in that space.

Cate: I know that sometimes, like, I feel like I work really hard to be a good partner and I work really hard to make sure that the people in my life are loved and cherished and taken care of. But like, sometimes I feel like a bad partner because I know that there are places where, you know, I leave, mess around and I struggle or I forget things or, you know, yeah, I totally paid that parking ticket — I totally forgot to pay the parking ticket.

And so, I worry and I fear that, you know, my partners feel this need to parent me and to take care of me in this way. And I think that that shows up in my own life as actually the reverse, where I go so hard trying to make sure that I'm perfect and good, that I'm one, I'm parenting my partners when I don't even need to. Is that common, do you think?

Lesley: Yeah, I think it's more common with women and femmes because of our socialization. And I referred to it as the steward behavior "Look what I can do," from Mad TV. Where it's like...

Cate: Such a deep cut.

Lesley: Or we're struggling so much that we're like, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to not only take care of myself, I want to take care of all of you, and you're all going to be happy because I am trying so hard." And that boomerang, that bounce back and forth is often what leads us to burnout. And executive function burnout, if you've never experienced it, whoever's listening, it's different.

Cate: Yeah.

Lesley: I don't really, even today have the words to describe it, but it's really like everything being glitched out. Like you just don't have any skill left. We really want to avoid that. Another way to avoid that kind of people-pleasing aspect of parentification tendency is to ask ourselves, Am I being a bad partner or am I functioning at the bottom end of what I'm able to do and I need support?"

Because sometimes it's as simple as instead of overfunctioning, we just need to tell our partner what we're feeling. "I'm feeling like I just want to fix everybody's life because I have been a burden or stressful," and give them an opportunity to take care of us a bit.

Cate: Dear listener, a good resource for this too, in our conversation that we had a couple of episodes ago with Betty Martin, we talked a lot about the dark side of giving and receiving and how when you were giving and giving and giving— even when nobody asked you to — that's not necessarily super healthy. And I think that ties really well into this conversation. Lesley, this has been an amazing conversation. Do you have any last thoughts, pieces of advice, words of wisdom for our dear listeners before we let you go?

(32:24) Lesley's parting advice

Lesley: Yes. In fact, I think when we ever we talk about something like weaponized incompetence or parentified relationship, we as the ADHDers we are, or perhaps everyone, could have a tendency to believe, "Oh my gosh, this is me we're talking about. I've been bad." So, for anyone listening, it's not bad per se. If you've ended up here, the key is, then what do we do with that awareness and where do we move? Do we move closer to our partner or do we isolate ourselves more? This is also just part of being alive and trying to figure out what that is like.

(33:00) Where you can find Lesley and credits

Cate: Dr. Lesley Cook, I would love it if you could tell the people where to find you.

Lesley: I'm mostly right now just on TikTok @lesleypsyd L-E-S-L-E-Y P-S-Y-D where you can find a variety of educational and silly content.

Cate: Lesley, thank you so much for being here. This was an amazing conversation. Dear listeners, I hope you'll learn something because I know I did. And yeah, thanks so much for being here, Lesley.

Lesley: Thanks for having me.

Cate: Although, call Mom. She misses you.

Lesley: Oh yeah. You got to pick up the turkey.

Cate: OK. I thought I was bringing the cranberry sauce.

Lesley: You're bringing the jello salad.

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 us 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. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

"Sorry, I Missed This" is produced and edited by Jessamine Molli and Margie DeSantis. Video is produced by Calvin Knie. Our theme music was written by Justin D. Wright, who also mixes the show. Ash Beecher 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. And I'm your host, Cate Osborn. Thank you so much for listening.

Now I can't stop thinking about pirate relationships. I shouldn't have said it.