My Partner Won’t Grow Up! Or…Is There Something More?

Is it Peter Pan syndrome? Are we sure? Is it ADHD? What’s the difference? You walk by a house, and see 1 person in a relationship seemingly doing everything, the other person seemingly doing nothing. We can assign gender roles - the stereotypes are certainly there - but let’s not. Let’s put gender aside in any given partnership for this scenario.

Ever seen one partner function a ton, the other seemingly not functioning at all? Over functioning and under functioning is an imbalance in relationships, and every relationship has imbalances that happen from time to time. But the real question is this: does the imbalance come and go? Are there peaks and valleys for both partners? So many relationships go astray when the imbalance continues to heighten, and both partners view their contributions as greater than the other’s. What if this exact description might have 2 different underlying causes?

Underlying cause 1 is what we know as Peter Pan Syndrome, or a manchild, or womanchild, or any new and trendy way of saying the person is fully capable, without much energy, of growing the *@&% up. Lots of time could be spent on why it’s this way, lots of theories, accusations, defenses, etc. But that’s not the point today. Today, the focus is on underlying cause 2. What might the underlying cause actually be? It might be…neurodivergence (ADHD, Autism, AuDHD, etc).

What if your partner isn’t what they seem (insert manchild type term here)? What if they are genuinely exhausted because they have spent all day, every day in the workplace, forcing their neurodivergent brain to fit into a neurotypical world? As evolved as many of us say we are, we really don’t understand how difficult that is. We can look to neuroscience, we can look in psychology, across psychological research. What we knew very clearly is that the vast majority of us do not understand neurodivergence. We expect people to operate from the perspective of our own brains. Let me ask: is that fair? Reasonable? Expecting your partner has the same capabilities with the same speed, efficiency, and abilities as your own? And then expecting them to meet half of your standards, based on you?

It might look like Peter Pan syndrome. Maybe it is. But maybe, just maybe, it’s something deeper. Maybe one of you has a much easier time adapting to the neurotypical world around because one of you is in fact more neurotypical. And maybe the other one of you, the one who looks like Peter Pan, is not - they’re just unbelievably exhausted from forcing their brains to do something unnatural all day, every day, and when they come home, they crash - and yeah, they crash hard. Is it fair? No. None of this is fair. It’s not fair to the neurotypical person who is taking on way more than their share. It’s not fair to the neurodiverse person who’s so exhausted even if they want to do more, they can’t.

So, now, what do we do about it? Continue living in this dually exhausted state, resentment building from at least one if not both partners? Sure - sounds like a fun challenge! No, seriously, that sounds terrible. So what can we do? It turns out, if both partners are invested, which is a BIG IF, there is so much than can be done to build a stronger partnership! If this resonates in some way, keep your eye out for the next article, that will start diving into just one of the many things we can do to help build a stronger, deeper, and more aligned partnership. Stay tuned!

Julie Taheri, LMHC WA MHC.LH.70102723

Psychotherapist, Guilt Free Therapy, PLLC