I'll try to keep this short. I've been in a long distance relationship with someone for two years (we used to work together years ago before he moved away). He has ADHD. Things were great, and as I realise now from reading this forum, I was the centre of his hyper fixation for the first few months. He then gradually toned it down and although we were still super close and he was always incredibly caring etc, he would take a week or so to initiate contact after the first year, he would get very stressed about all the millions of things he had to do just as part of daily living. But when he did initiate, he was always extremely loving.

6 months ago, I began asking him for reassurance on our relationship, and I initiated contact a lot more. This was due to my own mild OCD issues. This stressed him out and he told me so, that he felt like he was being crowded when he already had a lot on his plate. I tried to back down, I left it days without contact to show him that I validated how he felt and to give him space.

But when we did talk, I felt he had started to emotionally detach. He would tell me that things are fine in his head, but i could see that this was where our relationship started to take a tumble. The more he detached, the more I grasped at straws, trying to remind him of what we had, of things he promised or said, etc and it culminated in a big argument last week where he said I was giving him too much stress, he couldn't cope with being reminded of things he had said, or demands for his attention, I was getting on his nerves with my questions seeking reassurance, etc. I apologised to him and tried to explain my feelings of the situation while saying that I appreciated his honesty that I didn't mean to cause so much stress. He didn't reply (kind of expected), and it's been just over a week now.

I've decided to pull back and give him his much needed space. I have been doing a lot of reading about adhd in the mean time and have now opened my eyes to some of the struggles he must be going through and how my communication approach has likely added to these and stressed him out. I deeply regret not looking into this sooner and trying to understand him and his needs.

I have decided to go "no contact" for a month to work on myself, how I can better communicate and validate others feelings. However, I'm also slightly worried that during this period, with his lack of time awareness and distractions, he will forget about me. He has always been there emotionally when I need him the most, apart from currently avoiding my need for reassurance when I feel he distances himself. I want him to know that I am taking his feelings seriously and want to try to make things work between us. I'm just worried that if I initiate contact soon, and explain this to him, he will see this as an attempt to get into another long emotionally charged deep conversation which he finds difficult, and will back off again. Do I wait for him to contact me... and then act like normal? Try to carry on and rebuild our relationship? If I say nothing, will he forget me? Am I too late in validating his feelings? So many questions, I'm just really struggling right now, he is so worth fighting for.

From my own experience, and from reading others' posts here, I am wondering if what we are dealing with in ADHD partners is always necessarily a symptom of their ADHD. My husband has a diagnosis, but I keep thinking that some of the difficult things that come up map onto narcissism as well as ADHD. Grandiose sense of his own self-importance (he's an artist and so he's above the little day to day stuff - someone else can take care of it) extreme defensiveness around even the slightest hint of an inkling that he might be flawed (RSD or does he actually believe that he alone in all of humanity is perfect?). He has other symptoms or traits that don't match onto ADHD like a desire to surround himself with 'important' or 'special' people. There can of course be co-morbidities with any condition. But I'm wondering if anyone else has thought this - 'is it just ADHD or is he also a narcissist?'

We've been married for 30+ yrs. Husband was diagnosed when he was 50, but we struggled long before that. He takes meds, goes to therapy and says he spends "so much time" working on his ADHD. We've gone to couples therapy and taken Melissa's class twice. I've gone to therapy multiple times as well. Despite all this, to me it feels like his ADHD is untreated. I've tried to help him with docs and treatment but he needs to help himself.  He suffers from severe RSD, which I think is the root of so much of what we struggle with. He takes guanficine, but it doesn't seem to help. The ever so smallest thing sets him off into an irritability spiral and he's snarky and mean. I manage all things that require any attention to detail, I coordinate 99% of the details of our lives....... it seems like he only hears 25% of what we talk about. I never know if he's paid attention to stuff so I can't count on him for many things. When I ask a question about something we've talked about multiple times and he doesn't remember talking about it he gets all irritable and lashes out at me. Sometimes he says he's sorry for lashing out, but there's usually an excuse ..... "oh I didn't sleep, my phone isn't working". I'm exhausted, angry, sad, lonely and frustrated. I've told him multiple times that I'm at the end of my rope and something has to change. He makes some changes for a week or so then we're back to the same place....... over and over and over. I'm not the happy, fun creative person I used to be. So often he sucks all the joy from me. After his little meltdowns he can snap out of it and make jokes, but I'm spent and can't "snap out of it". So I stay angry, frustrated and cold towards him because I'm just so tired of being treated like that. We retired a few years ago and I thought things might improve since we would both be less stressed, but that hasn't been the case. He gets so hyper focused on various things that he's oblivious to everything else. When I mention the hyper focus  he says "oh I guess I just can't do x - I'll just quit doing that". 
For a long time I kept thinking he could find something..... therapy, new med, new tool........that  would help us, but I now realize that's not going to happen and at almost 70 he's not going to change. I'm struggling with making the break, financially it will be hard. I often think "who will take care of me when I'm 80" or "I don't want to be alone" ...... but then I realize how alone I feel now and wonder if I'd be better off calling it quits?????  I read all the stories here and I'm not optimistic that we can make it work