It’s 9:47 p.m. and you’re brushing your teeth while running the list. Their dentist appointment is Thursday. Their mother’s birthday is Sunday, so the card has to go out tomorrow. The car registration expired four days ago, and you are the only person in the house who knows.
Nobody asked you to hold all of this. Nobody had to. At some point the relationship quietly reorganized itself around the fact that you remember things.
Now you’re the calendar. The alarm. The person who notices the milk is low, and the person who notices your partner is thirty seconds from a meltdown at the party and gets you both out the door with an excuse that sounds natural.
Here’s what almost nobody says out loud: you’ve become your partner’s executive function.
And if you’re AuDHD, there’s a good chance you’re reading this from one side of that sentence. Possibly, uncomfortably, from both.
The Job Description Nobody Posted
If you wrote it up honestly, the role has four parts.
Read more