Building social capital is critical for strong relationships, ADHD can get in the way
A group of medical school friends nominated Sasha Hamdani to create a memory book for their pregnant classmate. Hamdani worked hard on the task for several weeks. She printed pictures, gathered mementos and listened to stories about their friend. The book — meant to be a group gift for their classmate’s baby shower — was more than 100 pages long, with items such as anatomy class doodles and fabric from a white medical coat.
On the flight to the baby shower from Kansas, Hamdani realized when she was searching in her bag for her headphones that she had left the memory book behind. She felt awful. “I’m sure that half of the people here thought I never even made anything,” she recalled thinking.
Hamdani, now 35, was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder at age 9. She frequently misplaces important items, runs late or struggles with a disorganized purse — all symptoms of ADHD. She has been labeled a “flake” because she forgets social engagements or to reply to texts. People have often told her, “If it was important to you, you’d remember.”
The repercussions of such missteps are an important yet underdiscussed issue for children and adults diagnosed with ADHD. While most people think of this disorder as causing difficulties with completing assignments in school or the workplace, it can also lead to a deficit in what experts call “social capital.”
“Social capital is the network and goodwill that you have with other people that help you not only accomplish tasks, but also [maintain] important social connections,” said Caroline Maguire, a family coach in Massachusetts and the author of “Why Will No One Play With Me?” Once you amass social capital, you can then draw on it by asking for help when needed.
Here are some reasons people with ADHD might not have much social capital to draw on, how a lack of such capital can affect them and what can be done to build social capital.
Why children and adults with ADHD sometimes lack social capital
Poorly managed ADHD. Failure to treat symptoms — such as not paying attention or being disorganized — with medication or counseling, can lead to relationship problems. For example, a person with ADHD may forget to put away their clothes or leave dirty dishes on the table, annoying their partner. Over time, this can leave their partner feeling unsupported and resentful.
Even those who are being treated might skip their medication during the weekend, believing it’s unnecessary if they’re not at work or school. But weekends are when people socialize with friends or family. Ari Tuckman, a psychologist in Pennsylvania and the author of “ADHD After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship,” said that when people with ADHD don’t take their medication on weekends, they may experience problems in their relationships. One of Tuckman’s clients told her husband, who has ADHD, “Your co-workers get ‘Medicated Joe,’ and I get ‘Unmedicated Joe.’ ”
Trouble with social cues. Even with the proper medication, people who have ADHD may still struggle with paying attention to social cues. “If you don’t read social cues, which a lot of ADHD kids don’t, then they might not even realize the social ramifications” of their actions, Maguire said.
In social situations, people with ADHD may impulsively interrupt conversations or have trouble waiting their turn during a game. For example, if a group of children at a birthday party are all waiting patiently to hit a piñata, the child with ADHD might run up, jump to the head of the line and hit it. This might cause the other children to feel angry.
Ryan Wexelblatt, a clinical social worker in New Jersey who specializes in ADHD said that people with the disorder have trouble understanding other people’s thoughts and feelings. The partner of a person who has ADHD might consider their relationship one-sided and think, “They’re asking me for something but not really giving anything in return,” he said. This inability to invest in social relationships also leads to a lack of social capital.
Lack of face-to-face peer interactions. Children who have ADHD might avoid in-person interactions because their difficulties with social cues lead to shallow connections. They’re often drawn to video games because of the stimulation they receive from them, Wexelblatt said. But when kids play video games or engage in other solitary activities, they aren’t spending time with peers or building relationships; instead, they’re retreating into an artificial world with superficial relationships.
Difficulty with executive-functioning skills. Organization, planning and memory are helpful not only in school or the workplace, but also in relationships. If a person with ADHD is always late to meet a friend for lunch, then that friend could eventually feel they can’t rely on that person or they don’t value their time.
“One social expectation is that you be on time. If you text me, you respond to my text,” said Maguire. If people with ADHD don’t adhere to these social norms, relationships can suffer.
People with ADHD sometimes struggle with what experts call “time blindness” — when you are unaware of the passage of time. This behavior can also disrupt relationships.
“If they’re chronically late and they don’t have a real excuse and say, ‘Oh, I was on TikTok, and I just spaced,’ ” their friends will feel upset, said Anita Robertson, a clinical social worker in Texas and the author of, “ADHD & Us: A Couple’s Guide to Loving and Living With Adult ADHD.”
Other people’s misunderstanding of ADHD. “ADHD is not taken seriously, and it’s looked at as a character flaw,” Wexelblatt said. That can mean that people with ADHD aren’t given the benefit of the doubt in social situations or assumed to be “flakes,” as Hamdani has been labeled. For example, if a person tells their friend with ADHD about an upcoming job interview that they are nervous about, but that friend later forgets to ask how it went, it could be misinterpreted as not caring.