ADHD & Intimacy: The Physical Intimacy Issues No One Talks About – Part 1

Change Your Brain Every Day

Dr Daniel Amen

Braintrauma, Healthtips, Sleep, Obesity, Anxiety, Braininjury, Depression, Ptsd, Mentalhealth, Mood, Brainhealth, Health & Fitness, Energy, Disease, Addiction, Mental Health, Healthadvice, Adhd, Memory, Focus

4.6 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

ADHD doesn’t just impact focus—it can wreak havoc on relationships and intimacy. In this revealing episode, Dr. Amen and Tana expose the little-known ways undiagnosed or untreated ADHD can sabotage your love life, from saying hurtful things to emotional outbursts to struggles with connection and sexual satisfaction. If you or your partner have ever felt unseen, misunderstood, or disconnected in the bedroom, this episode is a must-listen. Understanding how ADHD affects intimacy is the first step to rebuilding passion and trust.

00:00 Intro

00:52 ADHD & Sex

01:54 ADHD vs ADD

04:38 How Does ADHD Impact Relationships?

11:33 ADHD in the Bedroom

15:28 The “New Love” Addiction Cycle

16:50 Sponsor

18:05 Novelty Patterns

19:04 ADHD Symptoms in Sex

24:34 Dopamine

28:30 Conflict Seeking Behavior

30:59 Guilt vs Shame

33:00 Practical Tips to Manage ADHD & Sex

41:35 Wrap Up

Transcript

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0:00.0	Short attention span, distractibility, which really becomes important with sex, if you're easily distracted off and say,
0:10.0	what does an orgasm require? Focus. You have to pay attention to the feeling long enough to make it happen.
0:20.0	So they're often easily distract and they're
0:23.5	sensitive to touch. So if you touch them the wrong way, it can be sort of like males on a chalkboard.
0:30.9	So what you might think of as intimacy, they may find annoying. So communication is really important.
0:36.3	Yeah. Every day you are making your brain
0:42.4	better or you are making it worse. Stay with us to learn how you can change your brain for the
0:49.1	better every day. So welcome back to the change your brain every day podcast. Today we're going to talk
0:58.9	about my favorite topic with my favorite person. It's a topic that's not talked about enough.
1:07.8	We're going to talk about ADD or ADHD and sex. AdD. ADHD affects focus,
1:20.0	impulsivity, emotions, and relationships. And that includes intimacy. So many couples struggle with this, with their connection, their
1:30.0	communication, intimacy, especially when they have unmanaged ADHD. So it's hard enough
1:37.2	normally, but then you have unmanaged ADHD and it's 10 times worse. So if you and your partner
1:41.9	or one of you or both of you have ADHD, you're not alone
1:45.9	and there's good news. There are ways to improve intimacy, connection, and sexual satisfaction,
1:51.9	but it starts with understanding how ADHD works. But, you know, I think a lot of people have
1:56.4	been curious why the interchangeable ADD, ADHD, I have a tendency to say ADD, so explain that to people.
2:02.9	And I think actually most people do, because 1980, when the DSM-3, so the diagnostic and statistical
2:11.3	manual of mental disorder, so it's what they teach medical students and obviously psychiatrists, how to diagnose things.
2:20.6	It came out with ADD, tension deficit disorder, with or without hyperactivity.
2:29.2	And then in 1987, for God knows what reason, researchers, see, most of these diagnoses
2:39.3	are sort of made up by researchers. The researchers decided to change the name to ADHD,
	...

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