Hidden Steps: How Learning to Dance Shaped My ADHD Marriage
Before our wedding, my wife and I enrolled in a dance class. In the process, I learned to tango — and how to practice listening, patience, and moving with purpose through my new marriage with ADHD.
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My ADHD spouse and I tried ballroom dancing. It went well for a while. Then it went south pretty quickly. He could memorize the steps better than I could and got frustrated and angry if I made a mistake. Yet he claimed that he couldn’t hear the beat and wanted to practice without music because he actually found it too distracting. How do you dance without music? It was crazy! The more proficient he became in a particular dance step, the faster he danced. He would be dragging me around the room at warp speed while the band played a waltz and he wouldn’t even notice that everyone else was going at a different pace because he was totally in his own head. I really tried to figure out how to help him with the beat – tapping his shoulder, gently reminding him that he was gaining momentum, asking the instructors for other ideas. Finally, one night when I tried to slow him he screamed at me in front of a room full of students and I broke down in tears and refused to ever go back.