Adult ADHD and Sex

What You Need To Know (That Sex Therapists Cannot Tell You)

By: Gina Pera

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

REVISED October 2023

From award-winning author and Adult ADHD expert Gina Pera, the first guide to understanding how unrecognized or poorly managed ADHD could be interfering with sexual intimacy. Newly revised.

"Gina, sex is difficult for people with ADHD; it's tough to stay focused!" says a female friend who has ADHD. Staying focused during intimacy is only one issue that challenges couples affected by adult ADHD.

Yet, strangely enough, even many mental-healthcare professionals assume that sex constitutes an “ADHD Free” zone where brain-based challenges with attention, organization, mood-regulation, or motivation don’t matter or, in the minds of skeptics, don’t even exist.

Yes, sexual expression is yet another one of those areas—like sleep—where the public and professionals alike often fail to connect the dots to ADHD symptoms. As I write in my first book, Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?: "When ADHD does create significant sexual problems, it usually falls into two categories: The ADHD partner initiates sex all the time or almost never. In the sexual relationship as in elsewhere with ADHD, we encounter variable challenges in self-regulation and summoning motivation."

In between these two extremes, always and never, there lies an entire range of ADHD-charged issues that can drive apart couples—if they don’t know what they’re dealing with or what strategies to implement. Ignorance about this critically important connection between ADHD and sexual intimacy creates so much unnecessary hurt.

In this Kindle book (125 book pages), you will find four major sections:

(1) an expanded version of my book’s Chapter 6, on the myriad ways in which ADHD can affect the sexual relationship.

(2) An eight-step strategy toward leaving the ADHD roller coaster and entering the Tunnel of Love

(3) Post-Orgasm Irritability—A look at a common enough but little recognized phenomenon. It's one that leaves many people confused and stuck in a disturbing pattern BONUS: Two books from the early 20th Century that address this post-orgasm phenomenon and promote overall relationship intimacy in an intriguing way.

(4) Adults with ADHD and Their Partners Speak Out—a curated, categorized selection of comments on my first blog post on ADHD and Sex, in 2009. Consider it the first step in finding community—and finding your voice.