Dear Eric >> My husband struggles a lot with executive function, especially when he is stressed. For the most part he’s fine with work but personal stuff — anticipating how much money he might need for something, keeping track of where his driver’s license is — he always “needs” me to handle for him. We have had many conversations about how I am his wife with a full-time job of my own, not his personal assistant. But he gets upset if I can’t just drop everything to help him out.

He will text me at work to order him a coffee from an app on my phone because he forgot to bring his wallet out that day and then call me if I don’t respond. Every time one of us is away, he totally falls apart and major crises happen that require a lot of my attention.

Recently, he got into a huge fiasco with his hotel reservation when on a solo trip, in part because he lost all his bank cards the morning he left. I ended up having to duck out of a conference I was helping to facilitate multiple times throughout the day because he was texting me torrents of messages in a panic and I was getting calls and emails from the hotel to pay his bill, etc. It was crazy stressful and professionally embarrassing.

This stuff doesn’t happen all the time, but it always happens when he is feeling particularly stressed or vulnerable, and always whenever we are apart, which feels manipulative to me. He sees a therapist, but he won’t consider speaking to a doctor about medications or even admit to the severity of the problem. It’s hard not to get resentful. Where do I go from here?

— Spouse, not Assistant

Dear Spouse >> The book “Dirty Laundry: Why Adults with ADHD Are So Ashamed and What We Can Do to Help Them” written by married co-authors Richard Pink and Roxanne Emery is a fantastic resource for couples. While it will help you both, your husband’s pattern of panicked helplessness, and your compensating responses, point to a larger issue that may not be solely to blame on neurodivergence. You’ll want to work this out in couple’s therapy.

It’s, generally, good that he sees you as an escape hatch from feelings of stress and vulnerability. But he’s gotten into a pattern that, I suspect, creates even more stress and vulnerability. If you’re the only one who can solve the problems — panic is sure to follow.

A therapist can help you jointly explore where this stress is coming from, and what messages he’s telling himself about being apart from you that contribute to that stress.

This is also a good place to get into why he won’t talk to a doctor and talk through the ways that his crises impact you. A neutral third party can help you both safely and productively unpack behavior on his part that reads like a blatant disregard for your time and help you both develop new strategies for communicating and problem-solving.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com