"AITA for telling my GF I don’t care about her ADHD?"

Girlfriend (28F) and I (24F) have moved in together february. She has ADHD that she is medicated and goes to therapy for. I’ve known this since before we started dating and did my best to educate myself on how to help her cope with the challenges. However, ever since we moved in together, the challenges have gotten worse.

She never cleans or does any of the chores, she often leaves containers to grow mold in the fridge until I’ve started checking every single one daily to see if anything is spoiled. If she puts a dirty dish in the sink, it will stay there forever until I clean it. I bought a Dishwasher, but she won’t load it due to her executive dysfunction.

She won’t take out the trash either or do her laundry. It´s tiring but i figured she must be suffering from work stress so stepped up to help out.

But the incident that has made me me lose is it the following : more than 5 times now, she has put something on the stove and walked away to be on her phone, until whatever she was cooking set off the fire alarm. My stove has a timer on it that you set for however long you want, and it will shut the stove off after the set time has passed.

I’ve shown her how to use it over and over again, so that if she walks away the stove will simply turn itself off. She never has. I have also brought a ringing timer but she rarely uses it. Finally I told her to text me when she wanted to cook if she was worried she’d get lost on her phone, so that I can text her a reminder or call her.

Well, yesterday I came back home to the firemen in front of our building bc she had put a frying pan with oil in it on the stove and forgot about it while she scrolled tiktok until it caught on fire and burned down half of our kitchen.

I was very concerned for her and made sure she was uninjured, but I got mad after she didn’t even apologize. All she said was « you shouldn’t be mad, this stuff happens and you know it’s my adhd and I can’t help it ».

This is when I told her that I don’t care about her ADHD, that I cared about us being pretty much homeless now, and that I had just lost the security deposit for the apartment which was 3x the monthly rent money, because she refused to use any of the solutions I offered and all the accommodations I’ve tried to make.

She got very upset and left, and I couldn’t stop her bc the landlord had just arrived at the scene and was PISSED. It’s been a day now and I’m pretty sure she has blocked me, as well as made multiple posts citing me being an uncaring b-word towards the mentally ill.

I’ve had a couple mutual friends and her sister reach out calling me insensitive and saying that I revealed my true colors and dehumanized her, and that I’m putting the money above caring for my gf.

Even the friend that I am crashing with told me that I shouldn’t have snapped at her, that by saying I don’t care about her ADHD I have given her lifelong trust issues when it comes to future partners. So, am I the deluded a$$hole here?

What do you think? AITA? This is what top commenters had to say:

guessmyageidareyou said:

ADHD and Autistic here! NTA. The fact that she didn't even apologize for burning down the apartment is telling. I would be SOBBING because I knew that my brain "did the thing" so I would be remorseful to the point of begging for forgiveness. She is using her mental illness as a crutch to be a sh!t person.

EwokCafe said:

Hi, ADHD woman here. Absolutely NTA She is using her ADHD as an excuse for bad behavior. It's a reason, not an excuse and we should continue to do our best to find ways to manage the symptoms so that it doesn't cause issues in our life or others lives.

I'm regularly late to things because of my ADHD time blindness. And i apologize every time. My ADHD is my responsibility, and while all my friends and even my work are willing to accommodate it, it doesn't change the fact that my neurodivergency has caused inconvenience. I continue to apologize and I continue to find and adopt new strategies to improve my own function and coping.

You did everything you could to accommodate and assist her and she wasn't willing to meet you halfway. Instead she's happily using you to avoid having to address her issues. No need to get over executive disfunction if you have someone else to do it! I hope she's your ex soon, she has a lot of growing up to do.

Sea-Mud5386 said:

NTA. "All she said was « you shouldn’t be mad, this stuff happens and you know it’s my adhd and I can’t help it »" You're not her nanny. She needs to do whatever it is she needs to do to live a functional adult life. You don't need to carry her while she sorts that out, and all the people being nasty to you about it are welcome to let her burn down their kitchens.

It should be a priority with her therapist to develop whatever adult living skills she needs--setting phone reminders, checklists, practicing routines, whatever. It isn't the partner's job to pick up ALLLLLL the work as well as guess what she'll do to threaten his physical safety.

And DoOfferRefFood said:

You did care about her ADHD, you bought a stove with a timer, you offered to call, you offered solutions, she's the one who rejected that and didn't care, not about taking care of her ADHD, and definitely not about taking care of you. Poor choice of words by you, maybe, but are you in the wrong, definitely not. NTA

She later shared this update:

Thank you all for the comments, especially the lengthy ones! This has been a very informational thread about how different people deal with ADHD, and the different safeguarding and mitigation techniques and methods used in daily life to deal with the challenges that come with this neurodivergency.

I have chosen to not continue this relationship as my (ex)girlfriend’s facebook posts have now devolved into cruelty against me for some reason, which further confirms what a lot of you have expressed: that a lot of issues weren’t from her ADHD, but simply her not being a very nice and responsible person. I suspect she may have come across this post and it set her off.

As a final note, I would like to say that reading about the many accomplishments many of you have made happen while fighting this very challenging disability are to be celebrated.

And to those who are still struggling, I hope you find the correct coping methods that suit you and make your life a bit more fair (please consult the comments, many people have mentioned many things that personally work for them) With that, I wish you all a good evening and thank you.