23. ADHD and Marriage: We Separated for 18 Months. Then He Got Diagnosed. (with Emily Jade O'Keeffe)

In the Facebook group there's a pattern that comes up again and again: the mum grows. She gets the kids assessed, she starts to recognise herself, she does the reading and the therapy and the work — and the husband lags behind. He won't consider that he's neurodivergent, or the problem is always someone else. The kids. The school. Her. And underneath it all is the question so many women are actually asking: how do I get him to see it, and is it even worth staying?

Emily Jade O'Keeffe's story runs the whole thing backwards. Her husband got diagnosed first — but only after they'd separated for 18 months, after the mudslinging and the lawyers, after she'd rebuilt herself from the floor up. This is the rare positive one: what happened when the diagnosis finally came, why she chose to help him when almost nobody would have, and the single question a marriage counsellor gave her that changed everything — 'is it arsehole or ADHD?'

CHAPTERS00:00 — Meet Emily Jade O'Keeffe — 30 years in radio, and why she drove up from the Gold Coast

02:46 — The order most families discover it in — and why Emily's ran backwards

03:46 — 18 months apart: 'I was devastated, and he said can you just get over it'

06:07 — Rock bottom, and the call that started with 'you were right'

08:17 — 'I removed myself from the marriage and the problem was still there'

09:17 — The groceries, the tone, and the pressure that was never actually there

10:15 — PDA — a name for the thing Emily had been living without knowing

13:00 — The first six months: lawyers, mudslinging, and the awakening that stopped it

16:50 — 'I'll dance with my daughter's dad at her wedding' — the line that set the path

20:00 — 'I can't be the problem again' — why she wouldn't just take him back