For the first 30 years of my life, I acted like one of the guys. My first friends were boys. I quit Girl Scouts when I learned it was nothing like Boy Scouts and we would never make wooden race cars. I can’t remember having more than a couple social plans with all-girl groups in high school.
In part, this is because I never took much interest in stereotypically girly stuff. I preferred to pal around with the guys. We played video games and paintball and learned to build a computer from scratch. But my unrecognized ADHD also made it almost impossible for me to maintain friendships with girls.
ADHD: boys will be boys, girls will be left out
Unlike boys, girls’ ADHD often flies in the face of social expectations. Girls are expected to be passive, appeasing, adept at reading subtext. Fair or not, society judges women and girls by this standard every day.
Meanwhile, ADHD renders women and girls less capable of meeting these expectations. We have trouble understanding and responding appropriately to unspoken social cues. Impulsive behavior and high energy can make us seem aggressive. Whereas aggressive behavior and social faux pas may be shrugged off or dealt with swiftly in groups of boys, they can leave girls ostracized and disliked by their peers.
My boy friends behaved in a way I understood: they punched each other in the arm, made crass jokes, and rarely harbored grudges. Even when I did cross a line with male friends, the issue stayed between us. No one chose sides, and I didn’t have to guess at how anyone was feeling. The far more opaque world of girls would take me decades to begin to understand.
Of course, no description applies to all boys or all girls. But where generalizations can be made, girls and women with ADHD are often at a disadvantage.
One more ADHD symptom we don’t grow out of
These challenges only increase in adulthood. The vast majority of families still expect women to do the work of kin-keeping: that is, all the small gestures and communications that keep our extended families connected. These efforts — from planning family vacations to sending birthday and sympathy cards — should look natural. They aren’t supposed to feel like a struggle. And yet, kin-keeping requires many of the emotional and organizational skills people with ADHD struggle with the most.
It all adds up. Without the ability to interpret others’ behavior and emotions, women and girls often feel left in the dark — like I was — as to why their peers don’t like them. We don’t always have the right words to say. Sometimes we say the exact wrong thing without knowing it. When our kin-keeping efforts are uneven, family ties can become strained. Women with ADHD frequently feel ostracized, inadequate, or unworthy.
News flash: gender differences exist
For most of my life, I fought against gender labels. I insisted there were no real differences between girls and boys, men and women. I denied that gender was an important part of my identity.
And yet, gender is one of the primary traits that made me feel like The Other: either the only girl in the group of boys, or the only one who didn’t fit into the group of girls. Whether inborn or socially constructed, significant gender differences do exist. And they’ve defined my social experience from kindergarten through adulthood.
What can be done to help girls and women who don’t fit in?
I don’t know the solution here: should society try harder to understand women and girls with ADHD? Or is the onus on us to fit the mold if we want acceptance from our peers?
Obviously, we need some ability to navigate social norms. I don’t like hurting people’s feelings, being misunderstood, or alienating friends with inappropriate behavior. At the same time, I’d love to see us all do some soul-searching. We need to stop expecting all girls to possess above-average emotional intelligence and social skills. Because some of us don’t fit the mold, and that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything wrong with us.
After all, if I’d been born male, I have no doubt I would’ve had an easier time making and keeping friends. I felt most comfortable in groups of boys, and still feel more comfortable in a room full of male friends than I do women. I’m drawn to women who seem more like me: bold, adventure-seeking, occasionally gender-nonconforming. Despite the social progress we’ve made, many traits still apply to most women or most men.
And that’s a problem. When I hear people make generalizations about how women “just are” or what “women do,” I feel alienated. These stereotypes don’t describe me, so I don’t consider them female traits. And what do I consider them? Passive traits, a knack for mind games, and an aversion to asking directly for what we want. We shouldn’t expect — or encourage — those behaviors from girls and women at all.
Maybe my gender-blind vision wasn’t so far off the mark
In a perfect world, maybe life would look a little more like I remember it as a kid: a place where people could be themselves. Where everyone could form a group of friends where they felt comfortable and accepted, regardless of gender.
My reality was a little more complicated than my rosy memories here suggest. While I’ve always felt more comfortable with boys and men, I didn’t fit in perfectly with them, either. Sometimes I got left out of activities with “just the guys.” As we’ve gotten older and most of us have gotten married, I’ve sometimes felt more like an interloper than one of the guys.
And while I didn’t find many girls like me at my schools as a kid, they’re out there. As an adult, I’ve learned there are plenty of other ladies who enjoy rock climbing and video games. There are women working in IT and computer science fields. I don’t need an aptitude for social nuance to be considered part of all women. But for most of my life, I’ve felt like a novelty — the only girl in the group. The girl who “didn’t act like a girl.” I’d love to see a day when girls like me don’t feel that way.
We all need a place to let our guard down
Cross-gender friendships and nerd culture — whether in theatre, robotics club, or Dungeons & Dragons — have long provided a lifeline for kids who feel awkward and left out. When you find a group who accepts you for who you are, you can let go of your need to keep knocking on closed doors. For girls with ADHD especially, this can come as a huge relief.
I was reminded of this sense of relief last winter, when I spent a ski weekend with a group of nine nerdy dudes and…me. While I’ve made important female friendships as an adult, I still enjoy hanging with the guys from time to time. It provides an important outlet for anyone with ADHD: a place to let my guard down.
ADHDers can feel exhausted by the need to be “on” all the time. Basic functioning and playing well with others takes more effort for us — especially women. We need a break every once in a while, a place where we can just be. My guy friends have often provided just that kind of break: a social outlet where I can relax, and where I (usually) understand the lay of the land.
With age, I’ve found that gender-segregated social groups have increased, not decreased. I wish that weren’t the case. I wish we could all just be ourselves, without anyone raising an eyebrow over the gender of our friends. But failing that, I wish we could let go of some of the roles we expect women to play in our social universe. We aren’t failures for not living up to those expectations, but sometimes the world makes us feel that way. That seems like a waste of our mental health, and probably some perfectly good friendships, too.
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