ADHD Or Excuses? Woman Creates A Chore Chart For Her Boyfriend And Reddit Has Thoughts

Living together for the first time can reveal more about your partner than years of dating ever could. From how they handle chores to how they deal with responsibility, the small details suddenly matter a lot.

For one young woman, sharing a home with her boyfriend quickly turned from exciting to exhausting. After countless reminders and broken promises, she decided to take matters into her own hands, with a brightly colored, childlike chore chart.

What started as a creative solution to help him stay on track ended up sparking an argument that had the internet debating who was really out of line.

Was OP being practical, or did she cross a line by treating him like a kid?

The OP’s boyfriend, who has ADHD, often neglects household tasks; after many failed reminders, she made a bright, childish chore chart. He felt shamed. She feels exhausted. Who’s in the wrong?

In brief, OP and her boyfriend agreed to split chores equally, letting him pick what he preferred. But his forgetfulness, delayed actions, and unfinished tasks left OP doing extra work.

She tried lists, apps, reminders, nothing stuck. The chore chart was her attempt to externalize reminders rather than carry them mentally. But he sees it as infantilizing and humiliating.

From his perspective, ADHD’s executive dysfunction impairs remembering and initiating tasks. It’s not a moral failure, it’s a neurological struggle. From hers, repeated omissions reflect disregard, not disorder.

The emotional toll of “cleaning up after someone else’s gaps” mounts. Their motivations are clear: she needs reliability and relief; he needs structure and empathy.

Let’s widen the lens. This conflict reflects the broader social issue of mental load, the hidden mental and emotional labor behind household functioning.

According to Beyond Time: Unveiling the Invisible Burden of Mental Load, women are significantly more likely than men to carry the cognitive burden of organizing domestic life, report lower satisfaction in task division, and suffer higher emotional fatigue.

A systematic review also shows that this burden is largely invisible yet relationally loaded.

A relevant, real expert quote comes from Melissa Orlov, a well-known voice on ADHD relationships: “Always consider the symptom and the response. Learn which responses produce positive outcomes. Anger, nagging, and withdrawal are responses that don’t move you forward.”

That hits the heart of this story. OP’s frustration is valid, but the method (chart) triggered shame and defensive reaction. The quote reminds both partners, it’s not just the ADHD symptom, but how you respond to it that shapes outcomes.

To move forward, the OP should pause charting or messaging and prioritize emotional repair by acknowledging their partner’s dignity, struggles, and their own frustrations.

If challenges persist, OP might consider couples therapy or an ADHD coach to develop effective partner-level strategies.

Here’s the input from the Reddit crowd:

These commenters backed the OP with zero hesitation, arguing that ADHD isn’t a free pass for laziness.

Others went deeper, dissecting the emotional burden of “weaponized incompetence.”

Several Redditors with lived experience were blunt but compassionate, saying his refusal to adapt is what makes him immature, not his ADHD.

Then there were the realists who saw red flags waving, like TanishaLaju and mamadachsie, who warned OP to think long-term.

Sometimes love runs straight into the wall of shared responsibility. Was she wrong for taking a playful, structured approach, or is accountability still accountability, no matter how colorful the chart?

Living together means finding balance between compassion and consistency. What do you think, did she cross a line, or just find the only system that finally worked?