Wife worries husband’s job-hopping points to ADHD

down the atmosphere at home. Then he quits and feels insecure and tense about being jobless, so everything at home is also insecure and tense. Then he eventually gets a new job and things get better.

Right now, we can’t make plans to see family, for example, because who knows if he’ll have to work and he won’t have built up any vacation time. I tried to talk about this after the most recent quitting, but our conversations about it have been unproductive, because he’s so tense and ratty.

We have no kids, and we learned from experience a few years back that he can’t just stay home and not work, because that’s so much worse than what we’re going through now. Any suggestions?

A neuropsych screening, if he’ll agree to it. Your question pings like an old pinball machine – jack-of-all-trade-ism, job-hopping, restaurant work, anxiety, ping, ping, ping. I’d guess there’s a diagnosable condition in there driving a high need for stimulation and a low tolerance for tedious/repetitive tasks.

I’m not saying it’s ADHD – layman, not my place – but CHADD.org, an ADHD information site, has a good section on evaluations here that would apply to anyone with a possible neuropsych issue: https://chadd.org/foradults/diagnosis-of-adhd-in-adults.

The point of a diagnosis would be less about fixing it, and more to help him understand how his mind works and how to make choices that suit his nature better.

A job that has less repetition to it and more built-in novelty, for example, could hold his attention longer. If that’s a unicorn, then maybe a circuit of recurring seasonal jobs would allow novelty and stability both.