I am married to a guy with ADHD, or something similar- he seems to have some of the symptoms but not all. He's got a high IQ so he might be using other parts of his brain to compensate for symptoms he might otherwise have, I don't know. But anyway, I've been thinking about this a lot because it seems to be the root of a lot of our miscommunications and arguments. I think I'm neurotypical (in this way although surely not all), and when I picture the future, it's kind of like there's a space for things that need to be done or will happen in the next few minutes, and another space for the next few hours, and another space for the next week, and another for the next month or two, and another for the next few years, and another for the next decade... and then it breaks down. "next week" versus "2 months from now" are two very obviously different "slots." 20 years from now versus 30 years from now are just kind of lumped together in a spot for "way far down the road- don't worry about it yet." But it seems like for my husband, "way far down the road-don't worry about it yet" takes up anything more than about a week in the future, and sometimes even more. Sometimes with comical results... we were talking about trying to have kids, and he said he "wasn't ready to have a baby show up on the doorstep in 2 months"... Obviously on one level he knows that human babies do not, in fact, show up in 2 months, but for him, 2 months and 9 months from now are as much of a mishmash as 20 years and 30 years are for me. I think it gets worse when he's tired/ hungry/ sick/ whatever.

Somewhere I read or heard this described as being like someone driving down the road while they're extremely short sighted, so they can only react to things that are coming right up on the car, and they can't see far enough down the road to make plans to avoid obstacles or take exits that people with better distance vision can easily plan for. It seemed like a pretty good analogy to the way my husband seems to relate to time. But I'm not the one who is experiencing it so I could be wrong. I'd really like to know more about it so I can communicate better with him.