I know the title covers a whole lot, but here’s how they’re connected. I (24F) got out of my first serious relationship 10 months ago. It was a 2 year college relationship with someone (22M) who ended up being an alcoholic, and had been for years before we started dating, but I didn’t know because he was very high functioning. He didn’t tell me until a year and a half into the relationship; we were long distance for most of it (due to the pandemic), which is why I didn’t see the alcoholism progress until we moved into a dorm together last January. The relationship ended really poorly at the end of last May. When he and I first got together, I was in a really good place and had spent a lot of time working on my ADHD and anxiety-related issues. I think maybe I was masking at the beginning of the relationship and so he was attracted to me because he thought I had it all together and could support him? I feel like we became codependent early on, but not in the way that I hear codependency often develops in relationships where one partner has ADHD and the other one doesn’t. I was the “organized” one who took care of him when he drank too much on the weekend (which, btw, seemed in proportion with how much most guys at my college drink) and who reminded him of his appointments and encouraged him to go to therapy and yadda yadda. Then when the pandemic hit, we both were not doing well and we moved in together after several months of being away from each other, and all of the sudden, my issues became too much and he called it quits, only 3 weeks after asking me to get an apartment with him after graduation. So after sitting with the pain of all of that mess for a long time, I started reading a lot more about ADHD presentation in women and it started making me wonder: could I have just been like, ‘masking’ my issues in the first 6 months of the relationship and then couldn’t do it anymore once the pandemic really hit and his issues were becoming too heavy so it became too hard to continue to do so? I was very honest about having ADHD and a history of anxiety and depression from the jump, but maybe, without realizing, I was subconsciously hiding my weaknesses under pre-COVID circumstances for the first few months we were together, and then after an extended period of long distance, we were living together again and I just wasn’t in the kind of place where I could mask as easily anymore? It just seems like once he experienced me being in a tough place firsthand, I was suddenly not the person he fell in love with anymore? At least that’s what he said to me when he ended things. Sorry for the long post, but I’m just hoping to see if anyone finds this relatable at all? Any situation where initial masking in a relationship may have put you in a codependent situation where you were expected to be the main support, which is ofc pretty difficult with ADHD? I’ve also just been ruminating so much on this and so I’m just hoping to hear what other people may have to say because it’s really painful and I don’t even know where to get insight on this.