They taught us everything but how to be ADHD men who stay alive inside.
They teach us how to throw a ball.
How to drive a car.
How to smile without looking scared.
How to check the right boxes to appear as though we have it together.
But they don’t teach us how to survive when we want more than we’re allowed to say out loud.
They don’t teach us what to do when our brain won’t sit still and our skin feels too tight.
They don’t teach us what to do when we’re twelve years old, hard in math class,
wishing we could crawl out of our own body.
They don’t teach us how to carry the hunger.
They teach us how to hide it.
How to shut it up.
How to bury it deep enough to pass for normal.
But they don’t teach us how to live with it.
They don’t teach us how to hold it sacred.
Nobody Taught Us How to Love Without Disappearing
They expect us to know how to touch a woman like a mind-reader.
How to be bold but never reckless.
How to give love without “love bombing.”
How to move between masculine and feminine like it’s natural
without ever handing us the fucking playbook.
They expect us to balance on a tightrope they built over a pit they pretend isn’t there.
To be strong, but tender.
Dominant, but emotionally fluent.
Horny, but under control.
Nobody teaches us that our first orgasm isn’t just a moment.
It’s a whole fucking language we’ll have to prepare ourselves to speak.
Nobody teaches us that craving isn’t dirty.
Nobody teaches us that we might spend half our lives
trying to fuck the ache away
and the other half trying to forgive ourselves for wanting anything at all.
Nobody Taught Us How to Survive Our Own Wanting
I didn’t know I was different until college.
Everyone around me was smarter.
Prettier. Cooler.
Better at looking like they belonged.
I wasn’t the guy with the best grades or the best jawline.
I was the guy riding a skateboard and loud-ass colors across the city.
The history major who still slammed bodies on the lacrosse field.
The frat guy who didn’t fit the mold
but still ran the room.
I broke the categories.
And I knew it.
So I learned early: if you’re different,
you better prove you deserve to be in the room.
Every. Fucking. Time.
I didn’t cling to hoodies or old love notes.
I clung to the need to be their champion still.
Even after they left.
Even after they stopped choosing me.
I wanted to be the guy who still texted.
Still smiled when I saw them happy.
Still hugged them like they were the most beautiful thing I’d ever touched.
I talked about them glowingly long after it made sense.
Maybe even to a fault.
Because for me?
They mattered.
They deserved to be seen.
They deserved to be celebrated.
And maybe that’s why I still have some of their photos saved, years later
quiet little proofs that I loved their existence long after the world told me to move on.
Nobody teaches you that sometimes,
the strongest part of you isn’t the wanting.
It’s the remembering.
Nobody Taught ADHD Men That Freedom Isn’t Emptiness
Every relationship I’ve ever had carried that proof.
I didn’t go for the easy girls.
I went for the Dream Girls.
The ones every guy watched.
The ones you weren’t supposed to get.
And when I got her?
I locked her down like my life depended on it.
Not because I believed I deserved her.
But because I thought maybe
if I loved her hard enough,
craved her deep enough,
proved myself loud enough
it would quiet the part of me that was always…
hungry.
Always wondering.
Always wanting.
It never did.
She was jealous.
I thought that would save me.
If someone was jealous enough,
maybe they’d cage the chaos.
Maybe they’d keep me from wanting everyone else’s stories.
Everyone else’s secrets.
Instead?
It just made the chase hotter.
The danger sweeter.
The ache sharper.
I stayed loyal.
I stayed “good.”
I stayed miserable
and smiling about it.
Loyalty without freedom isn’t love.
It’s a slow, wet coffin.
Now?
Being single doesn’t feel like freedom.
It feels like static.
It feels like touching your own body just to remember you exist.
It feels like realizing your entire sense of pleasure was built around being somebody’s mirror
and without them,
you start to flicker.
I don’t miss the relationship.
I miss the way loving someone gave my chaos a home.
I miss being the reason someone felt electric in their own skin.
And fuck,
I miss someone looking at me like I wasn’t too much.
Like I wasn’t lost.
Like I was everything they’d been hoping for and didn’t know how to ask.
Nobody Gave Us a Map. So We’re Making One.
Nobody taught us how to be that guy without losing ourselves.
Nobody taught us how to hold the hunger without drowning in it.
Nobody taught us how to stay wild and soft and craving and bold without apology.
Nobody gave us a map.
So we’re making one.
Late. Messy. Loud. Hungry for more.
You’re not broken.
You’re wired for more.
Welcome the fuck home.
Sit with me in the ache.
Build it with me
messy, sacred, still learning.
Let’s make the thing nobody handed us…
and love it harder because we had to carve it with our own fucking teeth.
? SOFT DOM AFTERCARE
If this post cracked something open
breathe.
Your ache isn’t proof you failed.
It’s proof you felt.
And it means you still want.
Wanting isn’t broken. It’s brave.