Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

[suzanne1]

Greetings. I find myself living with yet another person with OCD (the current one, I'm married to--giving "committed relationship" a whole new meaning, no doubt). I am writing to get others' ideas / suggestions regarding certain aspects of the experience that I have not seen much written about. Specifically, control issues—in the context of our mutual living space--and unreasonably angry responses when attempts are made to question or deal with this. An attendant issue here seems to be that these fellows can’t get anywhere in life, or complete anything, and it’s all "someone else’s fault" or it’s for “very good reasons.”

Example: James (OCD #1) attempted to control our living space by subscribing to the newspaper, then refused to dispose of any of the paper--EVER! Each day, he would don his famous surgical gloves and relocate the unopened paper from the driveway to a growing pile in the garage, until the "trial period" for the paper ended (& I cancelled it). Then he took the pile of unopened papers he'd piled up in the garage--after donning his famous gloves each day--relocated them one-by-one from the garage, carefully unwrapping each one, reading them (for the first time), page-by-page, section-by-section (which were more like historical documents than news at that point) & filling every closet with the darn things, saying he "needed them for a class project” (a reach, although he was a college student at the time), until we moved, at which time I told him either he needed to get rid of the papers or I would. He finally got rid of them, neatly boxing each issue--as though they were actually the contents of the Holy Grail--and the whole time he seemed to fear that I would touch one of them!

James never bathed in the usual sense, but only applied rubbing alcohol all over himself, which he explained was due to an untreated broken collar bone years earlier (Insight: May I'M the actual nut here!...) and that this practice helped ease the pain (I have yet to find any medical expert who sees this as a reasonable gesture or rationale.).

A post script: James has never completed his bacherlor's degree to this day (which we were both working on when we lived together in the early '90s), but stopped for various "reasons" over the years, although he never even needed to work, as he'd inherited (shortly after we'd parted)--and subsequently blew--a $100K! I got my masters in 2000; he is still jerking our undergraduate school around while he "completes" his degree.

John (OCD #2, and my husband) is a very skilled craftsman & artist and a very hard worker, but at the age of 50, has spent much (some his money, some not) on tools & supplies, and has, at any given time, at least 10 projects going on, in & around the house--but mostly out in the yard. These projects have taken over the property to a ridiculous degree and gotten in the way of my own responsibilities; for starters, I can no longer turn on the sprinkler system, as this would get many of his power tools / projects soaked, so now my time is taken up watering by hand! As you can imagine, this is a nightmare in the summertime. The lawn has been completely dead for the past year or so, all the way around the house, from his covering it with wood boards & power tools, etc., and my not being able to water effectively. It's all I can do to keep the peripheral shrubs & trees alive! He freaks out (as James always did) when I express my concern (and now, extreme irritation) about all this, as though I am being completely unreasonable in my requests to keep the plants in the yard alive & restore the lawn! Although he already has more than enough projects to complete himself, he has fits when I calmly decide to handle repairs around the house myself or have them done by a professional; it's like nothing can happen around here, unless HE does it. Although he is supposed to be on the road, selling items we've made, he now says he's afraid to leave, because I'll get work done around the house (NOT a completely unreasonable "fear" at this point). Little gets actually completed (and so we're unable to sell many things that we have put a lot of money into), and we are in debt to an uncomfortable degree. Nothing can be said to him; he refuses to listen to anything other than compliments.

I would say that John has a sleep disorder although he does not believe this to be the case; he reports that he can get no more than 3 or 4 hours sleep a night and goes into a tirade virtually every day about this, blaming others for this problem (He maintains, essentially, that he is Mr. Sensitive and it's “everyone else” that keeps him awake) and reminding us that "this is why [he] can't get anything done!" Everyone else is the cause of his extreme entropy. Although my mother (whom we live with, as she’s needed more supervision these past 3 years & I’m only child) DOES listen to the TV too loud, John is in no way amenable to controlling this situation effectively on his own; he just yells & slams doors, trying to get her--an 80-year-old passive aggressive child--to change. Moreover, John complains about sounds outside (barking dogs, etc.) that I must hold my breath and strain to hear myself! When I offered to sound-proof my mother’s room, he wouldn't have it; when I offered to create a room for us on the other side of the house, he wouldn't hear of it. Now, I want to move by next year, and he is fighting that, although this area is not a comfortable geographic area for us (& as artists, we don't have the room to work as we should), and neither of us ever liked it here in the first place! I can deal with the madness to a degree, but I can’t handle having my own life being shut down due to his need to control every aspect of our living situation.

I greatly welcome any ideas / insights / etc. on these behaviors. Thanks for listening!

suzanne.