Mental Disorders

[Erin]

I have been dating this man for 2 years, and I love him. He is a bit eccentric, and many times when I inadvertantly make some little comment that he takes offense to, he will lecture me for 3 or 4 hours until he feels that I completely understand the wrongness or hurtfulness of what I said and until I make a "relevant response" that indicates my complete understanding. He is obsessive about time spent with me--he is dissatisfied if my kids are around in the evenings because then he feels that we don't have quality time together. I enjoy being with him in a normal capacity--talking, taking walks, just in doing everyday things together. He only considers our time together as "quality" if we are in the bedroom, undressed, with the door locked (and he would like to do this while my 3 teenage kids are home). Because I won't do this, he feels that I am insensitive to his needs. Anytime that I disagree with him in any way, he goes into lecture mode and discusses one small point he is trying to make--and it's a several hour ordeal. And it is something that he could say in a couple of sentences. I do love him, but I don't feel like I can continue in this relationship and still keep any traces of sanity. One more thing--he doesn't feel that there is anything wrong with him--I'm the one with the problem.

[ocpdfamily]

I have been married for 17 years and I have OCPD and have been trying to deal with it recently due to marriage problems. The only way it works for us is that my husband in very non-confrontational with me. It took years for him to decide if he could could live with it happily and we still have to work on it. I would suggest a support group or at the very least show your boyfriend statisical research on OCPD. We will typically evaluate the research and analyze ourselves for similarities, just be aware that there is always the possibility that the information will be rejected as flawed and therefore wrong. Good Luck.

[icanrelate]

Was just searching for ideas on how to handle this OCPD (not clinically diagnosed). However, my spouse has all the signs and is similar in that he spends hours on a subject matter that could have been resolved in a few short words. He has no since of boundaries or limitations when it comes to making his desires known (what he wants, he gets or will make life miserable until he does). He also has a controlling behavior, his way or no way. I have found it increasingly difficult to be in his presence although I do care a great deal for him but, over the years, the love has cooled off becaused of his unreasonable, unexplained, intolerable behaviors that I am desperately trying to understand. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with him or what he does, I just tend to take things overboard. He is also short fused to go along with all the other signs of OCPD. Just don't know what to do.

[drained]

Wow, I've just come to the realization, this is my husband. He's been trying so hard to fix me, help me be "better", "perfect". And I just never can be. It has made me feel really bad about myself. It has also made me not want to be around him. I feel pretty good about myself whenever he is not around.

He will spend a lot of time trying to convince me to see things his way. One day he got onto me for "not using post-it notes efficiently" I had wrote on 3 seperate squares (3 different, short messages.) Well later we got in an arguement about him getting onto me about petty stuff. And I said the post-it notes should not even be brought up. And he defended it to the end. He said it needed to be discussed because it is our finances- if I'm wasting post-its, I'm wasting money!
We just started counseling. I actually started on my own trying to deal with my frustrations with our marriage. He finally has decided to go (to fix me of course) I saw on the marital questionair. His big gripe about me is that I am sloppy and disorganized. I will be the first to admit, I am by no means a neat freak, and can still function in a room that is not tidy. But I'm far from a slob. I go to friends homes that also have small children, my house is about average.
My husband is a fighter pilot and I've always noticed the type A personality. But it has become so unbearable. If we didn't have 2 small children I'd be gone already.

[coolkitty]

My boyfriend has OCPD and now I am 4 months pregnant with his child. I don't live with him. We've been together for 2 years and our relationship has been very rocky. He wants me to move in with him once the baby is born however I am very anxious about that as I was living with him a while ago before and was told to get out as my bad behaviour didn't fall in line with his rigid code of conduct and moral ethics. . . I have found him in particular to be very rigid when it comes to making you feel very uncomfortable about a certain decision you have made and so when he questions it, you feel like lying just to keep him from criticising you for your bad decision because you don't know anything and when you're caught out for lying you are worse than satan. . . Oh I don't know how this whole shamozzle is going to pan out . . . But I feel comfort in knowing there are others who have to put up with such insanity.

[Maddison]

I'm new to interacting with someone who has OCPD. I try to be pleasant, but somehow this person makes every conversation into a power struggle. I do not like to deal with people like this, but right now I have no choice because I've sort of "inhereted" this person for lack of a better term... Does anyone know of any good tips/techniques for communicating effectively with someone who has OCPD? I really hate the feeling that I'm approaching a battlefield every time I need to talk to this person.

[Rose Irmersh]

I was married many years ago for near enough 20 years to a pilot who, I now realise, has an OCPD. Information about this wasn't available so long ago, but I now know this was the problem I was trying to contend with. Since then, I've qualified as a psychologist and worked with people with all kinds of problems in their lives, so I've developed an interest in it, for the sake of my children and grandchildren, all of whom find the man a great puzzle, however much they might enjoy being with him for a short time. No one can cope with him for long.
I have little to offer by way of advice except this:
1. Do you love this person enough to be prepared for a life-time test of your endurance? If you think you do, then you need to follow some of these ideas.
2. Detach yourself emotionally. Imagine, for example, you are watching, being with, the child of a neighbour, so you're observing what goes on. This is not easy, particularly when the OCPD sufferer (whom I shall refer to from now on as Perfie) is having a whinge about something that's wrong around the place, or even your behaviour. It has to go like this: Perfie gets going on some topic. Smile very quietly at Perfie. Nod. Say, 'Ok. What have I got to do?' Imagine you're floating on a cloud, or watching a TV screen. Just hang on and wait to see what Perfie does. If Perfie throws a tantrum, make a swift judgment about whether it's safe to stay around.
3. Accept that you will never be able to communicate effectively with Perfie. Perfie's head is full of what Perfie believes and needs. It's a desperately sad state to be in, so Perfie is someone to pity. You will never win in a 'power struggle', whether it's over tidiness, perfection in something that's to be done, or in a conversation. Shrug your shoulders metaphorically and float on your cloud.
4. The only way I eventually managed to live more or less peacefully with my own Perfie (until he decided he didn't want me any more) was to mark out in my own mind taboo topics, taboo things, all of which I systematically avoided. In the end, these things came to matter less and less to me. So the key is AVOIDANCE. It's certainly like walking around egg shells or a quicksand, but if you love your Perfie enough, maybe that's the price. Oddly enough, you get used to it in the end. It goes with the territory. No one's perfect. Interestingly, I'm now married to someone who's the total opposite and that's almost as difficult! So I float, float past the junk, the shambles and just love the guy for his sweet self! Hope this helps!

[Maddison]

Hi Rose, thank you for your input! Every outside perspective is helpful. Actually, my Perfie is not someone whom I have a personal relationship with. I have been forced into a business relationship with Perfie and now I am forced to deal with her. We have to conduct monetary transactions every month, due to our business relationship. She used to do things a certain way and now apparently can't seem to accept that certain things may change. To me, these changes are incredibly insignificant, but Perfie can't seem to handle them. Whenever I try to explain why certain changes are necessary she just gets an attitude. We do not have a boss in common, so there is no higher authority to whom I can appeal to get Perfie to modify her behavior. Basically, I have the authority in our business relationship, but there are a lot of things she could do that would really screw me if she wanted to. Thats why I'm trying to avoid getting into any type of power struggle. I want Perfie to see that I'm no threat but all I get is Demand Resistance. It is so frustrating!!!

[Rose Irmersh]

Sorry, Maddison, I shouldn't have jumped to that conclusion, that this was a live-in relationship.
I can see it's as tricky in most senses, but trickier if survival of 'business' is at stake. I'm thinking aloud here, back to a similar one in my own life way back, in around 1982, where I had a subordinate in my department at work who had done the job, very well, meticulously as Perfies do, for near enough 30 years but was undermining reforms And didn't want to budge on matters of style, delivery and process. In the end, I had to do the most awful thing -- pension Perfie off early.
So far as your own situation is concerned, you say you were 'forced' into a business relationship with Perfie. Without witnessing what's going on, I can only say that in the end you might have to use guile. You say Perfie could do a lot things to screw you. Financially? In your job? Or emotionally?
One last thought, apart from floating, is to see if there is any way of making Perfie into an ally. When I was married to my own Perfie, I found ways of getting round him, palliating him, which I could do more easily by 'floating' as it was brain working rather than emotions. Good luck.

[Maddison]

Yes that is exactly it! I want to somehow make Perfie into an ally! Hmmm, how to do this? Ok, I might as well tell you the real situation: I'm buying some property where Perfie is currently a tenant. Apparently Perfie has some anxiety regarding paying rent in a certain way at a certain time. I'm under the impression that Perfie likes to wait to the very last possible minute to hand-carry the rent down at like 11:59 pm on the last day its due. Needless to say, I am not going to tolerate this behavior. I'm also nervous that Perfie may just decide to stop paying completely, and then I'll find myself in an eviction situation, which in my city takes an incredibly long time and will cost me 1000s of $$, which is why I say Perfie could really screw me over if she wanted to. All that will be changing now that I'm purchasing the building is that Perfie will pay rent to me, rather than the old owner and the rent is going up slightly. To me these are insignificant changes (the old owner already put Perfie on notice of the raise in rent) but Perfie seems highly agitated by them. Today I have to see Perfie and I'm really going to try to be patient and empathetic, but I need to send the message that there are certain rules which must be abided by. I know this will sound ridiculous, but I've actually been practising how I'm going to talk to Perfie, so that I don't let my temper get the better of me-always a challenge! This is why I've been asking for input as to best ways to communicate with Perfies. I guess I'll just have to do my best and like you said, detach myself from Perfie's reactions and realize that she probably can't help herself and what will be will be. Ah, I feel somewhat better just having written all that out! Well thanks for listening and for your input :) Wish me luck today!

[wornout]

I am so glad to know that there are others out there that suffer the way I do. I have been married for 12yrs. My husband has ocpd and adhd, for the last two years he has been on meds. and it has saved our marriage. I still just feel so exhausted being around him everything is such an effort. our biggest problem is that he forgets his medication and then I feel like we just got on a rollercoaster and I had better hold on. It is usually my fault he did not take it or my fault when we argue. I hate the way i feel toward Him sometimes I feel like a I am the one with a dissorder!! I love him so much and yet I feel that I can't be as close as we could be because his just so thorny on the outside.

[Annette Ramey]

Erin,
I just got out of an 18 year marriage to someone who is OCPD (not diagnosed but two therapist have made comments to him having OCPD).
Sad, to say we couldn't make it work. He felt that I was the one who needed to be fixed. We went through 10 years of marrital therapy. I tried on different personias to see if I could make him happy--I was not going to ever make it better. I personally suffered greatly, our family went from being very involved with friends to not having any friends to speak of. He was an isolationist and very controlling-with money, sex, the way things were organized in the kitchen (I was a stay at home wife and mom for 14 years).

I finally decided that having two young boys (11 & 13) that were living and seeing how we treated each other and treated them I could not be married to him any more. I am now a divorced mother of these two wonderful young men. I will watch for OCPD with them and am willing to work with a therapist if I see it developing in them.

I would not wish a relationship with a person having OCPD on anyone. The last 13 yrs have been very lonely, defeating, exhausting, & frustrating,(yet the first 5 years of marriage were fun, happy, and filled with friends).

I lost 13 years of my life as for productivity in the work force and have little to show. I do have two wonderful boys and for this I'm grateful!! That I would never change. I just wish he was willing to get help and I wish the therapists we saw would have been willing to help me help him.

Things might have been different.
A

[geckogal]

Erin,

I am married to an OCPD husband, for 20 years now. He is good-hearted and loves me very much in his own way. But he cannot let me do anything, even in the kitchen, without coming up behind me and making some sort of adjustment or correction. If I am drying laundry, he comes in and checks the lint filter. If I am loading the diswasher, he unloads it and reloads it from back to front, because the dishes have to be in a certain order. If I am cooking on the stove, he turns down the burner temperature. He is critical of what I eat, and even the order in which I eat it. I don't even eat at the table with him anymore, because it is less stressful that way. He has about driven our teenage son nuts with his constant criticism. He can't delegate tasks to anyone without re-doing the job himself. As you can imagine it has been a tough 20 years. I have never been able to do anything correctly. I have learned that non-confrontation is key to making this marriage work. I just remind myself that he can't help it, and try to appreciate the good things about him. He is never violent or nasty, just irritating. I guess I can live with that.

[kipperdo]

I htnk my husband has OCPD. Ihave been able to live with it until I became a new mom. I have an adopted son, who was adopted at 12, and is now a thriving successful 15 year old and I have a 1.5 year old. My husband is driving me crazy and I need some managmnet and coping strategies as he refuses to beleive thathe has this condition. He has since undergone a hip replacement and MRSA, and is on a variety of heart and painmedication.....it almost seems like the medications ( vicodyn and lorithab, as well as blood thinner and bp meds) have made the condition worse...or the less control he has physically, the worse the condition has become..

Can someone help me with my own wayof responding to him. I seem to simply snap on him and I know it hurts his feelings, but he repeats himself constantly....we probably here "Tyler, did you do your homework..."12 times, with response, every evening. Is Tyler up yet, at least 5 times every work/school day morning. He saves everything. His order is not order..he stacks everything in odd configurations ( for example, all pots, pans and bowls lumped together ito one huge, dangerous pile up. All laundry wedged together with no category...but he washes clothes constantly and if I dont get to it fast enough, he has ruined my clothes and died my daughters grey!!!! My son is beginning to be disrespectful to him becuase he drives him crazy and I am to the point where hisvery presence irritates me because in mid sentence he will remind me to check something....we call him "check man" he checks on things all day. Pleasehelp me. I trul love him and he is a great father, but this problem is terrible. I told his doctor and nothing has been done, as far as I know.