Have I recovered? OCD is still affecting my relationships

[Guest Caliadne]

Hello this is my first post here, I would be grateful for any advice or comments. Sorry, the post is a long one!

I suffered badly from OCD when I was a teenager, it mostly centred around contamination and handwashing. It affected my life and relationships badly leading to depression. I recovered more than 10 years ago, in the meantime it has scarcely bothered me at all, except perhaps surfacing a little when I am tired or anxious.

I feel like I live a very normal life in terms of my mental health now, I function normally and any OCD tendencies I may get hardly interfere with my life.

Most people would consider that I have recovered, I think. I certainly feel like I have.

However I still hold onto a few things that are OCD related but that I consider to be normal enough or reasonable enough to keep doing.

For example, I still think of certain things as 'contaminated' and others as 'clean' and never the twain shall meet.

Things that are 'contaminated' include rubbish bins. I always wash hands after handling the rubbish/ taking out the bins. (Normal, no??)

Other things I feel aren't clean include soles of shoes, and public toilets - so for example I don't touch the flush with my hand, I use my foot (again - is this fairly 'normal'?)

I think of my bedding and towels as clean and try to keep them that way, but I don't go to any particular lengths, I don't always feel I need to have a shower before bed but I usually do have a quick one, and I never put clean towels on the floor - isn't this fairly normal? It never causes me any distress to keep my bedding and towels mostly clean, I don't get anxious about it, it doesn't really take any time out of my day. Surely its not unreasonable for me to keep bedding and towels clean?

I have recently got into a new relationship. My new partner is wonderful and I love him. He is a bit laidback about cleanliness, for example he puts his clean towel on the bathroom floor while he has a shower/ bath, ready to use afterwards. When I first saw him doing it, I cringed a little, I didn't make a fuss over it but I did mention to him about how I used to suffer from OCD, to warn him that sometimes it still affects me a little. But I am not going to ask him to do anything different with his towels - its up to him.

Last night there was an incident that has upset both of us. I was very tired after being on a course (which meant I was more susceptible). We were getting ready for bed, he has athletes foot so he applied a bit of athletes foot powder to his toes, then got onto the bed. As he was pulling down the covers, his feet swung round near my pillow. I said 'please don't put your feet near my pillow, I'm a bit ocd about that.'

If it had stopped there I could have got into bed, probably forgotten about the pillow fairly quickly and been fine. But he started to tease me about it (I'm sure he was just trying to be funny and lighten the mood) he hovered his feet over the pillow, waving them around like it was a game to wind me up.

At that point I was upset and to make myself feel better, I changed the piIlowcase. Then I tried to explain about the OCD. Unfortunately being tired I got upset and started to cry a bit. I usually cry when I talk about my OCD because it was such a painful time in my life. And I feel embarrassed confessing it to my partner, I love him and I want him to think well of me, not think that I am crazy, so I tried to explain the condition.

I guess he did think I must be crazy though. Today he told me that he is worried.

I recently became pregnant, and he thinks if I overreact about dirt in front of our child it will make the child anxious about dirt. He says I need to deal with it.

Personally I am proud of my recovery, and I consider myself to be healthy, OCD scarcely impacts my life anymore, only occasionally when I am tired and stressed. But my partner clearly thinks it is a problem. 'Dirt is good', he says. For the most part I agree - apart from those few things I still am cautious about (rubbish bins, public loos, -and raw meat is another one I am really cautious about)

Do I still need to fix those things? Am I not fully recovered? Or is it ok to be fussy about bins and toilets? Is it ok to be particular about my clean towels and pillows? Clearly it is affecting my relationship so it is a problem. I've been quite upset all day worrying that this has affected his feelings for me, that he thinks I am crazy. It feels so unfair when I feel like I have been doing fine these past 10 years.

[PolarBear]

Normal is in the eye of the beholder. There are people without OCD who don't let their clean towel touch the floor. Their are people without OCD who use their feet to flush public toilets. The question is, are you happy with where you are at? It sounds like you are. You don't have the anxiety normally present with OCD. You aren't doing major compulsions. If anything you have some quirks -- but non-OCD people have quirks too.

Now with your boyfriend, it sounds like he was fooling around with his feet near your pillow. He was having a little fun at your expense. That incident may show that you have a little ways to go. At the same time, he could be a little more understanding. It's not a good idea to throw a spider at someone with arachnophobia. Now he didn't know about your OCD so give him a little slack.

I think this could be not a big deal, if you two are willing to work together to find a middle ground. You're part way there because you don't freak out when he puts his clean towel on the floor. Give him some time to learn about OCD and how it affected you and hopefully he'll be willing to cool the joking around.

Take care.

[Guest Caliadne]

Thank you PolarBear for your sensible reply. I do feel happy that I have recovered - I am actually at my best in terms of mental health, I get very little anxiety about ocd now, and only very occasionally. Those rare occasions are always when I am tired, as I am now! And I think being tired has caused me to get overly upset and over think the situation. (Also being pregnant and hormonal!).

I guess its a bit disheartening to feel that I am doing really well and yet the person who's opinion matters most still thinks I am crazy.

I think it may be that my partner has just had very little experience of mental health problems (lucky him!) and so it is alarming to him to think that I might have had a problem. At the moment my issues are so mild compared to what they were that I guess I feel upset that he can't see that I am actually perfectly fine!

You are right that it shouldn't be a big deal, and hopefully if he learns more he will feel the same. He can put his towels on the floor if he likes, I will try to tolerate his fungal feet and hopefully he will be a little more sensitive and not tease me. And when the baby comes he/she can put grubby things off the floor in his/her mouth and I won't panic. :original: