Royal Wedding

[Gerard]

Hello everyone,

I haven't been on in a while. Doesn't the site look great?

I just wanted to share what's been going on with me the last few days if that's ok.

My OCD centres around my marriage and my wife. These are the 2 most important things to me and the prime targets for my OCD.

I just found, as the royal wedding approached, that I was getting scared. I would see a picture of Kate Middleton and it would cause me a mini-panic. I say "mini" because I have got to suss out my OCD these days and know its tactics.

I think Kate Middleton is beautiful and, as has happened to me before, can get freaked out when I have a regular heterosexual response to a woman. I hate it. I want to keep that side of myself for my wife.

Then something even more unpleasant happens (and I hesitate to post this, but must). I start to compare my wife unfavourably with the woman to whom I'm having the response. Do I want to do this? NO. It's intrusive thoughts and I can't help it.

The thing which scares me is that (though my wife is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen), we have now been married nearly 11 years and, I guess naturally, we do not take so much care of ourselves around each other as we used to. We've both put on weight, share the same loo, washing facilities etc and our marriage is now about muscular, functioning, hard-working and mutually-supportive love than wild love-making, champagne, chocolate and romance.

Please understand me. I am not immature and know that this is natural and right. It's what marriage is all about but sometimes I can miss the romance and get freaked out by it. Our love life is not good at the moment because my wife doesn't feel good about her body (she's not happy with the weight she's put on). As one of my CBT therapists used to say, I run things forward to a worst case scenario.

I love my wife so much and want to support her so that her soul sings. When I feel anything other than wild enthusiasm for her and conscious unconditional love, when we're having a spat, when I get an intrusive thought about, for instance, not liking her current hairstyle compared with the one she had when I first met her, or not liking her in certain clothing, or not liking how she's put on weight, I just hate it.

I want to use everything, including my OCD, to strengthen and nourish my marriage.

I've had some other frightening thoughts recently as well. One of our cats has just died and, by a horrible coincidence, the other one is dying of cancer. Our cats are massively important to us. They're like our children. I've started to have intrusive thoughts of the cats dying being symbolic of our love for each other dying, or my love for my wife dying. I hate even writing that but must to get it out.

More than anything I just want to be a fantastic husband and I hate even the thought of anything creeping in to my thoughts / feelings about my wife to undermine that.

I just had to vent I guess and would be grateful for any support. Only other people with OCD understand.

All love to you all,

Gerard

Edited May 2, 2011 by Gerard

[Guest mummywithocd]

Dear Gerard, I sympathise with your situation I really do. OCD seems to attack all that we love and care about whether it be a spouse, children,friendships. From your posts you can tell that you love your wife very much and have the same feelings as anyone would in a long relationship. I´ve been with my husband for 14 years and like you we have both "let ourse3lves go"-we NEVER go out together alone and up to recently we never really appreciated eachother as we both are constantly up to ears with work, the kids and finances.

I say up to recently because we have just returned from a weeks family vacation where for some unknown reason we re-connected somehow. We ACTUALLY had a good giggle and a laugh over the holidays and I think we both started to realise why we fell in love in the first place. We went back to his childhood home (not a very happy one) and it made me appreciate him even more-to see past the "middle aged spead" the bad habits we have both acquired over the years and to see eachother for who we really are.

Do you 2 manage to get any time together?

As for the attraction to other women I bet everyman on the planet has been daydreaming about Kate Middleton since that wedding I know my husband has-he´s developed a right crush on her It´s normal,it´s just that the OCD is trying to make you feel like it´s not normal-God damn ocd bully!!!

AM not sure if my post helped, sorry for it being so long, it´s just that I too beat myself up constantly about not being a better wife, I try and tell myself that I can´t change the past, I can just be the best person I can be TODAY and in the days to come

Take care

[Guest nic]

Arrrrrrr my dear Gerard, one is trying to reason with the thoughts isn't one? You are tring to reason with the unreasonable, rationalise the irrational. What do you need to be doing, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Ignoring it, and go and do something else. You are giving time to something that doesn't deserve it, precious time. Remember , what you feel is quite normal for anyone to feel when you have been with someone for a long time. Do I sit and imagine David Tennant whisking me off in his tardis? Damn right I do! Do I feel guilty about it? Nope, cos that is not my ocd. Does my other half dream of other women instaed of the beached whale he has a partner? I don't doubt it for a second. NOt my ocd , Gerard, so doesn't bother me. However, show me a plaster on the street and I will run in the opposite direction faster than Linford Christie on speed. The ocd would hit me with its full gut wrenching force, the sick feeling in the pitt of my stomach will return , the feeling of hopelessness and despair would be back again with all its evil might. SOUND familiar? And what would you say to me , under those circumstances? You would say ignore it nic, it is your ocd, these tohoughts are not what you really feel, they are an exaggeration. Now aS FAR AS KATE MIDDLETON is concerned, well im with you there mate, and i'm a girl! She is absolutely beautiful!Does that mean I want to have a relationship with her? Absolutely not!There is no harm recognising something or someone as beautiful. Where is the harm in it? Are you being unfaithful? Absolutely not!. Now before I bore you to an early death, I will depart, with my fondest regards and wishes that one day you will find the true peace you deserve....PS My inner peace comes from 6omg a day of prozac, marvellous stuff, love nic xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Gerard]

My Nic who always grabs my hand when I'm drowning.

You really are amazing, ya know.

I just don't have the words to thank you for always being there for me.

But DON'T YOU DARE REFER TO YOURSELF AS A BEACHED WHALE!!!!!!!!!!!! That's MY FRIEND YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT - and you know that, though we've never met and probably never will, we ARE friends!!!!

Your husband is a very, very lucky man and I will not have you talking about yourself like that.

Thanks lovely lady.

I've never supported you as you have me, but pray I shall get the chance soon.

Now I'm off down to the gym to get myself looking like Daniel Craig walking out of the ocean!

Love ya loads,

Gerardx.

[Guest orange socks]

gerard you are so sweet...i am sorry i have nothing technical to add....but you seem such a lovely man !

i can tell how much you love your wife - it oozes from you ....i wish someone would love me in the way you obviously love your wife !

she is very lucky - please dont listen to the rubbish ocd is telling you .

what a great guy you are - you really impress me - straight away i am impressed !

Edited May 2, 2011 by orange socks

[Gerard]

My dear Orange Socks,

Thank you for your beautiful posting.

I think you're lovely too and am putting an order out to the universe for someone who will love you as you deserve to be loved.

God bless you, dear friend. You're magical.

Gerardx.

[Gerard]

Hello dear friends,

I'm sorry it's me again. I hope you're all bearing up.

I feel guilty making another post on the same theme - especially since the angels on this website have been so wonderfully supportive to me after my last posting.

It's just that the OCD has ambushed me again this weekend. It's bad.

I'm actually afraid to be alone with my wife because of intrusive thoughts about breaking up with her, breaking her heart, thinking negative thoughts about her. I try to keep the thoughts to myself and just carry on as normal until they pass but, as I said, this latest blizzard has been quite shockingly powerful, and being added to by fear of it becoming MORE powerful. I'm in a fear-cycle. I've got in to that classic pattern of being afraid the thoughts will come back.

The fear leaves me breathless. It even scares me when she looks at me lovingly - which she does a lot.

I usually tell my wife when I'm having a bad OCD episode (I don't go in to details) and she's wonderfully understanding. In a way that makes it worse.

I've definitely made a trigger out of my wife and get afraid as the time approaches when I know I'll be spending one-to-one time with her, because I'm afraid the thoughts will come back.

In the last 24 / 48 hrs I've been having all sorts of terrifying thoughts like being scared to go on holiday with her because of all the time we'd spend alone together, being afraid to go away to work because of the fear of coming back home and the intrusive thoughts starting again.

Oh God I could go on and on but it just scares me so much.

I've definitely developed safety behaviours like telling her I love her a lot, kissing her and touching her to let her know how much I love her. I do this a lot anyway but even more so when the thoughts are really bad.

My lovely Nic, OrangeSocks and MummywithOCD were so supportive after my last posting and, as I said, I feel guilty posting again about the same thing.

I feel like a dog with rabies - desperate to drink but afraid of water. I cherish my time with my wife but have now become afraid of it and so am sort of trying to avoid it.

I know I should stay in the one-on-one situation with my wife, feel the terror and let it pass. It's worked before...but the OCD is grinding me down at the moment, grinding down my resistance.

I so need support. What I also find difficult is that this manifestation of OCD does not seem to be common. Beautiful and wonderful though the members are on this website, I find it's actually very rare that someone can identify with me.

Just want it to stop. I want to be able to enjoy my marriage normally. But I know I have OCD so saying thing like that is useless.

I think Easter / Springtime is bad for me too because, as I've posted before, it was at this time of the year in 1996 when I broke up with my then girlfriend. It was completely horrendous and I am terrified it will happen again.

I just have to get all my terror out there uncensored.

God bless you all. I don't know what I'd do without you and having this website as a support.

Love,

Gerard

Edited May 8, 2011 by Gerard

[Guest mummywithocd]

Hi Gerard, am sorry to hear you´re having a bd time of it lately. OCD is such a bully and targets what we love most.

When you talk about your fear of being alone with your wife it reminded me of when my ocd was at it´s worse, when I was pregnant with my second child and my first child was only 18 months old. I had terrible "harm" thoughts towards my first child so much so that I was completely afraid to be alone with her. Like you are afraid of emotionally hurting your wife I was afraid of...(I can´t even write it,but you know what I mean. Every evening for 9 months, when my husband went to work I would have my mother call around or I would go to hers so as not to be alone with my daughter.I was eaten up with anxiety and more so, guilt. Everytime mydaughter would look at me I would become filled with guilt and disgust at myself. How I got through that time I don´´t know,but I did, and although I still get ocd thoughts (now more health ocd) they were never as bad as they were back then.

I don´t know how to advice you but to say that even though you believe that this type of ocd is rare, I believe that eventhough the thought content is different the common denominator is the same-a fear of hurting the ones we love.

Just a thought....knives were my trigger and a councellor told me once to practice some relaxing breathing when I handled knives so as to disassociate the feelings of anxiety with the knives.

Seeing as your wife is your trigger have you tried practising some breathing techniques to calm you down while you´re with her?

Sorry for the rant...hope you feel better soon.

[Gerard]

Dear MummywithOCD,

Yet again you take time out from your life to support me. How wonderful you are and you made me feel so much better because you clearly understand and identify wit what I am going through.

What you said made perfect sense and I will implement it to the letter.

Huge love, hugs and gratitude to you, dear lady.

Mostly, I wish you a wonderful, peaceful day.

Gerardxxxx

[Guest nic]

My dearest Gerard, don't make me put you over my knee. Firstly I would like to say that your type of OCD is incredibly common, there are many people on here with it. Secondly, and I don't think there will be too many sudden intakes of breath here , but I reckon a lot of "normal" people think your thoughts. I remember watching John Bishop on the telly the other day saying "you know when you've been married a long time.....the way they breathe, its constant isn't it, in and out in and out...." Why is this funny? because there is an element of truth in it! You are expecting too much from life sweetheart. You are expecting to look all dewy eyed at your wife, whilst running hand in hand down a sunkissed meadow, just as I expect to be able to walk down a clean street with no ugly, sinister stains on it.......it just ain't gonna happen. Now, my lovie, life is not about waiting for the storms to pass, its about learning to dance in the rain. Of course these thoughts are going to come along , that is the nature of your illness, just as someone with a broken leg would find tap dancing smarts a bit...... But you need to be accepting of them , they are just your illness , yes they make you feel awful, but only if you let them. I know full well whenever I leave the house that I will see something that makes me feel contaminated almost immediately. Without fail, this will happen. However , I still leave the house and I remind myself that the feelings I AM going to experience are an exaggeration, a sensitized mind waiting for the inevitable to happen. And lo and behold, I see a plaster, or red stain, or literally anything to frighten me. But I say "I am not afraid of you anymore". True, sometimes I win , sometimes I lose, and unfortunate thogh it is , I don't believe I will ever be fully well. But I now know that life is worth fighting for, and that I deserve to live my life like anyone else. You know that your relationship with your wife is worth fighting for, and YOU ARE not GOING TO LET A SILLY ILLNESS LIKE OCD RUIN IT FOR YOU. So do not dread the inevitable storms, DANCE IN THE RAIN.......love nic xxxxxxxxx