OCPD

 For years I have skirted around the issues of my life on this blog, trying to be discreet at the same time as I express myself as best as I can. However, it's been going on for so long and secrecy and discretion have achieved nothing. With nothing left to lose, I am just going to come out and say it.

My husband has some sort of anxiety disorder which affects many aspects of our lives but most importantly it is his anxiety about his health, and his deep distrust of the medical profession that puts me in a position where I sometimes feel I am going mad.

Whilst I was away last week interstate he experienced sensation such that my son took him to a public hospital in the middle of the night. They were efficient to the best of their ability and gave a diagnosis consistent with their findings, but my husband didn't agree with the diagnosis, highly suspicious of the woman in whose specialty it was.

All week he raged about the woman, fixating on the details of the middle of the night dash, not once entertaining the thought she might be right. Having gone past the point of simply agreeing with him, I suggested that maybe she knew a thing or two about her specialty and that it was worth the possibility of opening his mind. He remained unconvinced and undeterred.

This led us to the private hospital emergency this afternoon where it was quickly determined that, no, there was no heart arrhythmia.  However, they were happy, as you would expect, to run all requisite tests and confer with various specialists until he was satisfied and that's what they will spend tomorrow doing.

I want to be clear that if I can, I stay away from doctors and hospitals. My goal is to be well enough to achieve that end, doing sensible preventative tests, of course, but basically using the insurance policy of a balanced life to visit medical establishments as infrequently as possible.

However, when you need them, all their training comes in mighty handy, not to mention some drugs newly invented change and save lives.

My husband has a combination of fear of dying, of being very sick and needing doctors and a belief in his own ability to research conditions such that he can come up with the correct diagnosis and treatment himself.

Anyone who trashes his body as he does with lack of sleep, forcing himself to stay up late, along with a great deal of anxiety and stress hormones running through his body in an almost non-stop way, is going to experience illness, and he has been unwell with one thing or another for some time; bits and pieces.

The key thing here - and was so with Deity also -is that you can't help someone who won't be helped. If you insist a la Sinatra in going your own way, no-one can stop you. Certainly, I don't make a dent in my husband's thinking. 

If you could have a reasonable and fair conversation, things could be worked out together. There are solutions. But that's not something my husband is prepared to do because his black and white thinking means that I can't possibly be right, or a doctor can't possibly be right, when he is right. Do you see the issue?

I have threatened to leave him. I have tried living part of the time away from our city house in which he is bunkered. I have said he must get psychological help. Nothing moves him; certainly not my upset.

In many ways this is why I was able to tolerate Deity's stubborn nature; because I know stubborn natures up close and personal. I occasionally make the mistake of thinking I can save such people which I definitely cannot.

I am not trying to 'save' my husband in fact since I have no influence. I am trying to make sure that my husband doesn't send me to the funny farm, and all the kids along with me.

OCPDers think they are right and are to this end unaffected. It's the families that are traumatized and who is there to support them?

Hitting the brick wall

This is the post that I never wanted to write, but I have been wondering for some time how to come to terms with my life and perhaps this is the way.

My husband is not the same man he used to be. After the chronic fatigue took its toll, there was some improvement for a time, but his condition seems to have now permanently come to rest in a state of what I call 'neutral sexuality'. He does not have any sexuality at all.

For the past month I have woken repeatedly in the middle of the night trying to figure out what has happened. Two nights ago, surprisingly, and I think because there was a certain sense of absolute despair that he read on my face, he shared with me that a medical test revealed that his testosterone is being turned into oestrogen. It's some block of the hormones and nobody seems to know what to do about it, although he talked of some extracts of plants available in the United States.

I took this opportunity to express comments that I had held in:

'I feel like I am living with a stranger.'
'I feel like I am in the wrong house.'

Then I asked, after we had talked a bit, 'Are you saying that there is absolutely nothing you can do? Are you saying that this is completely out of your control?'

'Yes', he said. 'It's what I have been saying all along. I'm not doing this to you.'

You see, it's not just that we don't make love. It's that when he holds me, it doesn't feel like he is holding me. A kiss doesn't feel like his kiss. It doesn't feel like a male/female experience. He doesn't comment when I get a new set of nails, something he knows I adore to do. He offers me nothing. He hasn't used any rope all year. Things that aren't necessarily sexual, and that don't require anything of him but a little time and effort, are not attempted. He has sunk into a world of his own making - work in one office or another.

I make an effort to keep our lives going if for no other reason than if I did not do that, I too would sink into some sort of depression. So, on Friday night I suggested we meet at our Club. It didn't take long for an old friend of his to sit down with us and lay out a plan. My husband could join his tennis group on Wednesday nights for a game of tennis and a drink later. He'd be home by 7 pm except once a month when they ate dinner together. It sounded perfect and I encouraged him to go. But, he would not give a commitment on the spot and he told me later he couldn't do it because he had hurt his shoulder carrying up groceries for me. They are excuses. He doesn't want to be around people he doesn't know. He just wants to do what he does; be with me and the family; work, eat and watch television.

It sounds like a very deep depression, doesn't it? Or, some sort of dymentia?? I know we all change as we age but I still remember the boy with all his abundant entheusiasm and rapture for life; his dreams and goals, and I just can't reconcile what has happened.

I believe, as I always have, that he has undiagnosed ADD and OCD and that the effort of life, everything being that bit harder to achieve, every decision being that more complicated to make, and every outcome he is involved with needing to be perfect, has taken a toll on him such that he has hit the brick wall and has nowhere to go. He has crashed. That's what my doctor says. His doctor suggested seeking mental health care, but my husband's angry response ensured he never suggested it again. He won't accept treatment because he remains in denial as to his conditions. Which is not to say that there aren't chemical/bodily issues here, just that he is ignoring the fact that his mind is involved in this malaise.

I feel an incredibly deep responsibility to this man. This situation is proving to be immensely painful to me, and I am at a point  where I fear that my mind's suffering is creating mayhem within my body. I have taken to walking every day and this helps me. My writing over the past few years has been therapeutic as I deal with the pain of my situation but I am ready to move onto subjects where I can escape into other characters' worlds. (I wrote a short script today, a comedy, and that's huge progress for me. I'm out of my head for those hours and into other people's heads and I think that's an incredibly healthy thing for me.) We'll travel, and I'm hoping that once my study is completed in a month's time I can provide the impetus for projects and new plans.

Of course, I am not alone in carrying the grief of a relationship that has unraveled. Millions of people are doing that. Oddly, some relationships, no matter how bruised and battered they become, endure. The love and sense of empathy remains. Hope has us holding on.