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?

Give and take

 A correspondent once wrote to me about the intention of a hug. Some hugs, she said, felt like something was being taken from you. She wanted a hug that felt like someone was giving something to you. 

I haven't thought about that statement since then, except to say that for some months, perhaps a year or more, I have noticed that I walk away from my husband's hugs wanting. It's an odd sort of feeling, to connect and yet to feel disconnected. I have wondered if it had something to do with the fact that he has  lost considerable weight. 

The only way I could describe it to myself until recently was that I wanted it to feel like a 'bear hug'. I wanted to be enveloped in the hug; protected; nourished. I am not sure that he is taking anything from me, but nor do I feel that he is giving me anything either. I think he wants the momentary connection, understandable, perhaps a neutral thing, neither giving or taking away. All I know is that it doesn't fill me; it doesn't satisfy the 'wanting'.

For a couple of years now, certainly all last year and this year, my husband has wanted a certain outcome in his business. It has been a transition thing and the transition hasn't gone exactly to his plan. He has worried this, strategized; tried to get things to go his way. 

It's all understandable and I realized in the past couple of days that retirement of a sort (he does have several other avenues of investment and projects to undertake) equated to him as a form of death before he died. He gets purpose from his business activities and can't seem to begin to imagine a life wherein we lived in a smaller house, traveled regularly to the country; put the focus on a much less stressed life together whilst at the same time having our own pursuits and interests. 

Some people have a compulsive personality. They feel compelled to control, to do things perfectly, to only do those things that they can do perfectly. They want to control their world and they feel anxious when they lose control. They are willing to work hard, are incredibly conscientious and don't seem to notice when relationships become unbalanced, or when friends and family leave them to their insatiable drive to achieve.

My father, who was a hotelier, had no interest in Christmas or any other celebratory day. Despite Christmas Day being one of the few days when the business wasn't open, he insisted one year, on opening on this day to trade. I feel sure it was a day when we lost money since people chose to spend the day at home, but his argument had been that if he opened every day people would be able to rely on us as always being open. I think it's fair to say our feelings on the matter didn't rate at all.

It was long before I interrogated my parents' opinions and choices. All I knew was that the day felt soul-less and sad.

I have read material that advises someone like me, who tends to put up with a situation silently to avoid any conflict, to express one's needs. I took that advise about a week ago. My husband came to bed about the same time as me, which is to say before midnight, which these days is a most unusual outcome. He likes to work until the middle of the night generally. He gave me a bit of a rub and quietly I said, 'I get lonely, you know.' Just as quietly he said, 'Well, that's not good.' 

But, it didn't make a pinch of difference and it won't make a pinch of difference. He is compelled to do what he does, and if I am honest, he has always had that compulsion.

I have to think that this was the initial attraction. I was kind, I was quiet, I was sweet. I understood his drive because I had seen it all my life. Both parents felt compelled to work. I got used to looking after myself from a very early age. The situation was never balanced, so why ask for it to be at this late stage of the game?

Something is arising within me, if only that I am being honest with myself and allowing the range of emotions to be felt.

Moments of happiness

As you develop a closer relationship with yourself - being aware of emotional states coming and going - you will begin to see that there are moments of happiness, possibly dispersed among periods of less desirable states - feelings of being overwhelmed, anxious, lonely; bored. When people ask you how you are politeness and a sense of appearing 'pulled together' may have you answering 'Fine' when in fact over the course of the commute to work, as an example, all sorts of troubling thoughts have drifted in and out of your mind. Why is your son so unwilling to do his homework and where are you going to find the money for a new car? We all have these thoughts.

Nearly three months ago now we took a vacation in Bali, my first time there. It was a special vacation since the fares there were a gift from my children. From the moment I set eyes on the place, and especially when I set eyes on the villa I had rented for us, I loved everything about Bali. It's hard not to enjoy yourself on such a vacation but even so I was aware at first of some not so perfect thoughts coming and going. My husband had been particularly obsessive and perfectionist - preoccupied over the past several months - and we had to get to know one another again in a more intimate way.

As one day turned into another, I noticed that nearly all thought, to the extent this is possible, had drifted away. I felt not the slightest bit of pain or tension in my body. I was floating through the days in a state of pure bliss. I took to wearing the $9 floaty long dresses I bought there - colorful patterns - with a pair of sandals, and a pair of panties underneath, that's it. Life was blessedly simple and I loved every minute of it.

A couple of moments stand out as being ones of total and complete happiness. My husband was busy doing something inside the villa when I decided to use the communal pool, about three steps from our front door. We had our own infinity pool inside the compound, but the communal pool, empty, spoke to me. Ever so quietly I breast stroked up and down the pool and as I did so I followed my fingers making the strokes, watching my hands closely as they returned to make straight lines in front of me. I was surrounded by greenery wherever I looked and the thought occurred to me that there was nothing more than this. This was bliss. I wondered if I had found heaven.

On another occasion we were on the motorbike my husband had rented. At first I was nervous. The traffic appears chaotic to the untrained eye. However, I quickly learned to settle. Vehicles drive fairly slowly by Western standards and everyone is so polite and accepting. At one point we were at an intersection and the thought does occur - how are we all going to work this out? I think my husband looked a small truck driver in the eye, like - Can I go? - and he nodded as if to say, 'Yeah, no worries, you go'. Off my husband went and on the back I put up my hand as if to say, 'Thanks'. He laughed. 'Crazy Aussies', he thought.

It was a happy moment, but not the one I particularly remember. The moment I particularly remember is when I was quite simply aware of being right behind my husband on the bike and holding onto him around the waist, the two of us off on an adventure, him leading and me holding on for the ride. I felt...love. I felt...complete. I felt I had arrived home.

The ten days quickly came to an end. The Bali we saw and experienced may well quickly come to an end too. Villas are sprouting up everywhere beside the rice paddies of Ubud to the point there may soon not be enough land for the people to grow the crops that have fed the people of Bali until now. I hope and pray this does not happen but greed may devour this beautiful place.

My life with my husband is all or nothing. Either he is worrying himself to an early death about something or other - obsessively and compulsively devoting his thoughts to one - or two or three - projects that consume his time and thoughts - or he is completely relaxed, such as he was in Bali. To this end I know there is always hope of other blissful states.

Yet, I have to get through - from one preoccupation and project - to the next time when he can relax; when he can decide it is time to 'let go'. This is, and has been for some time, my mission.

Perfectionism

I'm not at all sure that I am or ever was representative of women of this modern era. There is a certain blitheness about the way I go about life. In my younger days I was fairly 'live and let live' in my disposition towards others, so although I noted certain characteristics inconsistent with the way I'd do things, I wasn't particularly troubled by them. If it was wildly outside what I considered fair or reasonable I might question something perhaps, but I was in no way demanding. To use other terms, I was what is considered  as without boundaries.

Having said that, I remember telling my husband off one time in my mid twenties when I'd been waiting at the appointed spot for considerable time; a spot that wasn't comfortable to be waiting in. His sense of time was something that I had difficulty understanding. He'd say that he'd be a couple of hours when in reality he needed more like a couple of days. Or, he'd say he was coming to bed "soon" and rock up in the wee small hours of the night. He often underestimated the time it took to do something and even though he could give assurances freely that he could get something done for me, he'd struggle to tear himself away from the project at hand, or the thing that held his interest. When he did attend to the task it seemed to take an endless amount of time, for only a perfect job was satisfactory in his eyes.

The washing of the dishes was a strange affair. When we married he rushed out to buy a dishwasher, as if the lack of a dishwasher somehow implied that he had some unwanted involvement in the chore. The event stood out because making decisions was something that he often labored over for fear of making the wrong decision. When he occasionally did do the dishes it reminded me of a surgeon preparing for heart surgery. It seemed a job done with meticulous care and attention. My attempts felt sloppy in comparison, as was my packing of the dishwasher apparently for he often noted that something hadn't been done quite right.

It soon became clear that his relationship with workmen wasn't a happy one. Invariably he found fault in their attempts and he was much happier doing it himself, even if it might take a decade longer. He'd assure me we'd saved a fortune, though, as you might imagine, I  didn't see it that way. Recently an oven sat in the middle of the kitchen for 9 months as he got his head around installing it and framing it in the absolutely right way.

You'd be correct if you assumed that this has caused me a great deal of frustration over the decades. Trying to explain my frustration to him is like talking to someone from another planet. It simply doesn't compute. What matters is his sense of the fitness of things and this is determined through his own particular lens of perfectionism and obsessiveness.

Things reached a head several years ago when I found myself having the occasional conniption. I think the frustration had built to such a level that I demanded that he understand what he was doing to me. He'd apologize that he'd upset me, but then he'd talk me around to seeing things from his point of view. There was no winning this war. There was no change of perspective to be had; no recognition that he was sending his wife mad.

Naturally, I reached a point where I researched this dilemma and bit by bit I filled in the dots and created an accurate picture of what was going on. Then, I looked for solutions. Modern psychology was brutally honest with me. The person to change was me because I was the person who was able to change.

I needed boundaries. I need to express my feelings in particular ways and/or state what I needed at the particular time and in a direct but neutral way. I needed to be proactive. I needed to buy out of circular arguments. I needed to do things for myself where possible. I needed to keep in close communication and enjoy time together with him, but I also needed to understand that I had to be a free agent; to find joy in ways other than in the ways that I had intended and expected when I agreed to his marital proposal; to any marital proposal.

To my eyes, his priorities would often seem misplaced, but these were my eyes, and the common theme that remains to this day is that he was doing things in a completely necessary way and at a depth of detail that was absolutely essential for our benefit. If the need for a perfect outcome meant that the outcome was delayed, perhaps permanently, then this was the way it was.

It became a process of wrapping my head around the fact that there would be little meeting of the ways, but rather that I learn to 'let go' of certain expectations of life, of a certain living standard, of certain marital expectations, and instead focus on other ways to be  a happy, stable and fulfilled human being.

This is the face of perfectionism and of being married to a person with an obsessive-compulsive, anal retentive, perfectionist personality. If someone told me ahead of time the rocky road ahead, well, I'd have been a fool to do anything else than to find another highway. But, that's rarely the way it works out. We discover our partner's traits as we progress down the road and after the time it is easy to do a U turn.

The  five stages of grieving as outlined by Kubler-Ross are accurate; not necessarily experienced in the same order as the next person, but still, we do go through all the stages, and complete the cycle at the stage of acceptance. I have learned to accept that no change will take place. I've adapted my life, my mindset and my pursuit of happiness around it. I am at peace. I am loved, and happy. I live a good life even when, to the fly on the wall, it can look pretty darn odd. It is what it is. Come hell or high water, a perfectionist, full of love as he may be for his wife, and who attempts to make up for his oddities in other ways, is unable to change.