Anxiety has a presence in our apartment. It’s like a third roommate that I tiptoe around. Sometimes, I inadvertently stomp on it, and other times I’m too tired to care. The anxiety beast isn’t mine — my fiancé carries it with him — but we are well-acquainted.
My life is filled with loved ones who deal with anxiety. Family, friends, even my dog. I can’t say I totally understand it, but I am empathetic. I do my best not to trigger it, but I always know when I have. It’s a weird place to be — like playing a game without knowing the rules. And there are LOTS of rules. Much of my fiancé’s anxiety is rooted in obsessive compulsive behavior, specifically cleanliness and organization. To him, the “rules” make perfect sense. But to me, his rules aren’t logical. I probably break 20 just walking into the apartment. Why? Because I don’t live on his planet where you have to wash your hands between every load of laundry, and refrain from placing anything on the kitchen counter until it’s been properly disinfected.
The Clash
I’m not methodical by nature. My closet is a mess of colors and textures all shoved in where things will fit. When I travel, I stuff things into my suitcase with no particular order. My fiancé, on the other hand, organizes his clothes by color, with each item hanging in the appropriate place in his closet. His suitcase is the most meticulously packed bag I’ve ever seen (it’s actually quite mesmerizing). There is nothing wrong with approaching life differently. In fact, this is partially what makes our relationship tick. I’m easygoing to his high-strung. He takes charge, so I can sit back. But, at times, his anxious side clashes with my laissez-faire attitude.
Let’s say I come home from work, and set something down on the counter. This triggers his anxiety. Unbeknownst to me, the counter hasn’t been wiped down since dinner last night, and so whatever I’ve put down is now “dirty.” He will get up, come over and move the item off the counter. Sometimes he’ll makes a comment under his breath. Or, maybe there is a pile of papers on my laptop. I’ll move the papers to open it, and immediately hear, “What are you doing? Don’t move those papers!” echoing from the kitchen. These little things add up, create tension, and causes me to walk on eggshells. Eventually, it ends in a blow-up, courtesy of me. I think my most shouted phrases are, “I live here, too! This is my apartment, too!”
The first time I encountered my fiancé’s OCD was on a trip to see him out-of-state. We’d been dating about a year when he moved to a new city, and I came out for my first visit. I took a shower, using his shampoo, and went about my day. Several hours later, he caught a glimpse of the shampoo bottle — it was still bent in from where I’d squeezed it. SOUND THE ALARM. He politely informed me that I should pop the bottle back out. I’d like to say this caused us to have a calm and meaningful discussion about our differences.
In reality, I got angry — it can feel like your partner is endlessly criticizing you— and then upset, and spent the next 20 minutes crying on a bench outside. What can I say? Neither one of us is perfect. But that’s the point, right? We’re just trying to figure this shit out together.
And, we did have that meaningful conversation eventually. He opened up about his struggles with anxiety, and that his OCD response isn’t personal, even if it feels that way to me. He validated my confusion and frustration. I realized, after some contemplation, that OCD is a part of him, but it’s not him. It doesn’t cancel out all of the other reasons why I love him. And that’s enough to keep moving forward.
The Balance
The core issue, I think, is that people with OCD/anxiety feel an intense need to control their environment in order to ease their anxiety, but you can’t control the people you love and live with. Thankfully, my fiancé is self-aware. He knows it’s not fair or logical to get upset when I don’t live by his OCD’s standards. Often, he still does get upset for a bit, and then gets over it and apologizes. And, he’s looking into professional help options to alleviate some of his own mental stress. For me, it can be difficult to push past his annoyance over these silly things. I’m sensitive, and very attuned to the people around me, particularly those I love. I can sense when he’s upset, and I assume it’s because of something I did.
I’m learning not to let it affect me so deeply. For me, that means getting my mind off of it, and tuning out his mood. Maybe I’ll read a book in the other room, watch one of my favorite shows, talk with my mom or go out for run. The storm passes, and we’re fine.
We’ve even learned to laugh about it. As the “messy” partner in the pair, he jokes that I always have a splotch of spaghetti sauce on my clothes. And, yes, I look down to see a stain on my shirt a little more often than I’d like to admit. Or, he’ll tell me that he’s annoyed about something that he doesn’t want to say out loud because it sounds crazy. Sometimes he’ll tell me anyway, and I’ll just roll my eyes, take a deep breath, and snuggle up with him, and our beagle, to watch another episode of Black Mirror.
