Hi, I have been living with and doing business with my boyfriend for the past 3 years. We dated for 6 months long distance, then he moved in. Our problems started pretty soon afterward. I started noticing that he had to do things in a certain way. He turned out to have really bad anxiety and blow up, cry, get angry, etc if things were not done the way he thought they should be. He would have irrational fears and worries, and wear me out for hours, days, weeks about these fears until it turned out they were not true. Anything from our flyers not being delivered on time(we run an event business), to other people moving or touching his equipment if he had to leave it alone for a few minutes(he expected me to stand there watching it if he couldn't even though I had other responsibilities), to people talking to him while he is in the process of setting up(he wants them to all stay out of the room but it's impossible to prevent people from coming in and asking questions DURING AN EVENT) and other things. I did events for years previous to this and it was just never THIS HARD. He makes working with him a misery. He took control of our kitchen and I have not been able to cook anything for 3 years, and he gets mad if I put anything in the refrigerator because he has places where he wants everything put. He has specific sponges for specific things in the sink and gets mad if you use a different one. Somehow something got used to clean the sink in our old apt that had once cleaned or touched the toilet and I found out that even months later he believed the sink to be "contaminated by feces germs" because of this and was having anxiety about it. He has specific places for everything in his area and doesn't want anything there to be touched, which is fine with me because I like privacy in my area too. If you casually mention that you want to do something, he takes this to mean that it will DEFINATELY HAPPEN AND IT IS SET IN STONE, so if you then deviate from the original "plan"(which to you just means you casually mentioned that you might like to do something), he becomes irate and upset because you "changed the plan without telling him". He also hates if you add a chore to an originally scheduled chore, such as if I say I want to go to the store but then decide to drop the laundry off before I go, he gets really angry and irate.

It's been hard to deal with ALL the anger and stress, the first year I kept feeling like I was going to have a heart attack. I've developed a couple of new wrinkles too. The second year I feel bad about this but I started yelling and screaming at him. I yelled, threw things and threatened to throw him out because I could not take it and I didn't understand what was wrong. It sucks because he ARGUES ME BACK ABOUT CRAZY STUFF. He insisted that if I hung a piece of lace on the wall of one of the clubs we work at, the fire department would DEFINATELY BE THERE AND CLOSE THE PLACE DOWN. I think that was the start of me realizing that something just wasn't right. I got so angry and I screamed him down about that, because I just was unwilling to have a partner who would believe that the city would mobilize it's forces to take care a piece of lace on the wall of a club. I even hit the kitchen wall with a pan and there are still two round circles in the wall of my old apt from that crazy argument.

Before he lived with me he suffered a nervous breakdown over his father stealing his trust fund, which is understandable and could happen to anyone. He was living at his mother's house and she had forced him onto medication. The medication was making him feel sick and miserable, unable to sleep, and had increased his panic attacks. He couldn't go anywhere and was overheating, and was obviously a different person than he had been before(I knew him before the breakdown). With my help he got off the medication and now drinks no caffiene or anything that could irritate his nervous system. I thought I was doing him some good, but now I feel that maybe the mother KNEW HE HAD OCD. She didn't want me to help him get off of it, but she didn't explain to me what the matter was. He told me that the doctor had given him the medication for depression, and I didn't agree with medicating people's depression over normal life events. So much for my armchair psychiatry!!! I hope I didn't do him a great disservice by getting him off the medication. I have paid the price in stress since he moved in here.

I just want my old life back, when I lived by myself and didn't have ALL the arguing, ALL the stress, ALL the craziness, the rules, etc. I am positive this is OCD. I feel used because nobody told me. I confronted him and all he did was argue me AGAIN about how this problem was because I AM AN ABUSER AND RAGEAHOLIC. NO- I REFUSE TO ACCEPT CRAZINESS. I feel bad for yelling if this really is a mental problem, but his mother should have warned me or he should have told me if he was ever diagnosed. He went to counseling, did his counselor ever tell him he had OCD? Is that why he was on medication? I am really suspicious that she knew but just didn't tell me. She seemed distressed when I helped him get off the medication but didn't say why.

I feel tired, burned out, BEYOND burned out- I feel like if he moves out of here, I am going to have to sleep for 2 months to get over the damage to my nerves from the past 3 years. Oh, and our sex life has SUCKED. After the first 2 months it dwindled down to once or twice a week, and I like to do it every day! And it feels mechanical, like he is calculating every move and is not acting out of passion. Occasionally it is good but not very often. Whatever this disorder is, it sucks all his energy and he can take or leave sex. LAME, I always said I'd never get into a relationship like that. Yet here I am.

There are some good things about him or else it could never have lasted 3 years. He is obsessive about work and has pulled off some pretty amazing feats because of it, like doing events everyone else said were impossible. My house and especially kitchen has been uncharacteristically clean and well stocked (only I can't cook anything or move things around in the fridge without upsetting him). He fixes things very well (but gets obessed and anxious about the jobs while he is doing them), and takes care of our pets very well. But he works from home and having all the stress from him being here all the time is just really hard. As I said, I often dream about my old life and wistfully think about the times I could just have peace and quiet, meditate, etc. He refuses to do yoga or meditate by the way, and has no spirituality. Not only that, he told me at first that he believed that there are "writers", people who work for the government or even higher than that who script our lives and make things happen, and sometimes they do experiments on us just to see what will happen. Hmmmmm.......when I confronted him about this later on, when I started suspecting that something was just not right, he claimed that he had changed his views. But I wonder...he doesn't believe in any higher power in the sense that most people do, and obfuscates as to what his beliefs actually are. I suspect that he still believes that there are "writers", but just stopped telling me.

OCD? I believe so. And I can't see myself dealing with this for the rest of my life. I miss the ease and casual affection of a normal relationship, and the peace and quiet that comes along with one. Thank God we didn't get married or have kids. That's another bad thing, he is against having kids.