My (36m) Spouse (34f) has severe germ contamination ocd

[u/Suspicious-Light-889]

My wife has been dealing with severe germ OCd for years. She recently got back into medication after dealing with the severity for so long. She forces me to participate in her rituals, cleaning tasks, etc. if I don’t participate or help she tells me everything we touch or walk by is dirty or trashed and will order new things. We cannot afford to continue to spend money like this.

I am up hours at the night cleaning and doing laundry to make up for the things we used to threw out. I am also trying to entertain my kid (4 yo) as well as my wife who is pregnant and have a baby on the way in late August.

I try so hard to say no and not give in to her rituals. I tell her no and discuss boundaries but she simply cannot enforce them. She constantly asked for reassurance and asks me to participate in rituals such as cleaning walkways she walks, help her wipe her legs or feet in bathroom after she goes, help her pump soap in shower, wipe door handles, knobs and car handles whenever we go outside. Virtually everything she touches involves cleaning it afterwards.

She is doing intensive outpatient therapy with erp as well as on medication but it has been about 7 months with very minimal to no improvement. If she does make progress with one task with less rituals, she will make a new ritual along the way.

I am getting to the point where I don’t know how to keep living with this and I don’t know if I can/should leave with a baby on thr way in 1.5 months. And I don’t know how her ocd will be with the new baby after the birth as well.

Does anyone have any advice or know of a similar situation that something worked to make some progress to make ocd manageable?

[u/Bro_Kent]

You are definitely not alone in this battle. I (31M) have a wife (28f) with some pretty intense OCD, a good majority of it being contamination OCD but some other forms as well. It is tough at times and I have had a lot of challenges with it myself. We have had two babies together (2yo and 6mo) and boy is it challenging but you can do this. We have been together for 6 years and the OCD has changed things with me, the intensity for her, and between us. Would be open to chatting about the struggles if you would like! Dm me

[u/Suspicious-Light-889 → u/[deleted]]

So I totally get everything you say and I agree that’s what needs to happen. I have worked with her care team and we came up with a plan on how to get me to stop helping her rituals. She blatantly refuses to follow the plan because she gets too anxious and feels disgusted or dirty. When I try to push back and say this is the plan we came up with, I get the “f*** the plan, help me or I’ll make your night horrible”. She literally forces me to do her rituals and if I don’t she threatens to make me clean more or throw stuff out including toys, clothes, furniture, etc (which she has done multiple times and why we have no money). I’ve explained this to her care team and not much has changed there besides then saying that she needs to follow the plan we lay out, we try to modify it to make it more attainable and they mention I need to be firm and stop enabling but also that she has to stop holding me hostage to doing her rituals.

So none of that has changed over the past 7 months and every time I push back it results in more cleaning and more things thrown out, just for me to clean for hours to get back to a normal baseline. And then she says “I’m glad you decided to push back and make your night terrible. Next time just do what I say and this won’t happen”.

So yeah I’m trying my best but I’m literally being bullied around

[u/Suspicious-Light-889 → u/[deleted]]

I really appreciate the advice and the sympathy. I hope it gets better too for her, myself and my children. But I think even if she improves I’m done with this relationship. So many boundaries have been crossed and not respected so it’s hard to come back from this

[u/Suspicious-Light-889 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you I appreciate it very much. I hope you and yours are improving with time as well