[SpouseThrowaway]

I’m using a throwaway account and trying to keep personal details sparse to keep this as anonymous as possible. Also, despite my frustration with the situation, I’ll attempt to be as neutral as possible.

My significant other was always “germ conscious”; clean hands, no shoes in the house, etc. Nothing over the top or alarming. However, over the years, there have been huge shifts in behavior and routine in regards to keeping clean. This person has made the house the “clean zone”. All attempts are made to avoid contamination from the outside world.

The routines in the house start with the notion that you are dirty if you’ve been outside. “Outside” isn’t inherently dirty, so things like yard work and actual dirt are okay. Basically, if you’ve driven anywhere, you’re dirty. Anything that you or your clothing touches (while dirty) must be cleaned. If it’s the floor, it must be cleaned immediately to avoid tracking germs through the house.

The dirty rules apply to everything. Anything brought into the house from outside is dirty and must be cleaned before use.

Strictly speaking, the basement is dirty. Touching (nearly) anything means that your hands are now dirty. Shoes or slippers must be worn before going downstairs.

Shoes must be removed before coming in the house, but you can’t step where your shoes have been...otherwise your feet are dirty also. Sandal wearers must wear socks in the house.

We have guests over, but all walkways must be cleaned after they’ve left. Any surfaces they touched or sat on are cleaned as well.

Work days must end with a shower and change of clothing after coming home. It doesn’t have to happen immediately, but one can’t sit on furniture and should be careful not to contaminate anything.

The furniture, floors, cabinets, handles and counters see regular cleaning with either lysol wipes, alcohol wipes or lysol spray.

One larger issue stems from the fact that my spouse is a medical professional and is fearful of transmission of things like MRSA. While there is a real concern there, I’m of the opinion that the cleanliness routine is too extreme. This person does not typically do not work in a hospital, but when they do, they have a routine that must be followed.

- The car must be sanitized

- Shoes are removed outside and sanitized

- Clothing is removed in the basement and put into the wash immediately

- Person showers, which unfortunately means a naked stroll across the house from the basement all the way to the bathroom.

- Clothing is washed again

- The washer is now washed

After drying on the line, the clothing is washed again and the line is sanitized

All items on the person (jewelry, purse, bags, phone, pens, etc…) must be sanitized

This behaviour has slowly gotten worse since we started living together. The logic is consistent, but new behaviours are constantly being added. Where I’m really beginning to become concerned is that we recently had a child. I’m hopeful that this will encourage positive change, as some behaviors aren’t sustainable with a antsy child. But, I’m concerned that they will get worse and that the child will pick up on these behaviours.

Early signs of concern with the child: The showering rule applies to everybody. So, somebody has to hold the baby while the other showers. You can’t put the baby anywhere, because that would be dirty now as well. This has already become problematic now that the baby is almost three. Basically, somebody is stuck with a squirmy kid that you can’t put down for upwards of 20 minutes.

ANY attempt at discussing this has been met with extreme hostility, to the point where I’m afraid to mention or question the germaphobia.

I try to be very patient, but I believe that I've enabled too much of this behavior for fear of sacrificing a happy household.

[teahat]

This sounds very much like OCD. One of the nastier traits of OCD that I experienced with a partner was the tendency for the OCD to hide itself, by convincing the sufferer that they were just a terrible person, or that what they were doing was normal. And this was post-diagnosis. My interpretation was that accepting you have OCD is the first step to acknowledging that the repetitive behavior isn't necessary, which of course the disease fights against.

It was very hard at times and there was often hostility but it was always recognizable to me as a symptom of the disease and not an intrinsic quality of the person.

I met another person with OCD who didn't know they had it - 5 hrs of cleaning each day and they didn't know, they just knew things needed to be clean.

I strongly encourage you to do what you can to get to a diagnosis. What helped the person I was close to in the end was cognitive behavioral therapy and a lot of hard work, to get to a point where things were manageable.

Finally - the biggest mistake I made as a carer was not talking to others about it or recognizing and acknowledging the effect on me. Get support for yourself if nothing else.

[8xde0wcNwpslOw]

I'm not a doctor, but I'm almost certain your SO absolutely needs to discuss these things with someone to have any chance of relieving, or reversing the trend you mentioned.

From my past experiences, I must unfortunately say that you might be just about the last person they want to, or can discuss it with (as strange as that sounds), but without them confronting their habits, it is unlikely it is going to get easier. Even with crippling forms of OCD, it is easier to just "comply" than to challenge it, the latter being "guarded" by great anxiety that feels much more intimidating than even the most time-consuming and difficult routines, even if they fully realize some of the irrationality. (That, too, may be hard to understand from another person's view.)

[SpouseThrowaway]

They 100% don't want to discuss it with me.

I suffer from a terrible temper that goes from 0 to 10 before I know it. I've balanced it by taking constructive feedback and being mindful of my triggers. That was a hard road to travel and I still slip up. For the longest time, I thought I knew best and nobody understood. Least of all, my significant other.

So, I completely empathize with their difficulty discussing it with me. The problem is, they won't discuss it with anybody else either. I'm not sure if it was a slip-up, moment of clarity or a mistake. But, my spouse once said that "I don't want to live like this". Which was a window for an actually constructive conversation. I casually mentioned talking to a professional, which was met with stubbornness. But, there's be no progress since then.

We've been together for nearly 20 years, so I've seen this progress to where it is today. The next step is for this person to open up to somebody else. I just have to tip-toe on how I might suggest that notion. "In sickness and in health" right?

Ironically enough, when I was confronted with my anger issues, I was basically given an ultimatum that I needed to find help. To which I was very receptive.

This entire conversation is fraught with society's terrible attitude towards mental health, mental wellness and mindfulness.

[aeorgnoieang]

You'll probably need to give them an ultimatum. My SO isn't as extreme, at least in the same ways, but I need to constantly police the boundaries of their obsessions and, gently, push back against them to the degree I think they can handle.

[stubish]

Late onset OCD is very much a thing, more prevalent with women, and pregnancy one of the most common triggers. Do not expect it to go away by itself.

I think you are going to need to find a professional to discuss how to handle the situation and how to get your partner to accept the help you all three need. It will likely take a few tries to meet someone interested in working the problem, rather than proscribing some pills. Getting to the point of your partner accepting the label and some techniques to help cope and reduce the anxiety OCD causes could be all it takes get things improving.

[SpouseThrowaway]

I think the stigma of pills is where the biggest problem lies in addressing mental health. The last thing I want is to put somebody on pills, unless it's 10000% the right way to go.

As I understand it, the "easiest" and safest method is exposure therapy.

[stubish]

Its pretty much the only thing recommended for OCD. Maybe meditation or mindfulness gets a look in. But you want to try to get less superficial diagnosis than some random person on the internet; the OCD behavior could be a side effect of something else, eg. comorbid GAD or many other things I'd only be guessing at.

[rconti]

I understand where this comes from, and your resistance to trying to override your spouse. My partner works in a hospital, too. She tries to keep her 'hospital clothes' separate from everything else, which is probably wise. In her old car, basically nothing else could go in the trunk. Groceries, day-to-day supplies, all went in the back seat, because the trunk was the dirty place. Who am I to argue? I don't see the horrible effects of infection day to day, and I don't go through the procedures they have drilled into them.

Thankfully, it's not like your partner's. We share a car now, and there's just one basket in the trunk for the 'dirty' hospital shoes. She tries to change out of work clothes as soon as getting home and throws them in the laundry. Reasonable precaution, that's fine. She's more squeamish than I am about touching raw meat. But those are all preferences, and it's well under control. I don't think it's OCD related at all, it's just precaution.

In your case, it sounds like your SO has crippling OCD that's being fed/reinforced by rationality. Can you have some kind of intervention where other people who are impacted by this behavior are the loudest voices in the room? It's not good for her, it's not good for you, it's not good for your relationship, and it's not good for your child.

[SpouseThrowaway]

I've read that some hospitals have standard procedure to change out of the work clothing before leaving the facility. Certainly a smart move for high risk situations and areas/patients with contact procedures in place.

I would be mindful of your partner's current state and do your best to nurture a healthy environment while not letting it spiral out of control. It's easy to find a logical path to sanitize everything if your root reasoning make sense.

I'm doing my best to get feedback on how to approach a plan that is suited for the individual. I think with mental health, that's the only way to approach it.

[cryoshon]

this might be medically unadvisable, but i have found that education goes a long way towards disarming the notion that anything can ever really be clean if it is in your house. i helped one of my friends be slightly less obsessed with cleanliness this way.

let's say you bleach down a perfectly smooth countertop in your kitchen. okay, it's clean, there's no bacteria there. for about two seconds. probably less, in reality. we can't see microorganisms with our naked eyes, but they are as much a part of our physical environment as the air.

put differently, you can't make them go away by cleaning compulsively. not even for a moment. not in your home, at least. sure, if you see mold growing on food, throw it out. but you aren't about to out-clean nature's ability to survive.

remember, nature has been playing the game of "gotta inhabit every potential niche, ESPECIALLY if nobody else is there, because then there will be more room for me!" for a few billion years. a lifetime spent applying cleaning products isn't about to make any headway, nor will it prevent disease beyond a certain minimal level.

[8xde0wcNwpslOw]

The OCD notion of cleanliness doesn't always have really anything to do with any real germs or other pathogens. "Dirtiness" is more an abstract concept that varies and develops over time.

[SpouseThrowaway]

I think, in this case, it's the fear of the known that is the problem. "Dirty" is the concept used to describe all the reasons to clean stuff. But, real-world issues like MRSA are scary and the root of this slippery slope. Combined with the fact that my spouse works in a highly contagious environment doesn't help.

[Starwatcher2001]

What an awful situation for you both. Would a change of career be possible/practical/helpful?

[SpouseThrowaway]

Possibly, but my partner finds the work extremely enriching. I'd hate to upset that balance as well.

[stephengillie]

Previously on HN:

800 million viruses fall onto every square meter of Earth every day. They kill 20% of bacterial life every day. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16839636

[cryoshon]

really cool, never had a number for this. thanks for sharing!

[stubish]

OCD fears are often completely irrational, and sufferers often know it. That doesn't make the fears and anxiety less real. The common cleaning compulsion isn't so much to make things clean, but an attempt to cope with the fear and anxiety.

Still, education could point out that the behavior is not rational, and help acknowledge that there is a problem if the behavior is still necessary.

In some ways, the best compulsions are the ones that have a solution like washing your hands or checking the lock on the door four times. Unfortunately a lot of the 'what if' scenarios can't be so easily dispelled.

[classichasclass]

That's really hard to cope with and a big burden on you, particularly, especially since you see it leaking over to your child.

When you mention the hostility, what kind of things were said? How does your spouse justify their behaviour?

It sounds like there are attributes both of OCD and OCPD, and that makes for a very tough combination.

[SpouseThrowaway]

I defiantly learned over the years that my approach might have lead to more of these issues. Applying logic to each instance as resulted in the opposite effect and opened new doors in terms of what dirty versus clean is.

My spouse has a tendency to push back against things they might be told. For example, if somebody told them they were gaining weight, they would eat more.

Being somebody who struggles with a hot temper, I've learned that nobody really likes to be told that something is wrong with the way they are behaving. Especially if it's an issue that feels uncontrollable. The hostility purely manifests in pushback and stubbornness; which, of course, leads to heated arguments. I like to call it the "Because I said so" attitude.

In my opinion, the biggest justification is actually correct in it's baseline, which makes it so hard to break out of this cycle. Germs are everywhere and they can cause some real nasty issues. The disconnect comes in the thought pattern that they can eliminate the spread of germs. Of course you should clean things and be careful with raw chicken, diapers, feces, shoes in the house, etc.

[aeorgnoieang]

> raw chicken, diapers, feces, shoes in the house

That last one isn't like the others! You could almost certainly safely lick the bottom of your shoes (assuming you hadn't just literally stepped in shit).