- Date posted
- 5y
- Date posted
- 5y
Wow, friend. That’s rough. So, you moved out of the room because of his presumptive COVID. OCD kept you out longer than you’d intended. You faced the fears, and got back in the room and have been sleeping in there a month. Now, you’re realizing all the non-OCD perks of sleeping in the other room. You want to move back into the other room so you’ll get quality rest. Moving back into the other room feels like “giving in” to OCD at worst, and maybe giving OCD opportunity to grow at least (since sleeping in a separate room has historically led to avoiding contact with your husband). Do I understand the situation?
- Date posted
- 5y
You do! Except I made the mistake of saying end of July. I meant end of August. So this is my second week back in the room. I spoke with him this morning about it and he said he likes having me in the room. Thing is I also go up there at 10 pm and he says he'll be up shortly but doesnt come in till 1 am because he plays video games after I go to bed. So I'm like "you like me in the room? But what do you get out of it between 1 am and 7:30 when I get up for work?" So really I fell asleep after 1 when he came in last night and then got treated to the lovely experience of three night terrors. Oy vey.
- Date posted
- 5y
@catattak Gotcha! You want: Uninterrupted sleep Keep OCD in check Meaningful before-sleep time w/husband *if* you stay in the bedroom Husband wants: Your nearby presence Are there any solutions where y’all could meet in the middle?
- Date posted
- 5y
@Alyosha I've been thinking about just joining him on weekends and getting my lush me time during the week. I'm afraid it's a slippery slope to just staying in the spare room though. Which again, to me sounds fantastic (which is why its slippery, I love that bedroom). But I want to be supportive for him and also get the sense there is a stigma around sleeping in separate rooms (that I clearly dont understand because I think it's awesome haha)
- Date posted
- 5y
@catattak Haha!! I’m not married, but am a light sleeper. I’ve wondered if I could handle sleeping in the same bed with someone, or if every move and sound would wake me up. (Currently sleep deprived this morning because my sister’s alarm woke me up sooner than I intended. She’s in the next room over and I sleep with foam earplugs. Still wakes me up.) A few thoughts: 1) you & your hubby know what OCD looks like. You can both keep an eye out for avoidance behaviors in your part if you’re worried sleeping separately will make you slip 2) this is *your* marriage, not everybody else’s. You and your hubby need to do what is best for each of you, and who cares what society thinks. My two cents lol
- Date posted
- 5y
@Alyosha Thank you for talking this out with me! I'm a light sleeper too and you get used to it. If it weren't for the night terrors, I dont think I'd be trying to move out. I can sense the master bedroom makes me anxious germ wise. I hate touching the shared doorknob and light switch, I feel like the sheets are grimey (physically i feel that even though it's not true). We also have a portable air conditioner that I feel breeds bacteria and just blows germs all around the room. The room provides so much ERP that I was handling well and I think was helping me improve. It's just these damn night terrors that add to my overall stress and anxiety.
- Date posted
- 5y
@catattak Wow. That sounds very triggering, lol. Well hey—you can still touch the switches and doorknobs, lie in the sheets, and sit in front of the gross AC. Do that 15min every night before you go to your room, and you’ll still get some great ERP in lol.
- Date posted
- 5y
@Alyosha Ooohhh that's even worse because I will have to bring those germs to my sacred safe bed.....hmmmmm
- Date posted
- 5y
@catattak Haha! Right?? Maybe start small. Touch light switches, then go to the Sacred Room w/o washing?
- Date posted
- 5y
@Alyosha I think I could maybe go into the master after work for a bit then not wash and sit in it for a bit then work up to going straight from the master to the spare.
- Date posted
- 5y
I sleep in a different room from my husband. His sleep apnea keeps me up all night, and without sleep, I am even more stressed than usual. I do wish we could sleep in same bed sometimes, but I also really like having my own space at the end of the day. So I guess I'm saying, I get it. The weekend plan could be a solution for you guys.
- Date posted
- 5y
Yes! He has sleep apnea which actually causes his terrors. He used to have them multiple times every night before he got his cpap machine! Last night when he had one he pulled the whole machine crashing down on his head. Ugh. So much sleep disturbance and honestly it terrifies me too. I just think I also gain valuable ERP from sleeping in the same room as him. So I need to determine if I value ERP or relaxation and sleep more.
- Date posted
- 5y
Yeah, that's tricky. Could you spend more time with him as ERP at other times during the day?
- Date posted
- 5y
Something I will have to explore for sure I think. Right now we sit on opposite ends of the couch at night. May need to cozy up before bed and the depart to my beloved double bed all to myself
Related posts
- Date posted
- 21w
(long read ahead, sorry lol) I’ve struggled with ocd for as far back as I can remember. I find that it gets worse with stress, and recently I’ve really been struggling with the contamination aspect of my ocd. I’m worried about it becoming unmanageable and negatively affecting my relationship with my partner. I’ve been living with my boyfriend since January (got kicked out of my house a week after I turned 18, it’s for the better though my house is toxic as hell) and I love living with him, but him and his family aren’t as concerned with cleaning as I am used to. My boyfriend and I have been together going on 2 years and there’s been many times throughout our relationship that his struggle with depression severely impacted his ability to keep up with cleaning his room. This is something I completely understand because I’ve struggled with it too so i’ve often helped him clean, and since i’ve moved in he’s done so much better at keeping up with cleaning (especially because he knows about my issues with clutter, mess, germs, etc.) He is really good at being accommodating towards my needs (not overly so, i’m aware that recovering includes accepting being uncomfortable), but it’s so hard for me to differentiate between what is the normal standard for cleanliness and hygiene and what’s excessive and unhealthy. I get so stressed out every single day over the thought of how dirty everything is. He has 3 cats that mainly stay in his room (he has a catio attached to his window/side of the house) and dogs which stay on the opposite side of the house and backyard, so there is fur everywhere constantly (i’m also allergic to cats but it’s not severe). I can’t stop thinking about how they are getting germs from their litter box all over everything. They also used to piss under his bed and in his closet when his room used to be a mess and it’s soaked into the floor so no matter what it stinks. It’s so hard to bring myself to walk around the house without slippers because my feet will get visibly dirty and my socks would get covered in hair. I always think about how my boyfriend sometimes walks on the rugs in the bathroom in shoes and all the germs that spreads. There’s so many more things but this is already getting long and I am shaking just thinking about how unclean everything is. I want to deep clean the entire house myself so I can get it to where It’s not like psychological torture everyday and it’s easier to maintain but I have been so busy I don’t have the time. I am worried about my boyfriend thinking I don’t like living with him or that I think that’s he’s dirty but i don’t. We have had several conversations about this and he’s reassured me that he knows none of my obsessive thoughts are personal but I still feel so bad about it. I would like to get therapy to help work through this but currently that is not an option for me. I know things will get better once I get through the main things in my life that are causing a lot of stress and therefore making my ocd flair up, but I need advice on what to do in the mean time. I keep having moments where all I can do is shake and cry and clean and I feel bad for my poor boyfriend who can only sit next to me and try to comfort me or help me clean. I also don’t want to make him worried that nothing he does is enough for me (i’ve also already talked to him about this and told him about how I can never even be clean enough for myself and that I don’t think he’s dirty). There’s been many times where I want to tell him to do things that I think might be my own unhealthy compulsions (ex. not wearing shoes in the house or in our room, not getting into bed with socks on, making sure to completely dry off before getting out the shower, put makeup and jewelry back where they belong right after using them, etc.) but i can’t tell if they’re reasonable or not and i try to not tell him unless it’s something that severely distresses me. I’m aware that everything is going to have germs no matter what and have been using NER’s to help manage my thought spirals/rumination. I know that I shouldn’t keep doing compulsions because it just offers temporary relief and makes the problem worse because nothing will ever be enough. I just feeling so overwhelmed and hopeless and exhausted and want some feedback.
- User type
- OCD Conqueror
- Date posted
- 14w
My ocd has been at an extreme all time high the past 2 weeks and I am in dire need of some relief. I’m not sleeping right anymore. for context: I live in the south and found a springtail on my sheets about 2 weeks ago. This was like 2 days before our bug guy came and sprayed (it’s a normal maintenance thing here) so it’s a common bug down here and I’ve found them all over different areas of the house before. Finding it in my bed sent me on a bit of a spiral bc I started to doubt if it even was a springtail and that i was wrong and that it was a bed bug, not trusting my brain. It was a bad, sleepless night and carried over continuing feelings. Typical ocd stuff. Well two days later, I’m a nurse and I had a patient that actually had bed bugs. This wasn’t the first day they were here and I did not see any myself but it still freaked me out. There had one 2 founds after visitors came the day before. Of course I wore PPE in the room (coveralls shoe covers and hair net) going in and took everything off before exiting the room. When I came home I stripped in my garage and bagged everything down to my shoes. Threw everything in the wash and did multiple cycles. There were no other steps I could take but I still had a terrible night. Hours of ruminating and going back and forth about tracing my tracks, thinking of new ways I could’ve taken one home with me. Just checking everything. I was already on a spiral from the springtail. Having two such back to back triggering events for me so closely related has made me deteriorate significantly. I was already doing bad with my normal OCD and starting therapy here. I obsess over the thought of having bedbugs constantly and haven’t been able to sleep. I am constantly checking my bed while in it and can’t settle down. My bed is heavy too and I keep hurting myself lifting my mattress to check. But I need to check. I’ve become obsessed. I check everything and go down Reddit rabbit holes looking for new things. And of course, I talk myself into it every time. I can’t take it anymore, it’s bleeding off into other parts of my life like friendship and marriage because I am so high anxiety right now. I need relief so bad. I’ve never felt this unstable to be honest. I feel like even someone without ocd would be really struggling with this topic, nevermind me, with ocd to a point where I just started treatment. These aren’t even my normal intrusive thoughts and compulsive acts. It’s just taken on a life in the last week and I can’t find any sign that it’s going to slow down. when I think rationally I know I did everything right to prevent but I can’t shake it. 💔
- Date posted
- 12w
My husband told me recently he was going to hang out with a local friend he often goes to see. It got very late and I heard nothing from him. Tried calling and texting. Stayed up all night thinking maybe he was dead or injured. Logged into our cell phone account to see if I could find any recent location and discovered he had talked to someone on the phone that night but he was like 2 hours away from home at that time. And also saw a phone number he was spending hours on the phone with every day. I had been confronting him about his secrecy prior to that and he kept telling me it was this friend or that friend, or he was just taking the dog on a long walk or having a fire out back. He finally called me back in the morning and I yelled at him. He told me he was randomly with two friends from longer ago and had gotten drunk and passed out, and hadn't told me about these plans because I had a heart surgery a few weeks prior and health concerns and he didn't want to stress me out. He told me the phone number was a girl that he related to on trauma factors and that he views like a little sister. He said he didn't tell me because he was caught up in his trauma spilling of events he didn't share with a single person since they occurred to him 35 years ago, due to feelings of shame and anger, and that he thought I would view it as emotional cheating. I told him it really could be viewed as emotional cheating and in principle, honesty shouldn't be dependent upon the outcome... lying isn't justified because I would be upset by the truth. Since then, he's been more open with me and tells me when that girl is calling, talks to me about their conversations, answers her calls when I'm present. I talked to him about boundaries and things I'm uncomfortable with or bothered by and he changes those things. Especially because I have trauma from an emotionally abusive ex, having him lie to me when I directly questioned him about what I was perceiving or experiencing and telling me those experiences weren't real, when they actually WERE real, has really messed me up. Now when he wants to hang out with a friend, I don't trust it. But I'm handling these feelings in destructive OCD ways. I spend literally the entire time he's gone thinking and thinking and thinking about what if he's lying or what he might be doing instead of what he said. I call and text him intermittently and feel like all of my obsessive thoughts are confirmed if he doesn't answer right away. I'm always checking the phone history. The driving toll history. Scrutinizing everything. I cannot get out of this mindset. It's like this horrible mixture of emotional flashbacks and OCD. I don't want to live like this. I want to work on my relationship in productive ways. I want to be able to use my own time while my husband is gone. Even if he lied to me and is somewhere other than he said, I don't want to lie in bed just thinking and thinking and thinking for entire days and nights. I'm not sure what I'm really asking here. This is just the only place where I feel like I can share this without people thinking "wow she's crazy".
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