Anyone else on here have a spouse/SO who is also OCD? I’ve kinda figured I’ve had it since just after we were married. We’re now just starting to both realize she has it too. Mine isn’t the “stereotypical” versions of OCD everyone’s familiar with so it took me a while To figure it out. Hers also isn’t but it manifests so differently than mine that it kind of flew under our radar. What are the odds that two OCD-Havers would end up getting married without knowing they had OCD?

From experience I can say there’s a little of both. It has mostly been positive but we have had a few dark periods where our anxieties feed off each other. Communicating what’s going on helps a lot with that though!

Basically just exploring what is going on together - what the dynamic of the situation is. “It seems to me that I’m doing x which might be causing you to feel/do y. Which then makes me think X.” Rather than theorizing about things on your own, looking at the big picture together, and discussing how partner A can help partner B and vice versa. So for example. My biggest theme right now is sort of a fusion of relationship OCD and perfectionism OCD. It causes me a ton of stress and anxiety if I perceive that my wife isn’t doing well physically or mentally. Well lately she’s been having some alarming medical symptoms. And her anxiety fixated on those and she obsessively brings them up to me, researches, etc. so that makes me really anxious, and makes me compulsively think I have to do everything I can to help her “fix” it or to try and explain the symptoms away which doesn’t work or help. And then my anxiety feeds back into hers, that she feels like she’s crazy/driving me crazy, etc. and then that anxiety comes back again to me. So by talking it out we saw that big picture, and decided that it is good for me and for her to express her symptoms, but not repetitively. Good for me as a form of exposure, good for her to just not bottle it up. So we started having one time a day when she can just vent it all out, and I listen without having to solve anything. And then we move on with our day. This has helped a lot and seems like we’ve felt a lot closer because of that than we have in a little while. So hopefully that answers your question. By talking that

@cheyras LOL I wish you could edit comments on here. SO MANY TYPOS. Maybe it’s on purpose as a form of exposure for us perfectionism OCD folks.