I view my husband as a contaminant

[Cappuccino17]

I feel terrible saying this but I think my husband is unclean. He showers etc. But I am quite fussy borderline OCD due to past traumas. This is affecting our marriage a lot. I hate him touching things including me as I don't think he washes his hands much or for long enough after visitng the loo.

We had a huge argument recently because i heard the loo flush and he was out in seconds. I had to question if he had washed his hands at all. But i noticed he does a really quick soap rub and rinse and dashes. It has made me feel so uncomfortable but when i tell him he distances himself from me and tells me I'm nitpicking. I don't like him touching things in the home and me as a result and feel on edge. It obviously affects our intimacy too he doesn't understand how much this affects our marriage now because he won't change his actions.
He chucks his clean clothes on the floor and rewears them, he also wears just underwear to bed which i hate and find unhygienic and wish he would wear shorts and lastly he walks in the bathroom barefoot and I've always worn toilet slippers from a young age and he won't listen. It all disgusts me a lot and creates so much tension between us.

Am i being unreasonable?

Seems mad now yes lol.
I did it because to be honest we used to flush lid up and i felt all the germs had flown all over my clothing and could not think about wondering around the house with germ clothing. I wasn't used to the lid down thing until my dh told me it would be a better practice and it has helped me improve.

I understand it would have gone on my skin but for some reason i felt okay with that as i would he covering my body up with the clean clothes anyway!

But that's something i have stopped doing now thank goodness.

Well yes, thank goodness. OP I want to give you a big hug: this must have been so trying . I actually feel more sorry for you than DH ( though it must have driven him nuts and do listen to him because his advice is sensible; he isn’t overthinking any of this).

I would but I feel I have to sort out this issue before I can focus on my marriage. I feel this is the cause of our problems at the moment.
But if I don't help myself first i can't help my relationship much as i do not feel myself or feel like I have the energy for it.
Me and husband can still have a laugh but i am still on edge about certain things. We are not sat here miserably but I am struggling internally. He still gets a lot from me and we talk about other things and do activities, visit family etc. But it is all a struggle for me as I'm focussed on germs but i am good at masking until an issue i notice that is germ related and i start telling my dh what to do etc and little triggers that cause me to stress out. I carry a lot mentally that my dh can't see so really he doesn't see half of what I feel.

I'm just waiting to hear back from the counselling service and I hope to contact my gp on Monday.

And just tell them what you just wrote in that post. I can’t imagine the strain of having a mind so busy with all these concerns. When we were all being told to wipe down groceries etc during lockdown I found so much of the better part of my brain occupied with remembering what had been touched with what etc and it was debilitating. In the end I wiped down the fridge stuff and just left the rest untouched in a spare bedroom until the life of the virus ( whatever they were saying? 72 hours?) had passed because it’s too much mental strain. But you are on the way out of this bind now.

It is extremely exhausting with a mind like this. Yes i remember the grocery stuff and remember my friends used to leave their's out for 3 days so yeah 72 hrs. My dh used to deal with the groceries at that point as i just had my baby during covid and couldn't take on all the strain. But i didn't have OCD at that point but just anxieties surrounding covid.

Some of your rules are U: wearing toilet slippers?? Rewearing cloithes from the floordrobe ? All fine!

Plus, what negative consequences have there been from his not washing his hands for 'long enough' or touching things? Has he ever made you ill? Or himself? If not, what's the problem?

Your fixed beliefs around cleanliness are wrong and unhelpful. You need to seek help.

Please go to your GP and bring all of your posts on this thread with you. You can send the posts ahead of your appointment to save time.

So if you have more than one guest round what happens if one of them uses the toilet sandals and then the other guests need the toilet? Do they need to wait for you to wash said toilet sandals first?

You sound mentally unwell and I'm not saying that as a dig. Genuinely.

OP please do seek help before you pass these habits onto your child. They are not normal.

And PP expecting their partner to change clothes when they enter the house and guests to wear flip flops? Seek help.

Op - I have had OCD all my life but my CD contamination issues were triggered by me preparing to get pregnant / pregnancy. It is interesting you said you didn't have contamination OCD when you had your baby - even when it was during covid.

OCD is just another way for your body to deal with anxiety. Some people chew their nails - you have obsessive thoughts and actions.

What has helped me get over my OCD contamination as much as possible - is I passed it onto my children and I had to become a role model for them giving it up / reducing the behaviours. Children watch their parents to learn from them - your children will learn to manage their own anxiety the way you do - through OCD.

My son developed OCD around 8 and that's when I realised I had it and had therapy on the NHS giving up a lot of my behaviours....but unfortunately it was too late for my daughter who now sadly has severe debilitating OCD that will effect her for the rest of her life. As you know more than anyone - obsessive contamination thoughts are hard to ignore - try telling a child going through puberty and being in a school environment they should ignore their obsessive contamination thoughts.

If I could turn back the clock and realise I had OCD at the stage you have developed it - I would have medication or whatever I could to save my daughter's future. Some of my OCD contamination thoughts wer I would get sick or die if I ate certain things that had been in unusual environments or if I ate without washing my hands. When you realise you have a choice to do that or risk your child growing up with a debilitating mental illness - trust me it gives you the strength to overcome many OCD obsessive behaviours. I have deliberately said behaviours - but its harder to manage obsessive thoughts but there is a delay between an obsessive thought and the associated behaviour where you can challenge yourself and question do you really need to do the behaviour.

If your husband has not changed his hand washing behaviour since you first met him - there is no reason that anything bad will happen if he continues on how he is.

I would recommend you time how long your husband washes his hands and then how long you wash your hands and try each day to reduce your timing until you get to his level.

I think you would also find it think helpful for you to reflect on what it was that triggered your OCD contamination levels if you did not have this before. Sometimes changes in hormones like perimenopause and puberty can be triggers.

The annoying thing about OCD is that in life we are told we need to trust our instincts - but as people with OCD we can't trust our own thoughts. It would help if you are very clear with yourself what is an OCD thought and was is not. And start to pause after an OCD thought and tell yourself this is just your brain feeling anxious - what are you really anxious about?

The idea behind exposure and response prevention is that basically you are stuck in a cycle and a link in that circuit has to be broken. I am no expert but my lay person memory and understanding is…

An obsessive worry (eg over a specific hygiene risk) is followed by a compulsive and usually ritualistic response, which then leads back to more obsessive worry because the response reinforces the belief that this worry is a concern that must be ‘red flagged’ in the brain because it requires a specific response.

When you are suffering with this it’s natural to try and break the cycle by somehow not having the worry, because breaking it by not carrying out the response is so frightening. But actually that doesn’t work. The more you try to run from a worry the more the intrusive thoughts will come. It’s a more complex version of ‘don’t think of a pink elephant, whatever you do…do not think about a pink elephant’. The responses we feel we need to make to these intrusive thoughts are so exhausting and traumatic that we desperately want to avoid setting the cycle going by not having the worry, but that is just not how the brain works.

However if you do not respond to the worry with whatever compulsive response you normally have, your brain will eventually drop that red flag as it will recognise that this thought isn’t something we have to act on or pay attention to. The human brain will not sustain the level of fear and anxiety indefinitely it doesn’t do that, it adapts. It’s hard to believe, you think you’ll be that anxious forever if you don’t respond. I promise you won’t. In fact the anxiety as you know is sustained by responding because nothing we do ever really gives more than the briefest relief before the next red flag appears.

So the exposure part of the treatment is to be exposed to things that trigger your concern and/or to sit with your anxiety. The response prevention is not carrying out your normal ritual.

This can make treatment look very strange to someone who doesn’t understand it. For example the average person might have said to me…don’t be ridiculous, there are no fatal germs on that table, since that is likely true. But the cbt therapist would say, put your hands on that table…think to yourself that it is covered with dangerous germs but you are not going to wash them afterwards. Because they want to break that cycle at a different point, between anxiety and response.

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