My GF has all these rules that are driving me crazy
My GF (30F) and I (30M) have been together for 3 years. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I plan on marrying her. Lately, however, her ‘rules’ (I call them rules, but they are more like obsessions) are driving me crazy. I know she is meticulous; I know she is particular, and I know she’s a perfectionist but I’m starting to think she has some kid of underlying OCD or something.
Our house always has to be pristine, everything in its right place. But when I get off from work I just want to relax and not care about the fact that I hung up my jacket on the wrong hook. If I try to help her with laundry she gets frustrated because I hang up the wrong things at the wrong places. Apparently shirts go in a certain place on the laundry line and it’s a disaster if they’re too close to the socks. I’m not allowed barefoot outside otherwise I have to wash my feet before I can get back into the house. I’m allowed to put my feet on the couch if I have socks or slippers but those same socks and slippers are not allowed on the bed. Sometimes I just want to get into bed without having to put on clean socks. If a pillow so much as touches the floor it has to be washed, but then the designated pillow case for that particular set of sheets doesn’t match so the whole bed has to be stripped and changed. All our sheets and pillowcases are white and look exactly the same.
She reminds me to pack my lunch for work every morning, which is nice and all, but she does it four times in a row. She tells me every morning and every night to wash and moisturize my face, multiple times, and makes me promise that I will remember to do it only because I passed out on the couch and forgot one time. I’ve told her that it bothers me when she does this. She told me that she can’t help it because it just builds and builds in her mind over and over if she doesn’t say anything. I’m not allowed to say goodbye to her in the mornings, only see you later because goodbye could ‘curse’ one of us. I’m also not allowed to say drive safe.
She is currently studying for her board exams and she’s already told me that I’m not allowed to say good luck because I will jinx her. She is extremely intelligent and graduated at the top of her class last year. I told her mom about how well she did and how proud I was of her. Later that night, she was bawling her eyes out. When I asked her what was wrong she said that she knew I didn’t mean anything by it but if people are aware of how well she did it means that she will do poorly in her board exams. Her mother told all her whole family, who then called to congratulate her and I felt like the worst person in the world.
I feel like things are just getting worse. For example, one of the cloths that we use to clean the house with is missing. We had a huge argument about it because she was tearing down the whole house trying to find it. I helped her look for it but gave up after 5 minutes because it was after work and I was tired. She got angry at me and accused me of not caring about our things. I told her that I do care about our things, but it’s just a cloth and we can buy another one. It’s just not worth the effort for me. She was freaking out saying that it was difficult to find the cloths in that particular colour otherwise it wouldn’t match with the others (we have a whole set of cloths just for cleaning). I then said that it doesn’t matter what colour the cloths are, just that we had them which made her really upset. It’s been almost a month and we haven’t replaced the cloth yet because we can’t find one in the very specific colour she wants it.
The worst thing is that I really think it affects her health. We both love to cook and often do it together. We usually spend time together drawing up a meal plan for the week but her ‘rules’ has started to make the whole process unbearable. Meal planning takes hours. Every dish that we make has to have enough vegetables. Fine, that’s great but the vegetables have to be the right vegetables for the dish. Some things cant be eaten together because they don’t fit according to her. If a meal doesn’t have enough of the right vegetables she gets incredibly anxious to the point that she’s nauseous and then just wont eat. She also has this thing where food can’t be wasted and then I tell her its fine we can just have it for leftovers for lunch but obviously lunch is also then planned out so she gets really stressed out and eats a small plate of vegetables while I make myself food.
No matter what I do to reassure her I just feel like I’m making things worse. I’ve told her that she needs to see a therapist but she told me she feels ashamed of these things and doesn’t want to waste money on a therapist. I just don’t know what to do anymore.
Editor’s note: Sounds like she has a severe case of OCD bro.