OCD Spouse - How to respond?

OCDgf15 · Newbie User Joined: Oct 03, 2008 Posts: 1

My boyfriend has a mild to moderate case of OCD, which he manages without medication. We have been living together for almost 3 years.

His OCD consists of constantly tidying up, aligning things, and checking to see if things are as he left them. For example, he'll open a closet and check if the belts are in place, if all 6 pairs of shoes are in line and not touching the wall, if there are no hangers sticking out, etc. The way he has been working on it is by gradually crossing specific closets, drawers, and etc out of his "route". He still opens them, but if they look generally ok he doesn't account for each item.

There is one particular aspect of his OCD that has been causing conflict between us. If he hears me open a closet, drawer, or go into a bedroom he goes after me and asks "what did you get in there?" or "why did you go in there?" I initially didn't think anything of it, and simply answered his questions. But as someone who has always been very independent, I grew increasingly annoyed and uncomfortable. I feel like he is really impacting my freedom to come and go as I please within my own house. My response changed to "why do you wanna know?" or "it's none of your business".

Finally I sat down to talk to him about it and suggested that the next small step he takes in improving his OCD be thinking twice before asking me such a question, and telling himself that it's ok to let it go. He counterproposed that I should just answer his question "some of the time". I have a big problem with that idea. 1) how do I know he's actually filtering the times he asks? 2) I believe that would actually encourage him to wonder even more times, so he can filter some of the questions and still ask "some of the time"

Please note that this is a small aspect of his OCD, just a very crucial one for our relationship. He doesn't ask all the time, only the times that I do something he wasn't expecting. I do believe, however, that he checks every place that he expects me to have gone into at the end of the day to see if I didn't leave things "out of order".

What do you think would be a constructive way to respond to his questions without answering them? Are there any approaches for dealing with these habits that we may be overlooking?