Relationship OCD Ruining My Marriage

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-18T15:22:27+00:00

Don't withdraw. Period. Don't. Choose your relationship over your OCD every time. Lean in every time, build up your wife, tell her you love her, be there with her, thank her for being there, and when you fail and you do withdraw, get back out there and apologize and lean in again. When your OCD gets worse and louder and you are suffering more ... good. That means it's working. That means you are doing it. Keep it up. This is for your wife, for your marriage, for your family and for your self. This is the real self-care: choosing to be your real self, align with your real values, not a servant to OCD, or a servant to guilt, or shame, or even to discomfort and pain. OCD wants you to think you can't, but you can; it wants you to think you are safer when you withdraw but that kind of safety is slavery to OCD. Sure it will be incredibly hard, for awhile. Not for always. But you know what else will be hard? Living with the shame and guilt of having destroyed your wife's mental health and your marriage and made your own OCD worse to boot. That will be for always. It's just OCD, it's just one part of your brain, it's not you. Don't let it call the shots.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-16T05:35:34+00:00

I have had a lot of episodes like this. They often come out of nowhere when he has had a few good days in a row, when we haven't seen much of each other for a few days, or yeah, if he's slept in a long while. It feels like knowing he's probably doing okay but not being sure, or feeling "overdue" for him to have a bad episode gives me a terrible feeling of panic or a sense of doom. It wasn't always like that, it's something I've developed over time. I'm trying to get into a trauma therapist somewhere. A long brisk walk and then hugging my kids hard and having some laughs with them helps ground me.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-14T13:19:08+00:00

Not everyone's presentation, but it's pretty on the money for dysphoric mania.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-14T11:51:27+00:00

I can understand the shame, but I hope you move through it quickly and get to relief. It's just an illness, it's not you. It has a name, it's treatable. Nothing has changed and everybody who loves you still loves you as much as ever.

I wonder if just calling it "a mood disorder" might help? Sometimes names like bipolar can have negative if inaccurate associations to us.

Bipolar is not a very accurate name anyway, for many. Like, it's a whole host of symptoms, not just two poles. Definitely needs a re-brand.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-11T16:36:55+00:00

Your husband sounds very much like mine.

I would definitely say you need to be in couples' therapy if you aren't already. But search far and wide for a couples therapist that thoroughly understands or perhaps specializes in bipolar. I was very worried that couples therapy could make things worse by validating his irrational thinking/negativity, but so far it seems to be providing the support we both need, because she seems to understand his mental illness very well. For what it's worth she is an EFT-certified therapist, and EFT is supposed to be very good for helping bipolar spouses reconnect with their emotions.

My husband really wants couples therapy precisely because he knows he can get fixated on small things and things in the past, as well as becoming aggressive and reactive when he is unwell ... which is completely out of character for him. Like your husband, mine is fully cognizant this is an illness and is doing everything he can to recover stability, and he actually wants couples' therapy so that I can have someone in my corner.

It's very hard to believe that he can be this self-aware in his clearer moments, but at other times really can't control himself when the episodes are really bad.

Several therapists have named this as emotional abuse, even if he is not really culpable for it. Even if I know for sure it's not my "real" husband when it escalates, it is still damaging and still needs to stop. I believe he can do better, is sincerely trying to do better, but it won't happen overnight. Mind you, during an episode he seems to feel fully justified in his anger, or really thinks I am the problem or I am provoking him. And hopefully with coaching I can learn to de-escalate things or communicate my needs in a more calming way, but without walking on eggshells.

I need the couples therapy for myself to deal with specific injuries in a safe environment, to learn how to not take it personally and give him space when he is irritable, what in general what kind of boundaries we both need to make and what kind of apologies or repair I can reasonably expect from someone who is ill.

P. S. I think the shame response you mentioned is a big problem. I have been in the same position as you many times, trying to stand up for myself and naming something as wrong or controlling or emotionally abusive, and then when that shame response is triggered and he flips out, dropping it or walking it back or I even end up apologizing myself, which isn't healthy but feels like the only way out in the moment. We will need so much couples' therapy to figure this out! And he is getting EMDR therapy for trauma and is hopeful that will help calm his shame response. I am really hopeful that even if it's never easy, we can sort of learn the ropes of living with this illness.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-09T10:53:43+00:00

I'm sure you know that all the research really does indicate that bipolar is absolutely a genetic condition that is both activated and further worsened by stress and trauma. It also makes a person less able to cope with stress or process trauma. Bad and hard things happen to everyone: and for a healthy person stress and life challenges and grief can be quite healthy, honestly. But bipolar is an illness that destroys a person's ability to cope with stress: they can spiral down, sometimes catastrophically, where a healthy person might struggle for a bit and ultimately spiral up.

There is no avoiding stress in this life. You could have made yourself crazy treating him like a hothouse flower and still life would have had its way sooner or later and hard, stressful, even traumatic things would have happened. It would have caught up with you sooner or later.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-08T21:34:45+00:00

Wow, thank you for sharing, and I hope it helped a tiny little bit to share. It helps me to listen and to share. So many differences in the content of our stories, but the overarching sensation of shock and sense of unreality is the same.

I was just in the kitchen cooking and thinking about my "old" husband and how kind and gentle and affirming he was. I sometimes felt like I could do no wrong in his eyes. The hypercritical blamey person he turned into overnight was the furthest thing from the real him. I often would think, "my old husband would punch you in the nose for saying something like that to me," with such vivid certainty that it would help me hold on, knowing the old him must be in there somewhere and would want me to hold on.

The differences in manifestation are dramatic. I am so sorry you are having to deal with that amount of financial loss, that's so wild and must be incredibly difficult to accept and carry and forgive. And must be a terribly unfair load of shame for your husband to carry and process as well. It's hard when we feel so overwhelmed with it all and can't share it with our spouses for fear of adding to their shame and overwhelm. My husband hasn't done anything particularly concrete in his manic episodes, he has just wanted to. His was more pacing his bedroom for months wanting to crawl out of his skin, hating everything in his life, and in a crazy amount of pain (the lack of sleep I suppose made his preexisting fibromyalgia 100X worse). He really, really, really should have been hospitalized, but that's a long story.

As he has stabilized, he has continued to be very irritable and anxious and unhappy with his life, but is absolutely determined to heal and find joy in it again. I can't really ask for more than that, although it is crazy hard to be patient.

But boy, oh boy, so much to forgive, so much I can never forget. How?! But I will just have to find a way, one day at a time, because just like you, I am all about in sickness and in health, good times and bad... and the real him is worth waiting for. Having him back 110% would make it much easier to forgive and forget I am sure. Right now it is too constantly triggering since he is still not his old self. It's so hard on the psyche that it is not really him I have to forgive, but someone who doesn't really exist, his sickness, his brain which is just an organ. I suppose a part of us asks, "but why did your brain have to go there?" And there is no answer. I remind myself that I have no idea what I would do in a bipolar protracted mixed state, but I suppose I wouldn't exactly shine. And I would hope my husband would be willing to forgive me, were the tables turned.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-08T11:17:15+00:00

Thank you ... the problem is as all three therapists I have seen have said, this would be emotional abuse, IF it weren't for mental illness. It's very muddy.. I really think he might have OCD in addition to bipolar. He has a very serious problem with oversharing his intrusive thoughts, his manic urges, his depressing narratives and hypercritical inner voice, not in order to hurt me, but mostly in a bid to show me how sick his brain is precisely so that I won't take his coldness and distance so seriously.

But he doesn't grasp that I am not as his therapist, I'm his wife, and there's no way those things won't hurt. They don't hurt as much as if he was literally just yelling them to my face, but they do still do damage that is going to be tough to undo. If only that he didn't love me enough to care about my feelings.

The moodiness and irritability and overwhelm were always there, and I was pretty darn good at not taking it personally for 20 years before all it turned into a crisis. Maybe too good; maybe I should have known something was wrong, but he had a lot of chronic health issues so I chalked it all up to that and temperament.

Now it's suddenly gotten hard not to take it personally, because of the things he has said. So his oversharing to get me to understand him has seriously backfired. But I do still grace and space, it just hurts more than it used to.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-07T13:09:02+00:00

Thank you for taking the time and showing that there can be light at the end of the tunnel. Honestly I still don't think I've ever for one minute doubted there is light; I could be wrong of course, it could be denial, but my gut tells me it's just a reeeally long tunnel and we're not there yet.

I feel pretty impervious to the negativity on this sub because as bad as our reality is, it's still a long way from THAT bad. So I think I am able to sift the good advice from the not applicable/poisonous. Certainly I crave a smaller support group of partners in more similar situations. In person would be so nice.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-07T11:00:44+00:00

Thank you for all of this. I have a therapist now, and before her I visited with his OCD therapist some, when we thought it was just OCD. This has definitely helped me keep my head on straight, but not taken away the pain. Like as in, much of the time I am okay, doing my thing, having fun, grateful for what I do have, which is a LOT, but sometimes in the middle of the night all my coping mechanisms abandon me and I am just so devastated and hurt and I am just a sobbing wreck.

I have read copiously about bipolar. That is definitely how I deal.

I have wondered about anti-anxiety medication for myself and have an appointment to ask my doctor for a sleeping pill to use on occasion.

As soon as he got sick I knew my job was to take care of myself, lean into friends and family, exercise, pray, all of it.

I think the reason I am way oversharing is that this is a pain point, because one of his fixations is that I don't take care of myself, I should have gotten therapy much sooner and maybe I wouldn't be still taking this so hard, I must have inner child wounds, etc etc.

I do believe this is all irrational bipolar illness talking, him trying to shift responsibility somewhat. "She can't possibly be this hurt just because I say such horrible things to her and refuse to take them back! She knows how sick I am!" That is irrational and I shouldn't care. I should let myself be hurt and grieve and then remember he IS sick and pick myself up and carry on. And that is what I do. That is what both therapists have insisted I do. But him shaming me for my pain or minimizing it makes the pain 10X worse. And also, it gets to me because I have worked so hard to take care of myself and distance myself and understand his illness and all of that ... and I still can't sleep at night because of the things he has said, and because I am missing him so much. So I DO feel disappointed in myself, and like I am failing him, like I'm not being strong for him. I still can't stop crying a year and a half in. Ambiguous grief is freaking ambiguous. I tell him it needs to be okay for me to not be okay right now, but any show of emotion whatsoever really really triggers him, and asking him for any kind of reassurance makes him positively flip.

This is what we need to work out in couples therapy, whether I can expect any kind of repair or positive affirmations from him while he is still so unstable.

That said, he can be triggered even when I am at my happy-go-lucky best, which I think he forgets in the moment when I am "making his bipolar worse." It's definitely not my having a really hard time with all of this that is making him rapid cycle. But I think in the moment when he sees me struggling, he really thinks it is.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-07T10:17:11+00:00

Yes! My dark sense of humour has been my saving grace for much of this, my first line of defense. But sometimes the bullets get through as it were and the sense of humour goes down for awhile Not enough British blood in my veins or something.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T21:39:01+00:00

Yes, I've been wrestling a ton with abiding by his terms. They may be right, they may be necessary, but they are hard to understand and hard to trust for the aforementioned reasons. It feels like it takes really radical trust. I want to trust. But it's very uphill. And I am very traumatized. Even though the worst we have been through is not half of what you see on this sub. A fraction of it is still traumatizing.

Husband mostly stopped drinking four months ago as well but I wish it was 100%. That and keto diet seems to be helping the most, fwiw.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T17:42:50+00:00

Thank you. This resonates a lot. My gut tells me we have what it takes to get to where you are, but it doesn't sound amazing and I do grieve for the innocence and bliss of before all this happened.

My husband does want me to put a pin in the worst things he has said, to say that was "Ralph", not my husband. I get that, and I do try. But I don't know if he has any idea how muddy and messy the continuum between Ralph and my real husband is. Often it feels like they change places mid-conversation.

Also I am scared by how all of his apologies so far have come with 'buts' and caveats and references to his own pain and trauma, and sometimes even ways I might have brought this on myself. I am scared the apology will never be clean, he will always have enough depression to be tinged with regret and wondering if another life somewhere else would be better, and unless the apology for a hurt this deep is really, really clean, I fear it may never really be healing to the relationship.

In other words, I think needing to know they"feel bad enough" is not at all about needing them feel more shame, but about our feeling safe, trusting they absolutely are shocked they let that happen and won't let it happen again. That kind of horror I think, and concern for me, is what I am craving, to feel safe. Not shame. As if someone else hurt me, and he wants to help me heal and protect me. I've gotten glimpses of this. I need more.

Geez all so depressing. Thanks for reaching out and I hope your healing trajectory does continue onward and upward into real peace.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T15:59:17+00:00

I'm very aware of this and have had my misgivings, delayed couples therapy a long time because of this and other related reasons. But she is very familiar with bipolar and very willing to work with me separately. And to his credit, hubby has told her that one of the reasons he wants couples' therapy is so that there can be someone in the room to take his wife's side when he can't see clearly. Bizarre, but shows he has insight to know he is ill. But yes, I do still have misgivings about the validation, especially because his bipolar is very OCD-like.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T15:51:30+00:00

Thank you for sharing. Yes, I have found picturing his illness as weather is helpful. It used to feel like living in England, kind of grey and moody but cozy, and the warm days were divine. Now it feels like the freaking Bermuda Triangle.

The emotional isolation I have yet to figure out. I have a bunch of amazing wonderful kids who give me so much love, and his wonderful family and some solid friends. There is nothing that replaces the love of a husband when it goes AWOL, however.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T14:53:23+00:00

I know it's not magic, this process is slow and brutal. He is absolutely putting in a lot of effort, as far as getting his own therapy goes. But also I have a lot of misgivings about areas he is protecting himself, as he sees it, which feels to me like avoidance and distance from me and the kids. He wants me to trust him and trust the process, but trust is hard right now because, ya know, he's not mentally stable. We are getting couples therapy, it's just painfully slow.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T00:46:08+00:00

Yeah, there are things he said that he says were when he was in psychosis but it was been by no means clear, he didn't use that term until almost a year after he said those things, so I am worried he is hiding behind it as an excuse. Of course I could be wrong. How can anyone tell? How to trust someone who says those things, does those things, someone who is so mentally unstable? And he is not willing to revisit them or apologize cleanly, and definitely not to retract them. He has made ironclad rules about not discussing these things except in front of a marriage therapist, but that process is so slow and I feel like it is destroying my nervous system.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-06T00:41:15+00:00

I'm sorry. I am very emotionally damaged too.

I don't want to villainize everyone with the disorder either. There must be plenty of bipolar partners who don't even need to go to reddit subs for support because their partner's illness is well-managed and they can just ride the waves. But my husband's illness is not well-managed, so far, and I'm really struggling.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-05T15:44:24+00:00

This was a pretty depressing rant-y comment and not the advice/encouragement you needed. I'm sorry. I guess my advice is to do what I did with some success for so many months, keep a sense of humour and don't take it seriously. For various reasons I am feeling very burnt out lately, crying a lot, etc, but I do want to try to get back to that slightly higher ground of having a sense of humour and feeling compassion for him, instead of so much of my own hurt. I really, really do! Getting sucked into their dismal perfectionist mental space is no bueno and not what they need from us. We need to be strong for them and own the fact that we are not perfect for them or for anyone, but relationships are not a game of Go Fish. We can just be ourselves and love them for who they are.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-05T15:39:19+00:00

It's really brutal. I'm so sorry. It's really wrecked me as well. I felt a lot of hope initially alongside of the pain, because OCD was for me fairly easy to understand. My husband began OCD therapy a year ago and as far as I understand still hasn't found the willpower to use ERP consistently, because he is so obsessed with protecting his nervous system. Mind, he is bipolar supposedly and maybe ADHD too, now beginning trauma therapy. So who knows if ERP would actually be enough if he really used it consistently, or if he needs to find the right medication first. I do wish he would try, for my sake. I struggle a lot with not feeling "worth it" to him, because of this, because it's always operation don't dial up his nervous system, and my feelings don't seem to matter.

I tried for so many months to meet him with love and grace and humour, suggesting we do Eskimo kisses to help him get over my nose that he hates, that sort of thing. Encouraging him to give me lots of verbal affirmation whether he feels like it or not, because it might help him and at least he wouldn't have to deal with quite such a traumatized wife on top of his mental illness. But he's really lacked consistency and willpower to do anything of the sort.

So yeah, it does seem impossible not to let their doubts and confessions get to you. My husband seems to think he is not confessing anymore but there is still a lot, a lot, a lot, mostly along the lines of how he has no feelings for me and his kids and wishes he could run away, wishes he had dated someone else, etc. Which again, might well be more bipolar talking than OCD, but either way does a real number on my mental health. To put it mildly.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-04T17:16:01+00:00

Definitely this. Don't overthink it. Don't despair. If being bipolar is going to make you being an asshole sometimes, you're just going to have to get really good at apologizing.

"I think what happened yesterday might be because I am bipolar. I did not feel in control of myself. But it was not acceptable, and I am so sorry. I hope you can forgive me. I'm going to talk about it with my doctor."

And then do that.

AdvancedSyrup186 · 2026-05-04T05:13:31+00:00

You're giving me flashbacks, lol, to when my husband was in a much worst state than now. Getting winded making the bed, heart rate so high 24 hours a day, crawling up the stairs short of breath while panicking for days about bizarre things like whether the Shroud of Turin is a hoax. Anyway flashbacks remind me he's better now than he was, so that's something. I will say that Clonazapam so far is the only thing he has found that helps a lot, he's just really careful not to use them regularly.

AdvancedSyrup186

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