I’m guessing golden showers are out of the question, then. Good to know.
LOL. So with my next GF, I’ll just tell her: “But Honey, if you LOVED me, you would let me fuck other women. Why don’t you love me Honey?”
That is obviously, a bullshit comparison.
Yup.
Like the OP, my ex wasn’t always rational. Link
+3.
A straightforward request is NOT manipulation (with exception to obvious extremes, like your bogus comparison). I ask my husband to please leave the toilet seat down, don’t substitute generic equivalents when I ask for something brand specific, stop indiscreetly ogling that young hottie (I find it funny AND rude), adhere to a schedule for son’s care so I am not doing the lion’s share. Those are all REQUESTS of a reasonable nature, based wholly or in part on some of my hang-ups. He has his own requests that I try very hard to honor, revolving around his desire for neatness and order and his rather tight grasp on his wallet. Compromise. It’s what successful relationships are all about.
Hard to know what you are really like based on a handful of message board comments, but can say it comes across to a stranger as unyielding and passive-aggressive.
I disagree with everyone thinking he needs to wash his hands to cater to her. Under normal circumstances washing hands after peeing is just the obvious thing to do. But if he does it just to make her comfortable he isn’t helping her at all. He’s just adjusting the world to her problem.
She needs to sort out her problems, and stop demanding he cater to her issues. The rest of the world doesn’t either. Best to practice at home, at least his cooties are the cutest cooties around.
OP, have sex, touch your vagina, suck his dick and get a better therapist. The world isn’t supposed to adjust itself to your problem, even if doing so is pretty easy. You need to sort yourself out. It’s the only thing in this world you actually have any control over, even if you don’t right now. It can get better than this, but not by trying to make the rest of world adjust to you.
When you’re all done getting better we will all pile on to make him wash his hands after peeing.
Okay, so I’m having trouble with were the line is drawn. So tell me which of the following is bogus and which is not:
If you loved me you would do this uncomfortable sex act for me.
If you loved me you would go convert to Catholicism for me
If you loved me you would get a joint checking account with me. Never mind I’m irresponsible with money.
They all are, but you already know that.
The “if you love me you would…” Is the problem.
Healthy adults do not attach conditions to love. The love is presumed to be there, and because I love my spouse, and understand that compromise is essential to our ongoing relationship, I make an effort to accommodate him in ways that are not always intuitive to me. Case in point: I see no problem with tossing dirty laundry onto the floor of the closet. It drives him nuts. Hence, I make the slight extra effort to open the hamper lid and toss the clothes there.
Asking someone to change who they are, an ingrained value, is so obviously not about love/loving that I frankly wonder if you are being intentionally obtuse.
I don’t understand what’s unreasonable about asking to wash one’s hands after a bathroom visit. I really don’t get what’s so crazy about that. She’s not asking him to boil his hands for 3 minutes. Washing hands after a bathroom visit is your common courtesy to the rest of mankind. It doesn’t matter that there are worse things out there, that your mouth is more awful, that sex is full of potential infections, it’s the fact that washing your hands does indeed lower infection rates, so it’s a good thing to do. It has nothing to do with the fact that you just peed, it’s the fact that you just touched the whole dirty kitchen making that sandwich, then went to pee. Wash your hands several times a day if you piss or not, or think you got anything on your hands or not. Trust me, there’s tons of stuff on there from touching your keyboard or the door at work. Your hands are not a rose garden and neither is the world. It’s a good idea to reasonably mitigate the damage when you can.
If I had a spouse that knew I had big issues with this and instead refused to do such a simple thing (that they should be doing on their own anyway), I’d consider how much love is really there. Seriously. If a person purposely refuses to do something small that they know will cause significant emotional distress to their partner, that’s mean and disrespectful and not exactly what I associate with love.
And if he’s trying a “sink or swim” approach to your paranoia/OCD to try and “fix” you, he’s not a therapist and he should stop playing one.
But yes, please try to find a therapist that works for you. You do need to find a way to work through this.
Just for the record, I am all in favor of waiting until marriage. And when I say “red flag” I don’t mean that something is necessarily a problem, but it’s a sign that there might be a problem. (For example, a college student hooks up with an elderly billionaire. Maybe they really did find their soul mates in an unconventional way… but there’s a red flag there.)
But if you’re waiting for marriage, you don’t start living with the fiance. If you’re still working on basic issues like hand washing, you shouldn’t be living together. If you can’t handle penis germs, you shouldn’t be living together.
And if you can’t separate kids and sex… well, you’re either not familiar with contraception or you’re following religious beliefs that should also be telling you not to live with the guy until you’re married.
I don’t say these things to be judgmental. I’m just saying that you’ve got some serious issues to work out yourself, and trying to do so while in a live-together relationship is going to be even more difficult. His hand-washing at this point sounds like a way of saying he’s having issues other than just hand-washing (he was doing it and has stopped - he’s sending you a message, I think).
The posters who have recommended cognitive behavioral therapists (CBT) have some good advice there. Not all therapists are made equal, and not all therapeutic approaches are equal.
In the mean-time, if you really love this guy, give yourselves some space while you get sorted out.
Why not? Hell, maybe it would’ve been better for them had they started cohabiting earlier, so they could figure out and deal with all this stuff before they got married OR engaged.
It is not his job to fix her or cure her. *“Stop demanding he cater to her issues”??? *Yikes, that is one hard-nosed attitude. Her “issue” is small and reasonable. It’s not small to her, but in the real world, in absolute terms, it is very small and something he could easily do with no harm to himself.
This is correct:
Agreed. Spouses should not do therapy on each other.
Another +1 for Thelma Lou’s post.
I had a similar discussion once with my husband on this issue, with the standard response, “I didn’t pee on my hands.” So I stuck my hand down my pants over my lady bits and then said something to the effect of, “I didn’t pee on my hands, either. Do you want me to make you a sandwich now, or should I wash my hands first?”
He used to tailgate and drive aggressively, especially on the way home from visiting his mother, who usually managed to seriously annoy him in some way or other. I asked him to please not do that, and his response was usually to remind me that he’d never had an accident and that I should not tell him how to drive. Finally one day I gave him the “scary dog” analogy. If someone had an irrational fear of dogs, would you force that person to sit next to your German shepherd? No, of course not. So – even granting that my fear may be irrational, why are you behaving in a way that causes me fear and anxiety to the point where I am physically ill by the time we get home?
Yes, another +1 for ThelmaLou.
MLS, I applaud you for that incredibly clever way of handling the situation.
Her issue is “small and reasonable”? Really? You’re committing the classic error of not seeing the forest because all these damn trees are in the way. To make another comparison, you’re examining the a lug nut of a massive Earth mover and concluding “well this truck’s not so big”, all the while ignoring the fact that it’s one small part of a much larger system.
I might agree with you if the whole washing of hands was the entire issue. But it’s only a tiny piece of a much larger phobic soup, about to boil over and scald the hell out of all involved. I suspect, as do others (I’m sure), that marriage won’t lead to Mr. Hopeful getting nookie. He probably thinks it will but it won’t. And that will drive yet another wedge into the already-broken relationship. But by that time, Mrs. OP wil have him so far beaten down with the guilt trips that nothing but frustration and disappointment will ensue.
The best thing this couple can do is realize that Miss OP will NEVER change and take it from there.
This is the point I was trying to make. My fault, I miss read ThelmaLou’s earlier post and inferred that he thought it was perfectly okay to use the “If you loved me bit.” I agree small favors are not manipulation…
That said…
My gut tells me this is exactly whats going on. And if that is indeed case, I understand the defiance towards the hand washing. Not saying it’s right or healthy, just saying I understand.
That was kind of where I was going with post 36. Everyone is taking it for granted that it is really “just this one thing,” and why won’t he do that. I have serious doubts that it is only one item and I think he may be “rebelling” or testing the waters. He wants to know that if there is one item he doesn’t come to heel on, does the world come crashing down?
I completely agree with this, and will expand upon it to say that the best thing both of them can do is to realize that neither of them will ever change and take it from there.
In fact, when entering into marriage, the best thing is for both parties to assume the other person will never ever change (for the better) and ask him/herself if s/he can live with it. And bear in mind that when you’re dating and engaged, that is probably the very best behavior you’re going to get from each other… so if there’s something going on that is unbearable, you will not go wrong to assume it will only get worse. (It might get better-- i.e., change to align more closely with your preferences-- but don’t count on it. Down that road lies utter misery.)