Up front: I want to be clear that I have read people with diaries of extreme tragedy. Some of you may remember I have been there, too. This is not that kind of diary.
I actually consider myself very lucky. I have a great job - the economics are quite good for us. The medical coverage we have is tremendous, and includes what we are going through. My children are all smart beautiful and healthy. And my wife is mentally ill, and we are learning what it means to cope with this - all of us - and to help make it better.
Here's what I don't need: Money (we're great), a job (I'm great), fruit baskets (they'll rot in the mail). I need advice, however, because I am at a loss.
My wife is a highly educated, super fantastic lady. She is extremely smart - which makes the mental illness problem all that more difficult, because she wants to outwit therapy instead of embrace it.
According to the psychologist, she has what is called OCPD, or Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. This is not the condition where you need to walk around the chair 5 times before you sit in it. In fact, this is far more insidious. It gives the patient incredible anxieties about certain obsessions, which in turn leads to depression, which in turn leads to compulsive behavior.
The most common symptom of OCPD is hoarding. My wife is a hoarder. You can barely see the floor in some of the rooms in our home. Our house is - literally - almost full. It's not dangerous - but it is extremely cluttered and upsetting. The condition is visceral. She convinces herself that she needs to buy that right away so she does. I make a decent amount of money, so there is no real consequence to the bank account - it's a consequence of feeding the monster and enabling the behavior.
It's everywhere. It's even in my car. But it's also visceral and irrational. If you try to clean it up (and she cannot), it is an emotional attack. You cannot throw any of her stuff away, and neither can she. I've actually watched her go into garbage bags to retrieve one back issue of some magazine that was really of no consequence to her before I threw it away. It's terrible to behold.
Nobody is allowed in the house without consequences, with very few exceptions: My inlaws, a daytime sitter that is a good friend of my mother-in-law's, etc. The kids can't have friends over. We cannot have dinner parties. She even panics when my mother comes to visit. We have bought furniture that is in the garage, because re-arranging rooms means throwing things away.
My daytime sitter cannot come over in the evenings. My wife will frequently complain that I never take her out on dates, but she scuttles having a sitter, because she is too embarrassed to have somebody in the house. We have had window guys, backyard landscapers, fence builders, and others over to scan the outside yard to improve our unique fixer-upper, but she cannot commit - even if the price quote is good. Why? They'd spend time on the property and see how messy the house is.
And there is another obsession: Public school. This is equally irrational. This is equally visceral. There is always another reason our children cannot go to the public school - even though we picked this house in this town because of their incredibly good public schools.
And here are is the worst part. Her own frustration and her own intelligence allows her own illness to fight to protect itself brilliantly - perhaps because the fear of being cured, facing demons and changing habits is too great. So everything becomes my fault. Everything is an argument, or worse, a temper tantrum. Rational points that are not refutable just add to more temper tantrums. I don't care. I'm not the same person she married. I work too much. I'm detached from my children. I don't care about her. All this, because I cannot make the pain and frustration go away.
She ponders her situation, but cannot see it. It keeps her awake - every night - until the wee hours. Anxiety breeding obsessive behavior, breeding compulsive behavior, breeding more enxiety. And then she cannot get up in the morning.
There are other cascades of chaos, and tendrils of the intensity that we all cannot escape. Not even me - and I travel for a living 20 times year or so.
The kids see this. They are not blind nor deaf. And they are very bright children. They love their mother, but understand that something is fundamentally wrong. It's upsetting to them, so they act out (which is as it should be). Since it is all my fault, and she publically dresses me down in front of them, they don't really feel they need to listen to me.
We went to therapy together - originally - because my wife said we needed to go together to help me. These turned into nothing but bitch sessions where she kept talking about how angry she was at me. Now, at least, she is in therapy on her own, although still insistant it's all my problem.
I'm certainly not perfect. I'm very human. Like I said, I travel quite a bit for work - but it more than pays the bills. But I am a very dedicated husband and a very dedicated father - even when I'm far away. I've definitely enabled this behavior, and when I reach my limit, I'm really not very patient with her.
I want to rescue my family. I want to help my wife, and my kids. And for that reason, my fellow Kossacks, I want your advice.