How To Torture Your Obsessive Compulsive Husband

My husband is many things.  One of those things is a good sport.  Which is why he’s okay with me putting things like 8 Signs Your Husband is Annoying Your Around The House and The Top 10 Ways to Get Your Husband to Leave Work on Time all over the interweb.  (And despite what some commenters said about my passive-aggressiveness and the state of my marriage in relation to that, my marriage is rock solid and I think one of the main reasons is we both have a sense of humor). But he is definitely an obsessive compulsive husband.

Gabe’s philosophy is — if it’s true, you can write about it.  Although I do recognize some limits.  Yes, even me.

One of Gabe’s more dominant traits is that he’s exceptionally a little bit obsessive-compulsive.  This trait often expresses itself in him obsessively and even unconsciously moving things around our house in an effort to control his uncontrollable environment.

When we met, he was a drummer in a touring rock band.  He DID NOT obsess about picking things up.  Not even a little.  He was, like laid-back, dude.

But then we got married, he started law school (an existence much more encouraging to obsessive-compulsiveness) and those habits began to creep out.

But honestly, I wouldn’t have even called him an obsessive-compulsiveness husband.  I’d have just said he was turning out to be “neater” than I’d thought he was before we got married.

Once we’d been married a couple of years, we reached a bit of a turning point.  Something came into our lives that really exacerbated his tendencies.  That “thing” is named Asher.  Something about the complete chaos of babies and small children really brought out his need to control his environment.  It was probably the complete chaos.  So yeah.  Chaos.  Wait.  What was I saying?

No matter what Gabe did, shit was always out of place.  He’d pick up toys, blankets, clean and dirty laundry, dishes, random papers and bills and all kinds of other stuff lying about and put it away (even if putting it away just meant shoving it in a drawer).  And no matter how often he did this, it would all magically reappear.  All over the floor, the counters, tables, the bed…

Now 7 years later, we have 2 children and quadruple the mess.  The poor guy comes home from work and almost immediately starts picking up clutter and trying to put it away. I say “trying” because there’s so much random shit everywhere — much of it with no place that it actually belongs — that he often just picks up something (like a random piece of the kid’s graded homework that’s sitting out) and just carries it from room to room with a glazed look in his eyes.

He does this all the time without any sort of consciousness that he’s doing it.  He’ll be in the middle of a conversation with me and he’ll just pick up a piece of crap sitting on the coffee table and walk around the house in a zombie state with it outstretched in front of him.  Must.  Put.  This.  In.  Rightful.  Place.  Where.  Is.  Rightful.  Place?

So, to show my deep, wifely sympathy for his issues, I decided to rate his pathology.

A couple nights ago, I saw him in the kitchen doing his nightly picking up and wiping down routine.  I’d sat a spaghetti squash out on the counter because it needed to be used and this is the only way I can remember that (mom brain).  I saw him pick it up and put it back in the fruit bowl.  Then he grabbed the garbage and took it outside.

I jumped up, ran into the kitchen, put one slash mark on the spaghetti squash and put it back out on the counter.

Gabe came back through the front door, put a new trash bag in the garbage can, picked up the spaghetti squash and put it back into the fruit bowl without even realizing he’d just put it there 60 seconds before.

A few minutes later, he took our oldest upstairs to bed.  I put another slash mark on the squash and put it back out on the counter.

For 24 hours, I continued to mark the squash and move it back out of the bowl.  Gabe  continued to not notice that a big yellow vegetable had somehow acquired both sharpee marks and its own legs and kept putting it back.

Finally, he came stomping into the bedroom with the squash in one hand and a middle finger in the other one.  “Are you putting this out on the counter on purpose and marking it every time I put it back?”

I laughed.  Hard.

He laughed too (even though he’s not laughing in this photo).  See, I told you he was a good sport.

So he scored a “6” on my special homemade obsessive-compulsive scale.  However, his score is extremely unreliable since there was cheating involved.  Had our kindergartner not noticed the slash marks first and asked him why that “yellow thing” had a 6 on it,  Gabe’s score would’ve been off the charts.  Trust.

I guarantee my obsessive compulsive husband would’ve put it back at least 6 more times before he noticed.

This seems like a good time for some bitches to tell me how lucky I am to have a husband who comes home and cleans while I slink around putting sharpee marks on spaghetti squash and, oh I don’t know, shoving bonbons up my ass.

Guess what?  You’re right.  I’ll let you guess about which parts.

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