Dear DSO: "Can My OCD Wife Change?"

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And this one comes from Jay, and the subject line is, "Wife won't let me touch her face." He says, "Hi, I'm married 10 years with 2 kids and recently told my wife that we should separate due to a very long stretch of no sex. This shocked her and we decided to work on it through couples therapy. My issue is that she doesn't let me touch her face due to her OCD, which stands for obsessive-compulsive disorder, which makes it impossible to have connected and uninhibited sex. She also doesn't touch me ever throughout the day, and she doesn't enjoy open-mouth kissing. This makes me feel unattractive and unsatisfied. I recently developed deep feelings for a coworker that I know I could explore if I was single, and I can't help but think that there may be something more fulfilling on the other side of marriage. This seems to be something more than responsive desire, and I don't know if she'll ever change these deeply ingrained feelings. Is this the kind of situation that one works through and improves, or is this a situation where I either need to live with it or move on? Good question. And to me, from where I sit, pretty obvious one. Um, you've described your wife as having this obsessive-compulsive disorder. She has these kind of sensitive to certain kind of touches and so forth. For those that don't know, obsessive-compulsive disorder falls under the category of neurodivergent. It's in the same family as ADHD, the autism spectrum, dyslexia, and so on and so forth. Usually you have one and traits of several other disorders, if you want to call them that, under the umbrella of neurodivergent. It's not usually you're just one and that's it. So it sounds like she has the OCD, could potentially be on the autism spectrum as far as, you know, don't touch me here, don't touch me there, don't like this kind of kissing, very averse. Probably open-mouth kissing is probably seen as kind gross, you know, the fluids and so forth is very yuck to her, very sensitive to certain textures, sounds, smells, and so forth. That, my friend, is who she is, and I have a feeling you've always known her that way. So what you're telling me is, Ralph Brewer, can I fundamentally change an aspect of my wife's personality so that she can morph into something that I find more attractive and somebody that I can have a healthy sex life with? The answer, as far as where I sit, is no, probably not. That's who she is. That's who you married, dude. What were you thinking? Now, you mentioned this other person lurking in the shadows there, this coworker, whatever, that you have, quote, strong feelings for. I have a feeling that probably, um, deeply colors the situation from your perspective. So maybe those issues that she had or OCD and the neurodiverse stuff, for lack of a better term, maybe those were things that you quote lived with up until you started having these feelings for this other person. And then you realize, wait a minute, maybe I don't have to live with those things anymore. Wait a minute, maybe this is kind of a bigger deal than I thought it was. You see that there's a potential for a relationship and connection with this other human being. And therefore, you know, staying with the status quo with your OCD wife doesn't look so good anymore. Sounds like you had a long dead bedroom situation. Not good. Yeah, no, none of this sounds good. So yeah, from where I sit, it's basically live with it. If you're a cheating man, you could do that. Don't recommend that. Or you decide just to go ahead and divorce and start over with somebody else. But then ask yourself, dude, what is it that got you in a relationship with a person like this? Why did you put up with this for so long? This very unhealthy, sexual, close, intimate, very disconnected relationship. What caused you to seek that out? What caused you to hang on to that? And what causes you to hesitate from the separation? Now, why would you ask those questions now? It's kind of after the fact, right? Well, to prevent you from doing it, all over again, which you have a very high likelihood of doing, believe it or not. All right, brother, thank you for reaching out. I appreciate it.