OCPD & Hoarding

The ex P/N mentioned several times in our relationship that he was OCD, a packrat and a hoarder. When we were together, his house was neat, for the most part. Except, one little red flad went off when his bathroom sink started to drain slowly and he didn't fix it. It got to the point, over the course of about two months, where it almost would not drain at all and got pretty gross. And his kitchen was gnarly and often smelled rank, like garbage full of ground coffee that sat around too long. When we first started going together, his house was neat but there was a huge, and I mean huge, pile of dirty clothes on top of the washing machine like they were waiting to be washed. And he wears almost all black, all of the time, and is an obsessive shopper so there were probably 10 loads worth of clothes piled up on that machine. It caught my eye and struck me as odd but since he worked on the road for 18 months, I just figured that he had let his laundry slip a bit. His house, BTW, is a beautiful antique craftsman lodge designed by a famous architect. Anyway, he declared proudly to me that he finally got all of his clothes washed and put away and that I was a good influence on him (I border on being an OCD neat-freak). A mutual friend of ours asked me at one point during our relationship how I liked visiting the P/N's cave and I looked at him funny. He said something to the effect of, "how can you walk through all of the piles of crap?" And I was like, what do you mean - his house is beautiful and always very neat when I'm there. And my friend said, "Wow, he must really be into you because normally he's beyond just a normal guy-slob." So that was another oddity. Then P/N tells me one day that I'm a great influence and it's a good thing that I came to the house so often because it forced him to take out the trash. He said usually he lets the trash and crap pile up for, get this, THREE months and then he makes a day-long visit to the dump to get rid of it all. Goes to show you how hypnotized I was - normally that kind of thing would totally gross me out but I was like, "oh, he so cute and quirky" (barf).

After the D&D, he went out an bought another expensive guitar. Number 14 (and when I say expensive, all of his guitars are antique and priced over $5,000 each). He said that he buys himself expensive guitars when relationships come to an end. And he bought himself an expensive phone as a "distraction" from the "pain of our break-up". During our relationship, he send me an e-mail and said that he has an obsession with chairs. He counted and he has over 50 chairs in his house and he wrote, "that's a lot of chairs for one butt." And when our relationship really ended and he was depressed, our friend went to his house and said that it was a disaster. He said he could barely walk through the rooms because there was so much crap piled up. This was four months after he dumped me.

The reason I'm writing is because I saw a show last night on TLC called "Buried Alive" and it was about people with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder with hoarding and I was shocked. There was a lady with a house that was so disgustingly bad and they showed a shot of her sink all clogged up and I started to cry because it looks JUST LIKE HIS SINK. And I was so, so sad for him. And wonder if maybe he broke up with me because he couldn't keep up the facade. He mirrored me and couldn't handle it and didn't want me to find out what he really was. So he D&Dd me but tried to hold onto me by manipulating me into promising to be in this life forever. Our friend told me that he told him that he couldn't hold it all together for me - that it was burning him out to be normal and a nice guy all the time. He told our friend that he really tried, that I made him happy but that he just couldn't be the kind of guy I deserved. And my friend thinks that's why he broke up with me. My friend thinks that I would have not been able to handle the slobbishness and hoarding (and he's right), the selfishness and self-centeredness and that I would have eventually realized that I couldn't be happy with him and P/N knew it. So he struck pre-emptively and D&Dd me out of the blue when I still loved him in the hopes that I would set my feelings aside and be his best friend. My friend thinks that he was shocked when I said no, that I wasn't interested in his crumbs because he fully expected me to stick around and become a martyr.

But I was also glad to see that show, because it finally dawned on me that it truly was not about me. He even said it wasn't. He said I did nothing wrong and nothing to push him away. And now I see that there is nothing I could have ever done because I was just a side effect. This man is truly sick. And the labels that he gave to himself - bi-polar, OCD, addicted are all true. And those problems, each one a serious mental health issue to overcome, instead blend into this disgusting soup called narcissistic psychopathy. For which he won't get help. I truly believe that the psychopathic narcissism in him is less about being predatory (although there is an element of that) and more about having a hard, hard impenetrable shell to protect himself from seeing the truly disordered horror that is his life. This is so sad for me to write. Because I still love him. I feel sorry for him. I wish I could have helped him. =(

How could I, a successful, neat, organized, healthy woman, have thought that a bi-polar, obsessive, compulsive, hoarding, addicted, psychotic narcissist was my soulmate? Just goes to show how powerful are his methods of hypnosis and also how adversely impacted I was by having a disordered mother who never taught me the coping mechanisms to see through him. I was so fascinated and now I see why. I thought it was love but now I see that it was like being fascinated by a freak show. That's cruel, I know but, DAMMIT! WTF?!?