The cumulative effects of OCD on marriage can result in a relationship burdened by stress and conflict. If left alone, the challenges of OCD moments combined with OCD’s threats to the couple’s emotional and physical intimacy, related financial stressors, interference in social relationships and activities, and fears for the future can shake the very core of your relationship.

Failure to communicate with each other openly about these stressors serves as a form of avoidance that, whether purposeful or inadvertent, creates the opportunity for the root of the problems to grow while creating even greater opportunity for devastating and painful effects on the relationship.

Partners in Contracting for Recovery

Your combined efforts in fighting OCD are a powerful force in reclaiming your lives, your marriage, and your future together. Consider how much stronger you will be as a couple as you learn to communicate and support each other through the challenges of OCD. As you may recall, aspects of emotional intimacy, such as trust and closeness, grow each time we share our fears and struggles, provide or receive support, and celebrate the triumphs of overcoming struggles together. Rather than perceiving OCD’s challenges as threats to your marriage, you can begin viewing them as added opportunities for building resiliency and strengthening trust and emotional intimacy. The contracting process will allow you and your spouse to begin making this shift in your thinking about OCD and its effects on your marriage.

Spousal Contracting in Action

Deon’s obsessions centered around the feat that he would be responsible for some harm coming to him and his wife by failing to lock the door, or by leaving the computer, lights, stove, or other appliances on. He was late for work quite often because he had to go back to check the door. Deon’s wife Alisha accommodated by rearranging her work schedule so that she could leave the house after him, checking everything as she left. When they left the house together, she assisted him in checking, then reassured him that everything was checked well. Often, she reassured him that the door was indeed locked after they left the house. After Deon began treatment and they both learned more about OCD, Alisha realized that there was much she could do to help Deon with his recovery. Together they were determined to run OCD out of their marriage by applying the contracting process.

Identify the Problem Areas

The first step in the contracting process is to identify the day-to-day situations that are made more difficult because of OCD and accommodating behaviors. This helps to establish problem areas that can be addressed through contracting. You can discover these problem areas by self-monitoring, which involves recording the frequency of your accommodating behaviors, providing details and descriptions of the situations that lead to accommodations, and acknowledging the feelings you experience as a result of accommodating your loved one’s OCD.

Assessment of Accommodating Behaviors

After Alisha completed her self-monitoring exercises, she and Deon discussed what she had learned about her role in accommodating Deon’s OCD. They agreed that Alisha’s participation in Deon’s checking rituals and her regular reassurance that all the rooms had been checked adequately were her primary accommodating behaviors.

Deon and Alisha could more easily identify recurring problematic situations and areas for change. They discussed challenging situations, and agreed on the first problem area to address with the contracting process. They decided to work on the problematic situation of leaving the house together for short periods of time.

Identify the Long-Term Goal

Now that they had agreed upon the specific problem area to be addressed ,they were now ready to identify the related long-term goal: for Alisha to eliminate her participation in Deon’s checking rituals and refrain from reassuring Deon that he or they had checked adequately. Instead, she would encourage Deon to take risks by engaging in exposures.

Create Short-Term Goals

Next, they broke down their long-term goal into several smaller steps, or short-term goals. They made sure that with each progressive short-term goal, they were feeding the OCD less and less. A review of Alisha’s accommodating log revealed that she had been completing approximately 50 percent of the checking when leaving for short outings together (in these situations, Alisha had assumed responsibility for checking the five upstairs rooms while Deon had been checking the downstairs rooms himself). Furthermore, she responded to Deon’s requests for reassurance after leaving the home each time he asked, which could be as many as nine or ten times while on a short outing together.

With each passing week, Alisha’s short-term goals gradually reflected less and less involvement in checking and reassuring. The couple agreed upon how to decrease her participation in checking rituals over the upcoming weeks and also agreed on an alternative response to Deon’s requests for reassurance. Deon then assigned an anxiety level to each of the short-term goals as a means of gauging the anticipated distress associated with each short-term goal. In order to ensure adequate practice of their contract, they agreed to go on a short outing together (approximately forty-five minutes) at least once a day.

Identify Rewards

As a last step, Alisha and Deon identified rewards for their successful completion of long-term and short-term goals. Remember that it’s important to recognize your and your loved one’s efforts in making these difficult changes and paving the way for a life free from OCD. Alisha and Deon decided on a celebratory dinner at their favorite, yet expensive, restaurant as a reward for achieving their long term-goal. For meeting short-term goals, they rewarded themselves with specially planned weekend dates. They each contributed to a wish list of date ideas and took turns choosing a date from the list each week.

excerpt from Loving Someone with OCD: Help for You and Your Family by Cherlene Pedrick RN, Karen J. Landsman Ph.D., Kathleen M. Parrish MA