Is Their Behavior REALLY all that voluntary?

[Jsinjin]

I think the OCPD (my phone changed that to COPD which is a lung problem for smokers) person has what borders on panic attacks in their life over things that to the rest of the world wouldn't be even an itch.   We all have our quirks (I'm particular about how I dry and store my toothbrush every day for some reason) but we can also all let go of most things. 

My experience with my oCPD spouse and some people I've known who showed similar behaviors in life are that their brains can't distinguish between "important" and "inconsequential".

I had a laboratory technician who was the very best I've ever had in terms of being conscientious.   But as a business we had to put controls in place for managing him.   And sometimes he couldn't handle those rules.   An example was the chemicals that came in had what are called MSDS sheets that tell the safety, toxicity etc. for the chemical.   the rules for the lab were that everyone had to read and sign an attestation for the msds sheets that came in and if there were new chemicals we had to review at weekly meetings for handling.   One that came in was a particular high purity water.   It did have a MSDS sheets that included "can cause suffocation"

This is a safety requirement but anyone with a reasonable brain knows it's a 1 liter container of ultra high purity water for a very specific type of analysis.   And the toxicity of water to a chemist in a lab is very very low.   But this guy got both angry and filed a grievance that we refused to go over the respiratory and pulmonary risk assessment for that chemical since the msds said it could cause suffocation.   The mess of his grievance and HR and his manager and everything else took weeks.   And while very very technically correct, this issue from a rational perspective made no sense.   We didn't need to waste a team of masters and PhD scientist and skilled production operators time on the brainstorming of hazards of suffocation by ultra pure water.

But in this person's brain the rules of the safety details matter much much more than the rational perspective.  He could not emotionally handle this breach however rational the reason was.

My spouse is like this.   "Waste is terrible, it is worse than anything" so we store vacuum cleaner bags one by one in case there is a Lego or other piece of something in them that could be a loss.   That there is not time to go through them and sift through dirt and dust and that this is disgusting is much less important than the idea of anything being wasted ever.   My spouse like that lab tech I described doesn't process scale: the anxiety of not following the rules absolutely is enough to cause a panic attack.  The scale of loss of a single Lego is equal to a Picasso just as the scale of not following the safety review for water in a bottle (yes that's all it was-1 liter of pure water) is the same as if we had a potent nerve gas caoable of killking millions (we never had that, this is a metaphor).

For the OCPD, the fear and anxiety is what drives them.   I think that's it.   The fear of a consequence attached to anything without any aspect of scale or rationality.

[square]

I agree there appears to be a neurological issue at play there, including inability to distinguish priorities.

[MaxedOut]

But, he had control over how he chose to react and handle those triggers. He chose to abuse me rather than work on himself and get help for his issues. At some point, we have to stop giving our PD partners a sympathetic free pass and protect ourselves.

Thank you for this. Similar to others, I have also noticed my SO does not do 90% of the abusive or manipulative or just bristly behavior in public or in front of others. Though I also think she can only sustain a public mask for a limited time and is often not mentally in a place to do social stuff we planned. So she clearly knows it is bad treatment/perceived negatively and has some control over it. The alternative would be she doesn't have awareness and/or control which is perhaps even more serious in a community with others. And, as you mentioned, when she has sought support, made personal goals, tried to improve areas of her life—this has never been a focus or priority.