Throwaway. My last partner has OCD. I fell for her like crazy, but it was really hard. Is really hard. I know it’s harder for her, and I know I’m a jerk for complaining. We broke up, we got back together, we broke up, always stayed friends. She needed to move away from her abusive father, I didn’t want to move in with her because I needed money for my transition but she kept asking, and asking turned to begging. So we found a place. It took months to find a place that didn’t have asbestos (or something that she could believe had the same properties as asbestos, but now she’s started to get scared of the walls here too) and rain water tanks (she worried that asbestos could blow onto the roof and wash into the rain water tanks and end up on our washing). She’s been getting worse, and I’m trying so hard. I know that giving in to the compulsions makes them more real, makes them harder to resist, but when she screams or panics it’s hard not to give in. She’s stopped going to work, she’s on a disability pension now. She washes all day and all night. She sleeps for a few hours after I’ve gone to work and washes all night. The washing machine is outside my room and it's hard to sleep but I'm getting used to it. She screams and calls for my help and I always come running because I do still love her. I often want to move away but I don’t have the energy to, and besides, where would she go? She has nowhere to go. She talks about wanting to kill herself and I beg her not to. There are good days and bad days. I like living with her on the good days, but they're getting fewer. Taking out the rubbish is hard, washing is hard, shopping is hard because the vegetables have to have no spots and the rest of the food has to be “clean” and the rules about what is “clean” always change. When I’m not around there are constant messages. I turned my phone off once for a meeting and then I had to turn it on to check an email and a dozen messages came through from her seeking reassurance because she touched a thing after she’d touched another thing that had touched something else that might have touched a wall that might be made of a material similar to asbestos and she needed me to tell her it’s ok. I find the reassurance exhausting. It’s relentless. I just want time to myself. She won’t do ERP and refuses to take meds, says the meds are the equivalent of killing her and that she’d rather die for real than be made into a more convenient shadow of who she really is but I feel like I’m being erased. Like I’m having who I am pulled out through my weak boundaries. I want to be alone but I am so lonely but all I want is some time to myself. I go home from my full-time job to my other full-time job. My work is angry because I take so much time off to take her to her shrink and so I feel guilty taking time off for my own needs and it’s not fair because I do heaps of overtime but somehow that doesn’t count! My transition has stalled. I feel like it’s absurd that I get paid to help some rich person get richer but I can’t get paid to keep my best friend, my ex, on her feet. She’s not even the first. My previous partner was sick too. I don’t want to have another relationship because I must be attracted to people who are not well and who need a carer and I’m exhausted. I know, I know, I am a fucking worthless jerk because it’s harder for the person who is unwell. And it’s my own fault for not being good enough at keeping myself intact, because my boundaries are so weak. I don’t have any support of my own. She’s the only person I’m still close to.