A Marriage Stressed by Obsessions and Compulsions

My husband was kind, honest, supportive and way too protective.

One morning, when our son was four months old, my husband noticed a little red spot on the boy’s lip. Like any sleep-deprived parent, my husband went to his computer and Googled “red spot on baby’s lip.” Twenty minutes later, he came back pale-faced and hyperventilating; he even had to put his head between his knees to keep from passing out. He had gone down a dark hole on the internet and found the story of a baby with a red spot on his lip who ended up tragically ill. Our baby’s spot faded within hours. But it was, in fact, the first sign of something terrifying — my husband’s anxiety disorder. The night I met Mike, he charmed me at a pub trivia game in Seattle with his encyclopedic knowledge. I am terrible at trivia, but I found myself wanting to learn everything about this 25-year-old computer scientist who smiled easily and shared my love of making up silly lyrics to pop songs. He often lost things and had a refrigerator full of expired food, but he was dependable in the ways that matter: treating people with kindness, telling the truth, showing up.