Sunday was a hard day. I experienced strong anxiety. My religious OCD is trying to creep back in too. E and I went out to get a birthday present for Mum. We also did some grocery shopping, as E likes to browse in grocery shops for fun. On the way home, some stuff came to a head about my religious OCD and some other things centred on the wedding and our relationship. It was mostly stuff about it being harder than we expected to deal with a whole bunch of extra stressors most couples don’t have to deal with. Harder for both of us. Getting married is hard, even without immigration (for E), religious differences, neurodivergence (diagnosed for me, suspected for her), mental health issues (for both of us) and having to live with my parents (both of us, but harder for her). So we are both dealing with a lot. Anyway, we didn’t argue, we just talked it through. It was a painful conversation, but a necessary one and things feel better.
I feel particularly bad about having the wedding party, which is really just for me. E would rather have had a small wedding and a party later in the year, once she’s settled. I didn’t really understand what she was saying or why until recently, nor did I realise exactly what immigration would entail for her in practice. I knew intellectually, in an abstract way, but that’s not the same. So I feel bad about putting her through this. On the other hand, E is now very invested in having the party the way she wants, given that she has to have one. She has strong ideas about the wedding, even though she doesn’t really want the party, whereas I want the party, but am willing to go with the flow on many decisions. Even if I do have wants, if someone says, “What do you want for X?” my mind will go into autistic shutdown and I don’t know what to think, which doesn’t help anyone. We have now realised that conversations go better if E says, “Do you want A, B or C for X?” Give me a choice from two or three clear options, not a blank slate. But it’s taken us a while to reach that understanding.
The other thing I felt bad about was the return of the OCD, which I observed recently, but didn’t do enough to stop. I clearly wasn’t as in control as I thought I was. We did set some boundaries about that, mostly regarding checking that things are kosher, which E experiences as a sign that I don’t trust her to buy kosher foods. I think this is a reasonable feeling on her part and I’m upset that I hurt her, even though I know I was experiencing strong obsessive and compulsive thoughts. I think I need to appoint someone as my accountability partner. I would normally ask E, but that would be a bad idea here, as I would have to tell her every time I resisted checking something was kosher, not to mention if I actually gave in to the compulsion and checked. I’ll probably ask my Mum, as she is aware of kashrut OCD from my earlier bout (when I was mostly checking on her). The accountability partner is important, as I sometimes will need moral support not to check and positive reinforcement when I manage not to check.
When I had religious OCD first time around, I thought that some of my problem was that my view of God was punitive, as opposed to a loving God. But on reflection, I’m not sure that this was the problem. I don’t think I see God as particularly punitive. I do worry a bit about being punished, but it’s not a huge worry. It’s more that my view of God is too abstract. I do believe in a personal God Who cares about individuals, at least on paper, but unchecked my mind drifts towards see God as transcendent, remote and unaffected by humanity, certainly by me. I suppose it comes from a rather rationalistic, Maimonidean approach to religion, not to mention a reaction (or over-reaction) against conceptions of God that seem to me to be too anthropomorphic, not to mention convenient, in the sense of a “Divine Best Friend” God Who helps out His favoured children with miracles regardless of the moral worth of those involved, not to mention any kind of long-term divine plan for the individual or mankind as a whole. I find this attitude in parts of the Orthodox world as well as the wider world and I find it childish and lacking in morality. I believe in a God Who says “No” sometimes, although I possibly believe He says it more than is actually the case.
In addition, years of feeling depressed and burnt out probably had the effect of making me think that God just wouldn’t answer my prayers for myself and maybe it was a mistake to think that He would, that I should just stick to the set prayers, which are generally for communal, not individual, benefit. Except now He has answered my prayers (or some of them), so maybe I should reconsider this.
I used to be quite into the writings of twentieth century theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote about divine concern, that God has concern for human beings, concern which is strongly moral. This is perhaps a better way to see things. Lately I’ve been trying to focus in my prayers not on God as a distant King, but as Someone I am talking to, really in a casual way. I try to say my prayers as if I’m spontaneously saying them, rather than reading the same words from a siddur (prayerbook) three times a day. It’s probably not ideal, but it seems to have helped my kavannah (mindfulness) in prayer somewhat.
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To return to the main point, I think it’s worth noting that E and I don’t really argue. We tend to discuss things rather than argue, albeit that we also have some silent bits before or during the discussion, which I think is more processing time than passive aggression, although I guess it come across as passive aggression.
The bottom line is that we both love each other a lot and want to give to each other. We both have things we wish we could have done differently, but we just have to keep going forward now. In two weeks’ time at least some of these things will be over and we can concentrate on building our new life together.