I lived with a woman with OCD for a year before I met S. There were rules to be followed: how to stir the stir fry, how to wash dishes, how to clean the cat boxes. Of course I never did it well enough. She seemed to spend a lot of her time in her head though and played a mindless computer game compulsively so I had lots of free time. Most of the time I didn't feel her lack of affect -- it was only when we were on the ferry (we lived in upstate New York and went to Burlington VT often) that I would feel the deadness in her. Strange, but water is my element.
When I met S. I was of course checking her out for those traits -- did a spoon always have to go back in the same place? Was there only one acceptable way to make love? She -passed all the tests with flying colors. Since I had also had a relationship with a BPD I was also looking for sudden outbursts of anger or inappropriate reactions. S. passed all those tests too. No red flags, I told a friend.
Of course, in retrospect they were there aflying aplenty:
She had her sister incarcerated to wrest the POA from her for her Dad's estate
She doesn't talk to her mother
She gave her housemate the silent treatment
Her son wouldn't talk with her and lived with his father
She blamed her ex- for all her problems
She didn't get along with her bosses at work
Her house seemed more "decorated" to impress that she did art or read than really doing art or reading
She pressed me to buy a house with her after a mere two months of dating
She didn't seem to know how to part when we had to go about our own activities
She feigned an interest in spirituality but actually had none -- she knew I was a buddhist and actually had a picture of buddha above her bed
When we went to a dance she wanted to know what I was wearing so she could dress the same
Guess I could go on. Because my mother has NPD I wasn't looking at how all of these things were things that my mother either did or put on me as the bad child; guess I was delighted to be the good child and didn't look any further.
Now that I am the bad child (since the months of devaluing and then the restraining order and the affidavit from her ex- that she also abused her), all these things seem so familiar, how could I have ignored them? And how did she keep up the pretense for so long, unless it was because she needed someone to be with her throughout all her health issues and hospitalizations. That must have been the motivation. Interestingly, I never felt that lack of affect with her before I was split off as the bad part -- she must have been much better at projecting her false self.
