My Boyfriend Has OCD

My boyfriend has a mild to heavy case of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  Maybe it's his military background, or perhaps his upbringing, but the fact of the matter is, this guy needs things in rigid order. This goes way beyond typical cleanliness. I'm pretty sure he has a robot mind that maps visual data in lines and numbers and he extends his robot arms to correct flaws. The other day, for example, I caught him evenly spacing the folds between the opened drapes.  He opens them with a long dowel rod, then pops it between each grommet to get the drapes just right. Now I know why he insists that I don't do it. 

Peter's best friend, Jerry, the Roomba. When I'm away, they reminisce over epic cleanup stories.

My style couldn't be further from showing signs of OCD. I'm much more laid back about the way my space looks and in fact, prefer a touch of disarray (Mess Compulsive Disorder = MCD?). To me, too much order looks forced. Who has time to clean all day long? Rigid cleanliness should be saved for Red Eye photo shoots and visits from Grandma. Needless to say, our disparate housekeeping styles are a source of tension every now and then, but we're both working to meet in the middle.

Last night my boyfriend told me he was working on "curing" his OCD. When I asked what he meant he directed my attention to our knife magnet. "See how that knife on the left is turned the wrong way? I'm going to see how long I can leave it there," he says.

I smiled to myself wondering how long he'd be able to stand it.  I wish I could have recorded the turmoil that went down in his robot mind every time he passed that backwards knife and had to leave it that way.  (ERROR! ERROR! Disarray detected in knife department!)

Or maybe he fixed it the very next minute.  I failed to watch to see how long his experiment lasted. (He told me he had already been looking at it all day.) This was how the knife rack looked the next time I came upon it:

 

Peter had cleared the counters last night for their monthly oiling, so the righted knife was actually the last thing I noticed.  I was too busy staring at the gorgeous display of our temporarily displaced kitchen accessories.  Just look at those neat lines and well categorized objects. 

So much for working on that cure.  Hello to a lucrative career in shelf stocking. Does anyone else do this? Any tips for living with a type A or someone of opposing style?