Source: Is My Husband Crazier than I Am? Publisher: Cartoons Hate Her | Author: Cartoons Hate Her, Mr. Cartoons Hate Her Published: February 13, 2026 | Archived: March 21, 2026

In case his hasn’t already been made abundantly clear, my husband and I both have OCD.

Mine was diagnosed around sixteen or seventeen, after my parents wondered why I was inordinately obsessed with catching genital herpes from hotel bedsheets and washing machines. My husband’s OCD wasn’t diagnosed until his mid-thirties. He would probably tell you he went undiagnosed for so long because his OCD is far more mild than mine. He has even joked that I transmitted OCD to him. But his biggest defense is that he is convinced his OCD is a net positive because his compulsions benefit other people, while mine benefit nobody except the AI executives who are profiting off my million daily bids for ChatGPT reassurance.

In fact, it was his idea to celebrate Valentine’s Day by co-writing this article to convince you all that I’m crazier than he is. I’m Girl Inerrupted, he’s quirky Jerry Seinfeld. But I know the real deal—I may seem crazier at first glance (or first reading) but he is just as neurotic as I am, if not more. (Don’t worry, he is doing more romantic things for Valentine’s Day than arguing with me publicly on Substack—he is a very good husband! But he’s also a good writer, so this was a fun endeavor for us.)

First I will make my argument for why he is, in a best case scenario, equally as crazy as I am. Then he will have his turn to rebut my argument and go a step further: he thinks I am obviously crazier than he is.

Yes, I worry about things that are, on the surface, much “crazier” than my husbands’ fears. I went through a phase in the early 2010s when I thought any person, of any race, age or gender, who was behaving “weirdly” at the airpot, was a terrorist. In fact, I sometimes worried more about old white women, because I suspected that ISIS was using unlikely suspects to evade racial profiling. To be clear, one of the biggest red flags of “terrorist” behavior that I saw was when a guy used his laptop a the gate seating area without leveraging the highly-coveted charger right next to him. My assumption was that he had no need to charge his laptop because he knew we were all about to die. I am so terrified of being stalked that one time I almost fired my therapist after I suspected he was asking too many questions about my life.

These days, my fears usually surround rare diseases, often ones I discovered by accident on Facebook Reels. There have been weeks where I was convinced that I, my husband, and both of our children all had completely separate rare genetic diseases. To my husband’s credit, he has successfully curbed me from running to the ER over ridiculous things. My most “recent” unnecessary/insane ER trip happened more than seven years ago, so clearly I’ve made process. My husband keeps me somewhat grounded when it comes to the kids, and despite how much stress I have about my kids’ health, I actually don’t take them to the doctor beyond what’s recommended.

My husband’s fears are “less crazy,” than mine, but I would argue it’s extremely crazy for him to be as worried as he is about these things, precisely because they’re so insignificant. At least I worry about life-or-death things, rare as they may be. My husband expends ridiculous amounts of energy on very low-stakes issues, which, again, is more neurotic than what I do. What’s crazier: the guy who loses sleep over brain tumor symptoms, or the guy who loses sleep because he’s afraid there might be a scratch in his marble countertop?

My husband has lost entire nights of sleep over whether or not he was going to make reservations at an artisanal pasta spot or a French bistro specializing in locally-sourced tarragon. On that note, his sleep is another source of meta anxiety. When his insomnia got really bad (all because of his OCD, by the way) he became obsessed with the idea that the quality of his pillow was the culprit. He was nearly banned from Amazon for buying and returning over fifty pillows. When customer service reached out to him about his “unusual return behavior,” he sent them an email begging them to make an exception for him because he “couldn’t sleep” and “really loved pillows.”

His anxiety sometimes benefits me, something I’m sure he will point out in his section (as I write this, I haven’t seen it yet.) He is so anal and controlling about everything we do, especially dinner or vacation plans, that while I don’t really get to make decisions about anything (that actually gives me more anxiety, so it’s fine) I can rest assured that someone else is running 28 ChatGPT prompts per day about the best charcuterie spots within a five mile radius. He is also obsessed with his fitness and works out compulsively, at least three times a day. As I’ve made clear in the past, I like that he’s hot. This is not meant to be some kind of humblebrag. But he has a surplus of hotness. He could work out 80% less and I don’t think I’d notice or care, because he has reached the point of diminishing hotness. So yes, he has “good” OCD, in the sense that the scariest thing he worries about is me ordering an unauthorized burrata appetizer after he has meticulously planned our menu order for the night. But worrying about that is insane!

The downside of this “good” OCD is that while I sometimes benefit, he has sent multiple real estate agents, contractors, and various pseudo-foremen fleeing for the hills. See, when it comes to any complicated project—every real estate transaction, renovation or home repair—he is in charge. That’s fine, because while I don’t want to “infantilize” myself, I have to be honest and admit that the only time I feel comfortable exercising any type of authority is with my children or an unhelpful customer service representative at TheRealReal who won’t update me on my lost consignment, and maybe not even then. There is a reason I was never a people manager in my thirteen years working in technology, and it wasn’t only because I kept getting fired before I could get promoted.

My husband is another story. He is an accomplished senior executive at work, and has previously run two separate startups. He has taken his management skills into our various home projects. When we moved into our house, we contracted a company to build an extra bathroom. This should have been a relatively simple project, but my husband and Derrick, the project manager of the bathroom renovation, got into a variety of late-night text arguments about various (minor) mistakes that had been made. My husband wasn’t mean to Derrick, but he was nitpicky enough that I’m confident that Derrick threw a literal party (and/or cried tears of joy) when he no longer had to deal with him. The breaking point was probably when one of Derrick’s subcontractors who was working on the bathroom dropped a deuce in our hallway bathroom without flushing, and my husband texted Derrick at 10 PM to tell him that this type of behavior was “unacceptable.” It’s worth noting he did not receive a response.

A couple years later, we did a more exhaustive renovation on our entire house, and my husband hired an Albanian himbo named Mateo, who had his own burgeoning contracting company. My husband’s nitpicky behavior eventually caused almost all of Mateo’s subcontractors to refuse to work with him (they specified he had been polite and respectful, but was far too anal for them to tolerate.) Granted, the subcontractors made a seemingly infinite number of mistakes, but all of them were so insignificant that only a total psychopath would have noticed. For example, after they installed new wooden flooring, my husband noticed one tiny scratch on the floor and told them the job wouldn’t be complete until that one panel of wood was replaced. The subcontractors told him it was impossible to replace just one panel and they’d have to replace the entire floor. He insisted that one scratch be sanded down at least (they acquiesced, it took about a minute.) Later in a moment of weakness he admitted to me that it was he who had accidentally scratched in the floor anyway but he couldn’t tolerate living with the reminder of his folly in the form of the nearly-invisible scratch. Another incident that caused several subcontractors to quit was when he noticed they had used the wrong grout when installing out tiles (yes, he had sent them a link to the required grout ahead of time after researching most durable grouts on ChatGPT for seventeen cumulative hours) and requested that all the tiles be redone.

Once the renovations were done, he became incredibly protective of our new home improvements. I understand, given the amount of time and effort he spent managing these projects, but the downside is that now he refuses to host parties where he can’t be sure people will keep their shoes off because “what if someone steps on the floor.” We have two small children, so things are always being thrown on the floor or dragged across the floor, and it causes him tremendous anxiety, to the point that I think we’d all be better off walking on crappy linoleum.

Granted, my fears are less rational, in the sense that I worry about things less likely to happen than “ordering the wrong sandwich” or “someone stepping on the floor.” But at least I have a therapist. For a while my husband and I were seeing therapists at the same practice, but he stopped seeing his therapist a while ago, after he decided there’s nothing wrong with his neuroses because actually, everyone should be this neurotic about only allowing red light after 6 PM. I also suspect that when he was seeing this therapist, he was very invested in “not seeming crazy” which really defeats the purpose. Several times, we had double sessions with both of our therapists—a sort of marriage counseling for lunatics, one might say. On one occasion, I mentioned that I had a hard time being forced to go to bed at 9 PM to accommodate my husband’s intense sleep hygiene protocol. His therapist looked taken aback, and declared, “This was something you never mentioned to me.”

I’m not saying my husband is crazier than I am, let alone much crazier. But at least I know I’m crazy. This, my friends, is why I am reluctant to concede that I am crazier than he is. What is mental clarity, if not insight and self-awareness? My husband, on the other hand, still believes his OCD is a net positive and that everything would be great if we all just saw the light of his wisdom (but only the red light after sundown.)

*Samuel L Jackson voice*:

Oh you were finished? Oh well allow me to retort. What does CHH look like….?

Does she look like a bitch?

Well you all actually do not know what she looks like, but yes, a very beautiful, caring, funny but an emotionally unstable one. May I refer you to her own work.

Is my OCD insane? Yes of course it is. I obsessively clean, work out and research restaurants, pillows, matcha, or whatever I am going on about for that day. I know it is weird that I am constantly trying to source the best bang for your buck ceremonial matcha from the Uji region in Japan.

But ohhhh poor CHH, she gets to enjoy vibrant ass green drinks, amazing meals, a clean house and a natural latex gel infused foam cradling her head next to an individual who is not shaped like post-covid Russel Crowe, who, fun fact, CHH once mistook for John Goodman.

I am very detail-oriented, and some might say obsessed with design. It makes me good at my day job in Product as I often notice flaws most people do not see. For example, I am known to spot and fixate over any extra space between words or design objects. My product designer will occasionally be a pixel off, I believe just to fuck with me, or maybe he is just a bit liberal with his space bar. I’m sure I am annoying but I like to think it brings out the best in people’s work. Whenever I take a new job, I have the same 6-7 people across product management, design and engineering that follow me wherever I go, so I can’t be that horrible to work with. The above-mentioned designer and I have worked together at the last 4 companies.

Unsurprisingly, this design passion carries over into home renovations where I’ve had my fair share of run ins. There was a month where I had more extra wide wood floor plank samples delivered than CHH had fabric.

The general contractor on the last big house project, who became a close friend, told me he was having a hard time finding people to work on my home. After talking to his team, their feedback was, “They think you’re really nice and they appreciate that you buy them lunch, but they’re terrified to work on your house. You come up with crazy ideas that are hard to pull off, and they know you’ll notice every tiny thing that is off.” Fair. But, I became the featured project in this contractors’ lookbook once the work was complete. They also now use a bunch of my ideas and products I personally sourced. Things like the 11 inch wide prime wood planks I found at an insanely good price, rounding the edges on a floor to ceiling fireplace wrapped in one inch tile all the way to the ceiling, and adding glass to a kitchen island so you can display cool artwork inside it. I do get nitpicky over every little detail down to the specific type and color of grout. But guess what? The end product looks fucking good and it benefits all parties involved. We bought our house 4 years ago and even taking into consideration the expenses of the work we’ve done, we’ve already 2X+ the value of the home. So I am crazy in the short term, but my craziness pays off in the long term.

I love my wife very much, so I am not going to say what race, what people, is the crazier of the two of us. We know I can’t say that…. She was a Jewish writer.

CHH’s OCD costs us money. I often think about this perfectly ripe cut up mango that I was excited to sink my teeth into as CHH came running into the room to swipe the mango out of my fingertips. CHH could not remember if she broke the mango container seal herself or the next most rational answer; ISIS had poisoned the mango to eliminate the greatest liberal mind of our time. I am kidding about the liberal mind part, this was 5 years ago when CHH was just doing neckbead cartoons, but the rest is true. This ISIS-CHH collab cost me $5.49 of mango.

While CHH will argue her OCD is about important things like keeping her loved ones alive, I feel pretty confident I would still be kicking with or without CHH’s magical thinking curing my regularly occurring cancer scares.

CHH claims we need to go to the emergency room almost weekly, but for her sake she does usually acquiesce when I tell her it’s not happening. Sub ass CHH. However, about every six years I break down to her constant pestering and will go to the ER. The first time I was 23 and was still somewhat naive to CHH’s bullshit. She convinced me that I had a cancerous lump growing on my head. After sleepless nights of planning my head replacement surgery, we went to the doctor. The doctor said I had a “Follicular Pustule” and CHH burst into tears. This ended up being the medical term for a pimple on the head. The second time I was 29 and was having some tightness in the chest. I hadn’t slept in multiple days, my insomnia was out of control. She was convinced I was having a heart attack. The doctor believed it was likely a minor panic attack due to not sleeping in so long. That one I don’t knock her on. The third time I was 35 and she was convinced I had leukemia due to a weird rash on my left side. The doctor’s diagnosis, “Phytophotodermatitis”, which freaked the shit out of CHH until the doctor’s clarifying questions: 1. Have we been on any warm weather trips recently? Yes, we had just gotten back from a beach vacation. 2. Did we drink any frozen tropical drinks when there? Yes, more Miami Vices than we’d like to think. The doctor then made clear that Phytophotodermatitis often displays when lime juice (citrus) hits skin and then the skin is exposed to a lot of sunlight. Two take aways: 1. Fuck you doctors. 2. I am not looking forward to my 41st birthday.

CHH has overt OCD and I have covert OCD, unless I need a second set of eyes on a suspected paint drip 14 feet up a wall. But would you rather have a partner who repeatedly tells you that you need X-rays to confirm toe cancer on the very toe you just jammed into one of her 19 pairs of high heeled black boots she left lying around? Or a partner that will sit in the corner quietly for 30 minutes trying to secure a reservation at the hot new restaurant in town serving East Nusa Tenggara food?

I am cognizant that calling your wife crazy is not a totally socially acceptable thing to do, but you all have been calling CHH crazy in the comment section for 2 years, so I should also be able to do it too! There is a scene in Silver Linings Playbook when Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are at a diner and she says, “You think I am crazier than you” and he is totally surprised she is even raising this as a question. Then he tries to walk it back with, “Well, we’re different.” CHH and I very much relate to this scene. Look, CHH and I are both bonkers and that certainly plays a big part in why we ended up happily together. And if you can’t lovingly joke about your spouse’s, or your own, social shortcomings, life will be less fun.

So, happy Valentine’s Day CHH. Even though I need to sneak around to eat mango, I still love you for all your craziness Claire Harris Haberman! (or whatever name you’re going by to obfuscate your identity so your whole family isn’t murdered by a jealous ex boyfriend from your 5th grade sleep away theater camp.)