Hi whenwillitend,

I can't relate to the wanting the totally clean house. That's pretty much how I was raised too, and it drove me nuts, so now I've gone in the opposite direction and pretty much become a slob.

I can however relate to the fear of getting older. When I turned 40 I got SU. For me it was all about not being where I wanted to be in life and feeling like I'd completely messed up, due to addiction and MH problems. It can get better. First off I decided to start doing stuff I enjoy. That year I must have gone to 20 rock concerts. Now I'm 42 and learning to play the guitar. My biggest fears are dementia and dieing alone. Well dementia I can't really do much about and it's pretty low risk, as there's no real history of it in my family, and I'm working on my fear of intimacy in therapy so that hopefully I'll be able to be in a relationship some day.

What do you like to do? What did you like to do before you got married and had kids? Is there anything you'd like to learn? Even it feels like you're forcing yourself, try something new - it'll make you feel better and give you less time to obsess over your house.

I'd also highly recommend the book, The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown. It's quite good.

--splitimage