I have a daughter who began displaying signs of OCD in childhood. It seemed harmless at the time, as it was just her being unable to eat her food unless all the food was completely separated. Her food could not touch each other. That was childhood. Today she's thirty and her food issues are different. Her food can now touch each other. But, today there's not one single restaurant in the entire world that can prepare her meal properly. Every meal in every restaurant requires four "tweaks." Most people can eat a salad with dressing on it, already applied. She can't do this. She has to have the dressing on the side. In addition, she has to do substitutes. It takes her about five minutes in a restaurant to let them know all the changes she needs to have applied to her meal. She's not allergic, so that's not the issue. Nor is it about calories. It's about them simply not being able to prepare her food to her standard.

What I see is someone who can't eat a simple meal prepared for her without changing it substantially. I see someone who is dissatisfied with what she's given(served) every day. I can't imagine how difficult life must be for her to find dissatisfaction like that every day.

She was over for a turkey dinner at our house yesterday and she actually had to takeover the finalization of the meal, including creating her own "special" basting mixture to pour on the turkey. She had to "finish" the vegetables the right way. And she was greatly dissatisfied when she found out we had purchased low fat whipping cream for the pumpkin pie.

I'm not upset at how she is, but I do wonder where this great dissatisfaction with food comes from. And does this great dissatisfaction with food mask a great dissatisfaction with something else?

Her last relationship broke up, primarily because she envisioned how the relationship would operate. And when it fell short of her vision, she tried to explain to her new boyfriend her vision of how they were to interact. So he had to be "tweaked" to her standard of acceptability. Just like the food. Needless to say, he exited the relationship within a week to finding out how many changes were required to make the relationship work.

She has a younger friend who is 26, while my daughter is going on 31. The younger friend seems to be more mature than my daughter. In fact, I believe the younger friend is mentoring my daughter on how to accept the foibles of life, like food that is imperfect, with grace.

I think my daughter is truly perplexed by her own behaviour. It makes me think she will struggle her entire life, due to the overly high expectations she has. It seems life and people can never deliver to her what she believes is adequate.

Does anyone else know someone like this? My mother was also like this, but her dissatisfaction manifested itself with constant criticism of others. Every one who crossed paths with my mother was severely criticized.