If he wants the cleaning done a specific way so badly, why doesn’t he clean the house himself instead of making his wife do it all? 

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they need to overcome their fears and face their neuroses. I’m not saying you should go on Maury Povich and let him confront you with pickles if you’re deathly afraid of pickles. That is way too public and is more for entertainment than for therapy. I also wouldn’t say that you need to be fully un-neruotic about everything to lead a fulfilling life. But when your fears and neuroses affect everyone around you, it’s about time you take command of your life and stop letting silly stuff get the best of you. 

It takes a long time to overcome that which has plagued us for years, but recognizing that you have a problem that needs to be fixed is sometimes half the battle. Oftentimes, you realize your problems once you’re in a relationship with somebody else. If you have a spending problem, constantly putting everything on credit cards and hoping it will work itself out, that’s just going to get worse when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend to spend all of your money on. If you’re extremely afraid of abandonment and are convinced that everyone will leave you, there is a 100% chance you are going to bring that into your relationship. If you have extremely high stakes about cleanliness, you’d be foolish to think that it wouldn’t affect your partner.