Ugh. Neat freaks are the worst. And they think they are in the right and everyone should live up to their standards.  I don't know if "society" pushes people to have kids but families often do. More often though, I think people really want kids. 

I'm sorry his mother traumatized him. But he CAN try and overcome his obsession with neatness. 

He's not physically abusive, but he's starting a fight over a towel on the floor and that immediately brought to mind "Sleeping With The Enemy". 

Seriously consider if you want to live your life living up to his rigid standards. I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. 

No, not everyone should be a parent.  Sadly, there is no licensing requirement for breeding. Breeding, by the way, has next to nothing to do with parenting.  Breeding is a basic biological function like the rest of the basic biological functions.  Nothing more.

I think that it is obvious that there certainly are people who are driven to be parents who really have no business being parents.  Similarly there are people who had no conscious intention of being parents who are extremely good parents.

Fortunately those on the extreme end of the crappy parenting scale are relatively rare and most people are decent parents.  The blended family world has a much higher frequency of people who are crappy parents.

IMHO parenting is no different than any other critical group of tasks.  Make a plan, work the plan, adjust as necessary as events unfold.  Growing up, as the eldest of 3, the most infuriating thing for me was how my parents parented differently with my younger brothers than they had with me.  They were far more strict with me.  I am 6yrs the elder with boy #2 and was 8yrs the elder with #3.  The notable age gaps made the differences in how I was parented Vs how the younger two were parented very obvious.

When I gained the confidence to express my frustration mom and dad answered my questions to an extent.  They threw me a curve ball in those discussions. They told me I was right. They did parent me differently than they were parenting my younger brothers.  They learned what parenting was with me and my brother's benefited from that. Once I had beat the topic to death they finally said enough is enough and "Your brother's owe you a debt of gratitude for teaching us how to be parents.".

We all have parenting tapes that we inherited from our parents.  We all also have baggage that we inherited from our parents. At some point those problems become ours to solve..  Good parents take the good, build and augment that foundation, address the baggage and problems, and raise children from an improved perspective to that used to raise us.

Crappy parents have no plan, think that love is that tingly feeling they get with the SO of the moment, and the warm fuzzy that they get when they breed "unconditional love" through the physical act of breeding and think that procreating makes them a parent. They worship their children rather than establishing and enforcing standards of performance and behavior that they raise their children with, and then spend way too much time whining about the outcome of their crappy parenting. 

They ask why, why, why, why, why continuously regarding the crappy results of their ineffective parenting rather than addressing those failing results with the demand that their kids step up, deliver to established standards of performance and behavior and continually stretching their own performance and that of their kids.

Parenting is a highly emotional human experience.  The problem is that far too many parents never engage the brain while parenting or when dealing with the continual nurturing that a quality relationship with their breeding partner takes.  They follow the meandering random path that emotion takes them down as parents and partners rather than parenting and partnering with a structured plan and carefully considered goals for that most critical responsibility (parenting) and priority (partnering).  

As challenging as application of the brain over emotion is, that alone is single biggest success factor in parenting... and in partnering. Enjoy the emotion when appropriate, engage the brain and put emotion on the back burner when the what is not cutting it regarding kid and parenting behaviors.  Screw the why, focus on the what.

Those that are paralyzed by the why, have no business being parents at all.

IMHO of course.

As for the why of the drive and societal pressure to breed, that is basic biology and survival of the species.  Unfortunately those who should be breeding and parenting generally don't and those who have no business polluting the collective human gene pool are slinging their reproductive cells around wholesale and without any application of brain power. "Thinking" and decisioning with the tingly bits and feelings rarely turns out well for anyone. Mostly it does not turn out well for the kids that the tingly bits/emotion driven parenting model results in.

smh

Just my thoughts and experience.

I am so sorry that you had to experience the insanity of your hoarder X.

smh

I have never, ever wanted kids, ever. Nothing, no urge no drive to want nothing.

Even as a kid when others talked about "when I get married" or "when I have kids" I was like "when I get married" - there was no kid option for me. I firmly belive some is genetic, I'm not wired to have kids at all. 

And I don't feel I'm missing a thing! I'm happy, a good person, help others, etc. I just don't have kids.

He may not be hitting you but his behaviour is controlling and abusive.  You need to address it with him.  If he can't and doesn't want to change, I'd leave the relationship.  

I seem to be of the less popular opinion but to be honest, a towel on the floor after one used it, would be annoying to me. I feel that it speaks to being lazy if you simply keep bypassing the towel and not picking it up off the floor of it it is indeed yours. However, I just made an entire assumption, which is that it was a bath towel, used, thrown on the floor and being stepped over by the person who used it. 
I am not a neat freak per se, but I do have a problem with people who are messy and think I'm supposed to clean it. Here's an example. SSs, when they were younger, would leave dishes in the sink all the time, and actually still do (though I should be grateful the dishes even make it to the sink). The issue with this is that if I or SO do not do their dish, we have to tell them to do it because they will not take the initiative to just do it. This annoys me and they are 15 and 20. I can't imagine having to deal with a grown up who does this. Again, my brain might just interpret it differently, more of like you're not being considerate of me at all if you think I'm just going to clean after you and not have a problem with it. 
 

I kept reading though and those last comments you wrote are a big red flag. He's expecting you to clean his mess, and now that's a horse of a different color. 

Being able/willing to be a good parent is best reason for having kids.  Unfortunately, so many people (wrong people for parents) have kids for the wrong reason and the kid suffers.  That is horrible.  If you remember the old movie PARENTHOOD with Steve Martin, there is a great line delivered by Keanu Reeves that sums it up perfectly: "you need a license to buy a dog. You need a license to drive a car. Hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any @$$ be a father."

To me being a neat freak is a qurik (maybe a very annoying one) but don't most people have quirks of their own?  Quirky people can be great parents.  

Historically I don't think it came down to "wanting" kids. I think it was just wanting sex and, before birth control, kids were often a result of sex. Like some others have said, it's just biological - the desire for sex. Now days we have birth control so people (women) can choose whether or not to have kids regardless of having sex. I think many people are not meant to have children in the sense that they do not do a good job at parenting but it is what it is.

I wasn't meant to have kids but unlike others who shouldn't have kids, I chose not to have any (never felt the biological need to, either). Really don't care what anybody else in society has to say about that, and I never dated anybody who for sure wanted kids, because I was so sure that I didn't.

As in everything, there has to be a balance. Procreation is necessary, but overpopulation and child abuse/neglect are real. There are definitely people who should not be raising children.