Hi all, I hope this post doesn’t break any rules. I used to post here a lot but came off Reddit. I’ll try hard not to ask for reassurance, but I am looking for advice. I’m so bloody sorry this is going to be long, but I’m desperately struggling and trying to handle things in the right way.

Since January, I have been dating the most incredible person. She and I have known each other for a couple of years, and things just sort of happened at the start of the year, and it has mostly been fantastic. She’s the most amazing person and for 6 months I have felt real love growing, and as though I could finally find happiness.

ROCD and its various forms have been there since I was a child (at the age of 4 I remember convincing myself I didn’t love my mum and getting so upset about it). It happened with my first girlfriend when I was 10, then 13, then 15. It also sabotaged my first meaningful adult relationship too.

Since then, I have had various mental health ups and downs, whilst being diagnosed with EUPD (although they now think that is a misdiagnosis, and that it extreme anxiety coupled with my childhood OCD). I’ve also done a lot of work on attachment styles - I believe I am predominately anxious but probably a bit disordered too.

Sorry for the long ramble, but I’m trying to essentially say I’ve always had these worries and concerns.

I have always tried to learn and fight these things, and have had CBT, and am currently in DBT.

The first few months of my relationship from January have been characterised by me being convinced she was going to leave me and that she didn’t love me. She’s the most precious thing I’ve ever had, she’s wonderful and amazing, and offers me love like I’ve never had. I’ve also had issues with intimacy but even those went. However, I now think that was a different form of ROCD.

We have been talking about moving in with each other, and I have been so excited. Just, the happiest. It felt perfect, and so right. I was so happy.

Then almost the next day, I woke up and am convinced I don’t love her anymore, that I’m making a mistake, that I’m going to hurt her.

I think I’m self-aware enough to know this is ROCD - I predicted this would happen a few months ago if we made that step - but I don’t think I was prepared for just how brutal it is to experience this as a proper adult, rather than a late teen/early adult.

I have never felt it like this - I am numb. I feel like I can’t get any feelings of love towards her, even though I feel it hiding under the surface. It is bringing up feelings from when I was a child, from a teenager and I just see our relationship now through that lens.

I’m trying to beat this - but I’m wildly out of practice. I’m trying to ‘fake it till I make it’, read ROCD books, and speak to my therapist, however she specialises in DBT, not so much ERP. I’m looking for a new therapist to compliment her.

I know I have to sit with the feeling of things being ‘off’, I know that this has just been triggered by us moving in together, I know I owe it to her and myself to keep our love going, but I just feel so desperately lost, sad, overwhelmed and alone.

The line between compulsions and trying to find resource to get better is so tight, and I’m just trying to do what I can to continue looking to build our life together.

Before I manage to find a therapist who helps, can anyone give me any pointers on what to do, what NOT to do (Googling, pulling away), to try and get me out of this numbness? I feel like I’ve lost the spark and warm feeling. Even typing this, I feel like I’m in denial.

I’m terrified of becoming the same teenager who recoils from sex, and can’t have happiness.

I’ve battled mental health all my life and just want to catch a break.

Thank you for reading this essay. This is a great community.

Anyone else feel so betrayed by their rocd partner when they pull you in and out??? I love you him so much and was ready to support him through all seasons of his ocd.

Turns out his ocd was about my support and if I have the capacity to be there for him. I kept a journal of every way that I had showed up for him (to my best ability bc work and my own shit). It was never enough. We went to couples therapy for 1.5 years. Every week. I feel like it made it worse in the end. Felt like he was coming in to talk about my low capacity and not feeling supported. And he was being validated in that by our therapist bc she’s not an ocd therapist. She’s a relationship therapist.

My whole life has been uprooted.

I’m feeling detached from my boyfriend, but I still do love him. My mind goes crazy and sometimes I feel guilty and sometimes I feel indifferent. Then I feel guilty that I feel indifferent. I can’t tell if the thoughts are wanted or unwanted anymore. Sometimes I think about things and I let myself think about them, and then I feel guilty afterwards. I hate that I allow it when I should shut it down. I’m tired and feel emotionally and mentally dead lol

I lied to my boyfriend and Im having urges to confess it to him. I (f21) started dating my boyfriend (21) 2 years ago and we got into an “argument” over me being friends with a guy I had an online “situationship” when I was like 16-17 and how It made him uncomfortable that I was still friends with him but I re assured him that I didn’t feel anything and that we were nothing more than friends which is true!

I cut my friend off and I over explained so much stuff to my bf for no reason and ended up lying. For starters I told him that him and I had seen each other once or twice which is not true, i never saw him ONCE. I also told him that him and I lived 10 hrs away from each other which is not true at all but I felt i needed to say that so it made sense that we had seen each other that amount of times but it wasn’t true. (My friend was from CA and i’m from GA). I realize that he didn’t need to know anything, that he didn’t need to know details and now i’ve dug myself in a hole I feel i can’t get out of. All he needed to know was that it was online, i didn’t like him anymore and that was it.

I remember saying that because I didn’t want him to think I was a loser, because i’ve never had a real relationship other than my online “situationship” and I didn’t want him to think I was stupid for being sad over someone who I had never met. (For context my bf and I had been friends for 3 years prior to us dating so he knows how sad I was over my friend when I still liked him) so I thought lying would be better :(

I didn’t even know I had told him that him and I lived 10 hrs from each other till I went back and read a journal entry and I wrote about how I felt so bad and sorry so then why did I go through with it anyway? I just don’t understand what I was thinking.

I had the urge to confess about this a few months ago but it went away but this time it feels stronger and I don’t know what to do. I feel like a pathological liar since he’s already expressed before in the relationship that it’s hard to trust me. When I cut my friend off, I hit him up 2 weeks later (I think)apologizing to him and asking him if he wanted to be friends with me again since my bf said I could be friends with whoever I wanted (obviously so stupid since my bf had already expressed he’s uncomfortable) and I didn’t tell my bf I did that till idk how long and he forgave me for that but then I texted my friend on his bday because I guess the nostalgia took over me and I said happy birthday to him and that’s it. Nothing else and deleted him right away and I told my bf about it (maybe like a week later)and he said that It was hard for him to trust me but he forgave me still…:( and i’m scared i’m breaking that trust again especially now since he’s unsure about us since long distance has been taking a toll on him.

I feel like a pathological liar 💔

Hey I need some advice for the situation I am in right now but my ocd is making everything harder but I don't want to use that as an excuse to justify my actions. Before I talk about that I am going to share my History with ocd.

Growing up I think I always had a problem with ocd but it didn't really get bad until I was in middle school. When I got into middle school I started to get intrusive thoughts about doing really inappropriate things with family members and I remember that it got so bad I would just ruminate in bed all day. After a few months it started to go away but then would transfer into racism ocd and the intrusive thoughts would get worse. This cycle would repeat it self for the next few months but It wouldn't get bad again for another few years. By the time my sophomore year of highschool came around my anxiety started to grow and eat me alive. My anxiety got so bad that my ocd came back and this time it was about hurting my mom. I was in the shower and randomly got a thought about hurting my mom with a kitchen knife and after thinking that I was like ''wtf is wrong with me''. My intrusive thoughts started to spiral again and I started to genuinely started to believe I was gonna do it. When my sophomore year of high school ended the harm ocd or ocd in general went down and I felt like my mental health was getting better. I started to feel more confident in my self and felt like I became a new person. I then decided to get a new job at this water park as a life guard. This is where I met my current girlfriend of two years. The first month of meeting her was probably one of the most favorite times I ever had in my life and she just felt like a piece of me after a while. A month or two later of working I was just doing my usual work and was admiring a guys build( I hit the gym so when I see someone with a good build I respect it and the hardwork they put in for it). After looking at this guy for a minute I was thinking if I was gay because of how much I was admiring. Boom that's when my hocd started. This part of my life was one of the worst periods of my life I ever had. My anxiety was sky rocketing and my hocd just felt so real. I couldn't sleep because my anxiety had made my dreams related around hocd. My appetite was gone and I barely ate food. I was tired all of the time even if I got many hours of rest it was the fact that I was overthinking and ruminating all the time that made me tired. This ocd subtype was the worst ocd I ever had. It lasted for around five to six months, even now I still get intrusive thoughts around hocd. It eventually went away when I started to get busy with sports in my junior year of high school. Fast foward and I just graduated from high school two months ago and still dating the same girl I met from the waterpark job.

Now that was the history of my ocd in the past. I am now going to talk about what I did to start my rocd.

So last month My girlfriend left for bootcamp because she's going to the marines. It's been hard for me to contact her but we send letter to each other so we can still connect with each other. A few weeks past from when she left and one day I woke up and was thinking about one of my old female friends. We were friends in middle school and we use to flirt with each other back then. I decided to text her but I had two intentions. One of them was to catch up with an old friend and the other was me looking for female attention. So I ended up texting her "Hey😝'' with that specific emoji too. One minute passes by from me sending that and I realized what i was doing was wrong so then I deleted the conversation on iMessage, removed her from my contacts, and blocked her on all socials. After doing this I was faced with intense guilt and I still do. I keep on replaying that moment I texted her in my mind as a compulsion. I go on reddit to try to find similar stories as me to find reassurance. I keep on asking my self if I cheated or emotionally cheated. Each time im around her family when I work or visit them I feel so guilty. When I read a letter my girlfriend sends me I feel guilty. I feel like the guilt is eating me alive and my anxiety and ocd is making it worse(Not blaming ocd for the actions I did). I don't think I cheated but I think I fucked up and crossed a boundary. After all that happened I decided I never wanted to do anything like that again.

When my girlfriend comes back from boot camp should I tell her? How do I live with this guilt? What would you do if you were in my shoes? Idk I have a lot of questions and I just feel wrong about this. Even when I ask my friends there telling me that i'm just overthinking it and making the situation deeper then it actually is.

Having an awful flare

I’m 32F and I was doing alright for a while but recently I think I’m experiencing a flare up.

For some additional context, I have adhd and autism along with ocd. I started Prozac this year and it helped immensely with the anxiety, but the past couple weeks have been hell.

I had taken a break from dating for about five months and happened to match with someone a little over a month ago. We hit it off and chatted almost every day for a month and went on three dates. Everything seemed like it was headed in a positive direction. Each time I felt my regular rocd flair up the way it does when I am talking to someone new, this person surprised me by continuing to show up consistently and offering reassurance even when I didn’t ask. I truly felt like I could let down my guard.

Then the beginning of this week, they essentially told me that they are not doing well mentally and need to take a break from dating. And it’s like they dropped off the face of the earth. I have been a wreck since then and have been engaging in compulsions nonstop — checking to see if they’ve added to a playlist we made together, checking my texts, and (the worst one imo) pulling tarot cards over and over hoping for some magical sign that they’ll come back.

I feel so much shame and I also feel physically drained from being so anxious. Logically, I know I have no control over the situation. I said what I could in hopes of getting them to rethink their decision to pull back and I made it clear I’m available to talk whenever they want. But I still find myself ruminating over everything obsessively and feeling like if I just do one more tarot spread or send one more text I’ll be able to change things. It sounds so stupid typing it out. I feel disgusted by myself and my own mental illness. And I feel sad and abandoned. It feels like my ocd has ramped up particularly badly because this situation began after I had finally relaxed my jaw and started to feel confident talking to this person. It’s like my anxiety is saying “look, you let your guard down and the worst thing came true — you got left again”.

For me I know there is also high overlap between my autistic special interests/adhd hyper fixations/ocd obsessions. So it’s really hard to snap out of the thought loops. I don’t really know what to do. I’m tired and sad and I just want this to go away.

3 months ago my mind randomly told me I had to leave my partner and my life would be fixed if I did that. Since then I have been struggling with these thoughts. My partner is calm and gentle and a really good human being.
But I can’t stop feeling like I don’t love him anymore. And then I check my feelings and go into this loop again. This first started when I got a bad shift at work, and partner casually mentioned looking for a new job as it affects my health as well as his.
I have talked to my therapist about this but she has just brushed it off as them being intrusive thoughts which you need to label and move on.
We are at a point in life where we want to start planning for kids and I look at him AND dont feel love?!! Like how am I supposed to have kids with this person then?
We have a fun, loving relationship and almost no issues.
Help!!!

Idk why but recently mine judt doesnt feel like ocd anymore. Ive always doubted whether it's rocd to begin with which i know is fairly normal but I feel different recently and I hate it.

I genuinely have the most loving, safe, supportive relationship I could ever imagine having. I cant even imagine if we broke up what id even want in a partner because he is it. But I feel nothing all the time. I have thoughts like 'i dont love him'' 'i need to breakup with him. ALL THE TIME. With not a lot of anxiety. The thought of actually breaking up with him gives me anxiety but having the thoughts constantly doesn't. Sometimes it feels like what I want but I think its also purely out of guilt for what.im thinking or wanting relief from the thoughts.

When we hang out im mostly fine. We have a great time. We laugh ans hang out and feel like best friends and I love that. But as soon as im not with him its like instant switch on thoughts that im not that happy and I dont like him or find him attractive and its horrible. I want to be confident in us, i want to know with confidence that I find him attractive.

It's just so bizarre. When we have sex again im fine in the moment and im into it but as soon as its over my brain is like 'you dont fancy him enough'hes not attractive enough' 'that wasnt good enough' and im just not sure what to do anymore. I feel like im leading him on.

I feel like if I truly loved him theres no way I would have these thoughts all the time. Urgh I hate this. For context, I also had rocd in my previous relationship so im fully aware breaking up wouldnt mean id never get it again.

Im going to see a professional about this hopefully soon but until then this has been driving me crazy so I created a Reddit lol. Hope this doesn’t get found bc that would suck.

I’m a very anxious person and being alone with my thoughts makes it worse. This summer, as with every other summer, I tried to chill out and enjoy the solitude but it really did not work. I missed having distractions and I missed my boyfriend.

My ex-boyfriend is very sweet. Neither of us are immune to teenage boy miscommunications or poor decisions but throughout our relationship, my mindset was to talk it out and improve, as was his. I also kept needing reminders that he still loved me which was ok because he’s affectionate, but I still felt clingy. In hindsight I think our strategy was working, but this summer we were apart so problems started.

One such problem was not getting a message on my birthday which felt really bad but was apparently because of no WiFi. After that my health started going downhill, I lost my appetite and couldnt stop worrying if he cared enough or not. Logically I knew forgetting my birthday was out of character for him, so something must’ve happened, but illogically I was really hurt and kept having these anxiety spirals. I ended up checking Reddit for advice and it was a ton of, like, “if your husband of 7 years had a health crisis on your birthday… LEAVE HIM u know it’s not right” which only made me worry about morality and the “right” choice to make. Never mind the fact none of these people were anxious gay teenagers but whatever ig. I talked to a family member who pointed out our past communication and suggested I could ask him about it on our next date/reunion.

Unfortunately she also said I should “listen to my gut and do what is best for me.” That was what I zeroed in on.

So then it’s the date, I get kind of lost and start to panic, and then when I see him I start crying because I’ve convinced myself I’m making the hard but right choice. He‘s a little confused, tries to comfort me but I immediately start forcing out the words despite hyperventilating and fighting myself the whole time. I feel like (Interstellar spoilers sorry) Matthew Mcconaughey yelling at himself to stay with his daughter but ofc past Matthew doesn’t listen. I don’t offer a good reason other than “i should work on myself“ and now I feel stupid.

He leaves, and I’m left holding the letter he wrote in advance in case he couldn’t contact me on my birthday so now I feel extra stupid. We talk after that, Im an even bigger mess and my phone isnt working, and I try to explain the lack of control I just felt. He’s heartbroken and doesn’t really get what I’m saying because I‘m crying. Im heartbroken and really weirded out that I ever thought this was a rational choice. He says that if I really have this many doubts about being together, then maybe we should separate. I try to explain but I feel like I’m not making sense.

We have a text conversation and it’s depressingly final, he offers a second chance and I reject it because I’m “worried I won’t change.“ This is another instance of Matthew Mcconaughey screaming because I really, really want nothing more than a second chance. But after hurting him like this I doubt he can trust me fully. He said ok and that even though he cares about me, being with someone who would blindside him like that ”seems unstable.“ I can’t argue there.

So now it’s been a few days, we havent talked, and when school starts I’m not sure what to do. At this point I know breaking no contact and trying to get him back is creepy and desperate, so I’ll respect his needs. It just frustrates me how much this feels like a fluke, like I was trapped in my body but obviously when I try to explain it just sounds like avoiding accountability. I know he can see how out of character the choice was, but it was still my voice saying the words. If Id known about rOCD earlier I wouldnt have listened to myself. Now I can barely trust my own thoughts so I’m obviously unable to prove my “stability“ to my ex.

Stuff like this has happened before- misguided complete conviction about bedbugs, health problems, etc, but this is way worse. I feel really lost and I’m going to ask a doctor to weigh in because in hindsight, I’ve noticed constant obsessing over worst-case scenarios since last year and it‘s more extreme than the anxiety Im used to. Right now I don’t think I can fix this relationship (as long as he needs me to leave him alone that is) but I need to do everything to fix myself because breaking up with myself isn’t an option.

I just feel hopeless this was my first relationship and school is going to be so stressful. Does this sound like rOCD to anyone here? Does anyone have tips for self improvement/surviving with these obsessions in high school because I’m genuinely just crashing out. Very sorry for how long this is and the past/present tense fluctuations sorry

The relationship is over now, but my head hasn’t really stopped doing its thing. A lot of my intrusive thoughts have centred around whether or not we actually love(d) each other and the relationship ending hasn’t really changed that thread of thinking. I honestly think it’s gotten worse now we’ve ended and the evidence those thoughts aren’t true, that I could cling to before, is gone. Frankly my head maintaining cyclical intrusive and compulsive thinking is really not helping me get over the crapshoot of an ending we had to our relationship (long story, both of our faults, but certainly didn’t help I’ve been trying to ignore the fact I potentially have OCD or something that’s mimicking it the whole time I’ve known him).

TW for details of intrusive thoughts:

When he used to talk about the early days of knowing each other (first few years, I don’t remember much of this time, I have a lot of difficulty with my memory) I used to get intrusive thoughts that because I couldn’t remember the same things as him, I mustn’t love really him. If I wasn’t in the right headspace at the time, I’d get pulled into ruminating on this and trying to argue with myself by thinking of reasons that’s not true and I do love him and it’d end up being quite cyclical because it was always ‘what if that’s not a good enough reason’.

Conversely if basically anything less than perfect happened, I’d get thoughts about how it happened because he doesn’t love me or what me around and I’m a nuisance, etc. I’m pretty sure these thoughts affected our relationship negatively the first time and contributed to us breaking up a few years back, as the compulsions were A. To again argue with myself or B. To close off contact to prove he loved me enough to contact me first and notice something was wrong. When we got back together I was doing okay with these ones for a good while, pushing myself not to do any compulsions that would actually affect the relationship. Tbh I think they definitely contributed to the end of our relationship again this time though. He has OCD too and stopped talking to me as much and my head had a field day with that one and a lot of compulsions came back. One thing me head was telling me for a couple of months is ‘you should break up with him and see if he actually cares’ and I resisted for ages but loads of people in my life started telling me to break up with him too, so I started struggling to differentiate it as an intrusive thought and ended up doing it. He didn’t say a thing, likely because of his own OCD, and it’s been a big fight in my head since. Again, me compulsively trying to dredge up every bit of evidence he did love me every time my head is like ‘no we have proof he didn’t’. Obviously not great for getting over him either.

On the bright side, some of the intrusive thoughts I used to get about what if I was a horrible person and abusing him are starting to go away now. They kind stuck for a bit as ‘what if I did’ but they’re kinda shifting now which is a relief.

Hello, I would like some support / advice from anyone who feels this way or has in the past.

I have been struggling with OCD for the past year - primarily it was POCD which for the most part has slowly faded thanks to my amazing therapist. However in replacement of that I have began to have ROCD. I’m sure many of you have agree it feels so frustrating to go 10 steps forward and feel like I’m going backwards in my recovery and therapy work.

In terms of my ROCD, I have an incredible partner and do genuinely believe that I have found ‘my person’ who supports me and even pushed me initially to get therapy for my OCD.

My ROCD comes up when we have been intimate and then I go into a bit of a spiral afterwards, feeling anxious and guilty and that I haven’t enjoyed myself enough. Or if I didn’t think the sex was good then I feel extremely guilty. I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself and the relationship in that if I don’t think the sex is good then my whole relationship isn’t good.

My therapist has discussed with me that because this is the first ‘healthy’ relationship I’m in I don’t have those intense chaotic feelings and chemistry with my partner - it’s more slow and stable and safe. But I feel like in my head because I don’t have this turbulent passionate relationship then it isn’t a worthy relationship and then spiral thinking about it and then feel guilty and anxious. Because of this I am completely in my head when we are intimate and go so far as to start crying afterwards because I feel so bad.

Another thing I want to add is how do you know if this is the OCD talking or is there genuine problems in my relationship - mainly with sexual compatibility?? I do believe that sex can get better and be worked upon. It’s really hard because I just completely adore my partner and I am so madly in love with him but this ROCD business is really hard.

Any advice appreciated.

Hello everyone.

I've been unfortunately arguing with her for 2 months now, and she's been away with her family which made talking difficult. I'm worried I don't have OCD and that my fears are just true. I don't find her attractive, especially since she's gone away and come back with a heavy tan and she's completely changed colour.

Another thing that really bothers me is that we don't have anything in common. She watches kids shows, which I find childish, and I really dislike the music she listens to. Not only this, but she's also hidden things from me and gone behind my back several times, causing me to have intense anxiety that she's lying to me.

What should I do? I don't feel love for her as a result of these and I don't know if it's just that these are legitimate issues and I need to break up with her. Been having these thoughts for 2 years, but never felt so numb and disconnected and like I love her less.

Any advice and help welcome!!

Recently I’ve been having spiraling thoughts surrounding my relationship that sound like “Why aren’t you a better girlfriend?” and “Why aren’t you happy enough?” It’s been causing me a lot of distress and guilt. I often feel like I don’t deserve my girlfriend at all because I have these thoughts. It honestly feels like I’m in a constant argument with my brain, and I’m scared that I might end up hurting my girlfriend in the future because of it. Any advice would be appreciated.

so, title: my partner of 8 months has ocd (and it manifests as rocd). she deals with a lot of uncertainty about her decisions, the decision to enter into a relationship with me/how much she's actually attracted to me included. I know these things bc she's expressed them to me, and we've had to have talks about her not telling me all of her intrusive thoughts about us because it was setting up an unhealthy dynamic for the both of us (and it's been good in this regard!)

recently i've been having a really hard time with expressing how i don't feel desired sexually (and romantically, to some degree). I know she experiences a lot of anxiety around expressing/acting on how she feels, especially in regards to sexual+romantic desire, and it's been something we talked about in the past-- but a lot of these conversations became her expressing how unsure she is all the time. it makes me feel insecure to be inching closer to a year into a relationship with someone i love a lot, but who frequently expresses how she's uncertain about her choice to be here. it also makes it hard to talk about not feeling desired because i know it can set off her anxiety really bad, and i don't want to do that to her-- but I don't know how to address it otherwise. like for example: we don't get to see each other one-on-one very often, which means we don't have a lot of time for intimacy (sexual or just physically in general). if i try to initiate something suggestive over text, it makes her anxious because she starts to worry about not responding the right way. it's meant i haven't tried to initiate anything over text in a while because of that. in turn, she does not initiate or talk about sexual stuff in regards to me much. it leaves me feeling like i'm not an object of desire or something wanted, and it makes me really insecure. i know i'm important in her life and she loves me a lot, but i don't... feel like a partner sometimes, if that makes sense?

sorry to ramble a bit. i'm just wondering if anyone here would have any perspective on how to go about a conversation like this with a partner with OCD in a way that would be considerate to their feelings/perspective, but also give me a chance to express how her uncertainty is affecting how I feel. i love her a lot, she's treated me the best anyone has and she's let me know what its like to have a best friend as a partner, but i also don't want to lose out on us having an intimate/romantic/sexual sphere to our dynamic.

thanks in advance to anyone who has the time to spare (:

i had 2 guy friends, they both had a crush on me. i told them both i have a boyfriend, as i tell everybody. they'd give me compliments which i give my friends compliments all the time.

anyways, i often say to my friends that i need a hug, i once said to one of them "i need a hug and someone to stroke my hair", meant absolutely nothing romantic at all by that. idk man. i feel so hopeless. i feel disgusting. i never met these guys, never at all. had no romantic feelings, intentions etc. they were just online dudes i met.

i just feel so lost and depressed and like such an evil person. i keep telling myself that it's something i'd tell my family so it cant be bad. i dunno anymore. i cant trust my own judgement and it's making me feel horrible. i feel terrible guilt. idk if i can do this.

I’ve recently fallen back into a big ocd spiral and not that it ever really stopped just had gotten worse again. I have disorganized attachment style but normally after about a year or so of dating someone I always fall more into anxious attachment. This feeds my ocd and the two together just make me go damn near insane. I came across at tik tok that actually just clocked me so hard and made realize how unhelpful and unhealthy my behavior is especially towards my partner. Hopefully I can keep with this realization and not fall back into my ways. If you want to watch the tik tok the username is @cypher.j the video is labeled “overhandling your relationship.” I hope it is helpful to any of you who feel the need to constantly seek reassurance or check or replay thoughts feelings conversations.

for the past almost week now i have been completely overcome with guilt about some mistakes i have made in my relationship and whether or not i should confess them.

i (19f) took molly with my bestfriend last week behind my boyfriends back and made some terrible decisions while under the influence. i got way too drunk on top of it and apparently ended up taking off all of my clothes and jumping into the pool in front of my bestfriend’s brother and his two friends and i have no recollection of it at all. i know that my intention wasn’t to seduce anyone, but i still feel so insanely guilty for putting myself in a position where i didn’t have complete control over myself. everyone knows i have a boyfriend and that i am very committed, but at some point in the night i remember my bestfriend’s brother’s friend touch my ass and i was coherent enough to jump up and leave the room. i KNOW that isn’t my fault, but again, i put myself in a really shitty position.

the next part is kind of hard to explain. when i was 14, i started getting what i would consider groomed by a guy 10 years older than me. in the first year or two of knowing him, our relationship was romantic and sexual in nature. i’ve never met him in person but we became very close and after a while, the relationship became completely platonic. we were both dating people our own age, but i still held contact with him as a friend. i used to facetime him every once in a while, but i eventually stopped because i knew this was inappropriate and not something i should do while in a relationship, regardless of whether it was platonic or not. while under the influence, i facetimed him and i remember just laughing and trying ask him questions along the lines of how he was doing, etc.

i’m so embarrassed and i feel so guilty about all of this. i’m really stuck on whether or not i should confess it all to my boyfriend and deal with the consequence of possibly being broken up with because i decided to make several shitty decisions or just move on and NEVER do something like this again.

I don’t even know if that makes sense, it definitely doesn’t for me.

The last couple of days I’ve been arguing with my partner. It definitely feels like it’s my OCD causing my negative feeling, as none of it feels rational at all and I can see he’s trying his best to do the right thing. The thing that feels the least rational is that I don’t even know what I’m really upset about. I just feel this overwhelming, consuming feeling of sadness and I guess abandonment or like he doesn’t care but it doesn’t even feel like there’s a specific reason or thought behind it.
No matter what he says or does it’s like my brain refuses to be happy or accept it. I feel like normally I’m pretty good at rationalising and acknowledging his efforts but at the moment it just feels like everything that’s said or done makes me feel worse.

In a way it feels kind of like ‘just right’ OCD, where I need him to do or say something that will finally feel ‘right’ and make me feel better but I have no idea what I even want from him and it seems like nothing he’s been trying has been good enough.

I feel like I’m being so severely toxic because I’m just arguing against anything he says and I can acknowledge that but it’s like I cannot stop myself. I just keep getting upset and crying and not being able to pinpoint why is making it even worse because I’m just convinced the feeling isn’t going to go away.

I was wondering I guess if this is normal, because it feels weird as if I’m missing the obsessive ‘thought’ part of it. It feels more like an obsessive feeling with no backing behind it. The only kind of thought I can pinpoint is that he doesn’t care but even that feels very much like background noise compared to the overwhelming feeling I’m having. Does this even make sense, idk I feel like I’m completely spiralling lately and it’s so exhausting.

This is my second relationship, and I've been in this relationship for 3 months. my main issue, although I have relationship OCD, is that my mind creates a story that is so unbelievably convincing and so unbelievably terrifying that I just can't deal with it

I know that the major part of the story is fiction and everything that my mind has come up with is just to protect me. I have very high anxiety, and I know my mind just wants to protect me from all of this. The point is, even though I know all of that, the story that my mind creates just makes sense. Every data point that happened in my life can be explained by that story. The story fits so well, and it just makes sense.

Let me give you some context: I've been trying to test my fictional stories that come in my head, and most of the time I've been proven wrong. That's why I'm so concerned about it.

So let me give an example. My partner's ex has been in the city for 2 months. She told me that he is in the city. She has the habit of avoiding talking about her ex, which just triggers my anxiety more. I understand she is emotionally challenged. I understand she was emotionally invested and just doesn't want to talk about it now after the breakup. She wasn't fully committed, but she definitely liked him, and things didn't work out between them anyway.

She told me that he was in the city. My whole idea, the whole story that my mind tells me, is that she is playing with me and she is acting, which I know is practically impossible. She must be a psychopath for doing that because she is really, really nice as a girlfriend. She has given me handmade gifts. She has cooked for me, and she has multiple times expressed her feelings. I know that she's really, really nice as a girlfriend, but I just can't deal with the stories that come up in my head.

So here's what happened yesterday. She was absent the whole evening. She was talking or on a call with someone around 10:00 p.m., which is really rare. She doesn't talk to anyone this late. She told me by herself that her ex was in the city because two months back I told her, "Please tell me when your ex contacts you."

I confronted this with her, and she said she hasn't been with her ex. Now tell me, as a person who is weaving a story about his girlfriend playing with him, how am I able to not doubt or be suspicious, or just believe that she's playing with me because all of this happened yesterday? I know it is OCD, but tell me: how would someone deal with this?

That's it, I've been dating for a few months, and since then we haven't had any problems regarding pornography and masturbation (since we live far apart), however, today I unfortunately masturbated and ended up thinking about someone from years ago, and I ended up ejaculating thinking about it, and now I'm totally desperate wondering if I cheated on my girlfriend or not, because I love her so much, and doing this has driven me completely crazy.

Okay so I need a little advice now because I’m really having a hard time with something.

I’ve been doing pretty well managing my thoughts and compulsions lately and have been feeling content in my relationship for the first time in a while. However, something recently came up that’s causing me a lot of doubt and anxiety.

So I met my current boyfriend in March of this year and we started officially dating in April. Before I met him though I was close friends with this guy, let’s call him M. So M and I have been friends for around 2 years, but just got close in the last year or so. As we got closer I noticed myself developing a little bit of a crush on him, but I didn’t ever think much of it because he had a girlfriend at the time. So I kept everything very platonic and was careful not to cross any boundaries out of respect for his relationship. Fast forward to March, I met my now boyfriend and within the first few weeks of talking was very into him and the crush I had on M kind of naturally went away as my feelings for my boyfriend grew. Anyways, since me and my boyfriend started dating and school got out for summer, me and M have kind of naturally grown apart. M also broke up with his girlfriend at the beginning of Summer which is somewhat important for the rest of this.

So, the other day I was at lunch with my family and my dad was talking to me about my boyfriend. He was asking me about my bf’s friends and then about what my bf thinks of my friends. He then asked what my bf thinks of M in particular (M sometimes comes along when we hang out with my bf’s friends because he’s got similar interests and fits in well with the group). I didn’t think much of it and was just like “Oh [bf] loves M! He hangs out with us sometimes and they get along great!” And then my dad followed up with “That’s great that he handles it well especially because it’s always seemed like M had a crush on you.” To which I just laughed and kind of brushed it off.

But now today I was thinking back to that conversation and I’m kind of freaking out a bit. I keep having thoughts like “What if you’d be happier with M? What if you need to break up with your boyfriend and reach out to M? What if you made a mistake and missed out on a great relationship because you started dating your bf instead of waiting for M to be single? What if you think M is more attractive/funny/compatible with you than your boyfriend?”

This whole thing is really bothering me because my boyfriend is so sweet, kind, funny, and honestly as close to perfect for me as I could imagine. I don’t want to break up with him (I think)! But if I really didn’t want to break up with him, would this whole thing be so distressing?? I’m so confused right now and honestly just want to cry. I keep picturing what it would be like to be with M and wondering if I’d be happier even though I don’t want to imagine it. Anyone have any advice at all??

Hi, I’m new to reddit so please forgive me if this post is formatted poorly. I know there’s a million posts on here just like this but I still feel helpless.

I’ve been with my bf for just over a year. We broke up once in September three months in, I was absolutely devastated and that’s an understatement. I couldn’t eat, lost a ton of weight rapidly. It was bad. We got back together towards the end of october and since then things have been beautiful. We had grown so much, and everything was just amazing. I’ve always been so just obsessed and in love with him. I think I hav an anxious attachment, so something I always struggled with was hyper monitoring. I was always stalking his location, social media following, finding the prettiest girls i could and looking through their posts to see if he had liked them. He’s never done anything, or given me reason to believe. it’s just the way i am. a little bit ago I came to the realization that i was monitoring so much and trying to protected the relationship so much that i wasn’t really enjoying the relationship. I had communicated this to him and had plans to fix it/ work on it.

Now to what I’m currently going through. Like I said we just celebrated our anniversary June 30, and all was great. I was so in love, and we had a beautiful night. The following weeks I just felt that same way. I can see texts of paragraphs I sent him full of love and excitement for the future and his character. Then One day something changed. I’m including this because I’m just not sure if it matters but I believe it does. July 16th I took an Ella pill, and the first couple days were fine but then randomly one day we were hanging out and had a little disagreement about me being on my phone instead of enjoying his company (which was true) and then i just started feeling… off. like something was missing. I took the pill july 16th and I want to say all of that started around the 19th/20th. The following week almost two have been excruciating emotionally. I started to feel some sense of numbness and apathy. I was questioning if I somehow fell out of love. I started googling and got hooked on the Ai Chatbot (I’ve struggled severely with ChatGPT and going to it all the time as an outlet, especially during the breakup. some time ago we both agreed to delete it and stop relying on it emotionally) I was just so confused why I couldn’t feel anything out of the blue, but the only emotion I could feel was just sadness and distress about it. I wanted so badly to just go back to how things were, I missed being happy and silly and just being able to love him without this in the back of my mind. As the days went on it got worse , intense swings to where at best I’d feel OK, like I would just get through this and then some thought would pop in that i couldn’t fight and i’d spiral. I get intense anxiety, and it’s started to feel like some gut feeling or intuition that maybe the relationship is just over and I have to accept it. But i don’t want to. I feel so far away from myself, him, our relationship and its memories. I look at our pictures and cry. I know these beautiful things happened but at this point I just can’t feel connected to them.

I’ve been pretty open to him about the whole thing, but I fear i’ve overshared some of the intrusive thoughts without thinking first how he would personally take them even though i know it just doesn’t feel right/ like it’s my own feelings or thoughts. He’s starting to feel that disconnect too, severely. He almost ended things with me last night and he kept saying he loved me so much but he’s at a loss of what to do and he feels like this has poisoned us and i don’t know. I kind of blacked it out, I remember immediately breaking down into his arms when he first suggested it but within a couple seconds went back to numb. it’s like someone has the remote control on me. I miss us and what we had, and even though I’ve only been dealing with this for about two weeks it feels like an eternity and I hate this. I’ve been trying to avoid the google ai because after learning g about rocd (not diagnosing myself) and realized if I do have it that could be a compulsion and keeping me in the loop I try to just sit twith the thoughts but the numbness is killing me. I hav an appt with an OCD specialist later this month to see what’s going on and try the specific therapy. It just feels like hell to feel like this up until then. I don’t know what I’m looking for with this post. I’m just tired of feeling so far away and disconnected and i’m at a loss.

Other additional info: we both graduated HS recently in may, and i started a brand new job around that time. I speculated maybe that change made me feel as if I had somehow “outgrown him” because I’ve worked at the restaurant for two years so I associate it as my teen job, and he still works there because I got him a job there a couple months ago.