Any tips on things we can do to help our partners understand what we are going through. My boyfriend is super supportive and feels for me, but I feel like I’m such a burden with everything and some days I’m so irritable and feel like he’s eventually going to get sick of it. I tell him I wish he could be with someone as carefree as he is and not someone with real event OCD who dwells on everything from the past

Hey guys! My boyfriend has said recently that he doesn't know if he's strong enough to continue with our relationship because of my OCD. He wants to see me overcome my symptoms and learn to live a healthy life with OCD, but my anxieties and obsessions are starting to really affect his life. I understand his reasoning, it's hard to see someone you care about struggle with OCD, especially when it starts to affect you too. I'm asking for tips to deal with my compulsions in the relationship. I HAVE to know the answer to things and sometimes that leads into arguments because even with apologies and discussions I can't let things go, even if they genuinely don't matter or are miniscule issues we have. It's a healthy relationship otherwise but I feel horrible because it's impacting him so negatively, that's the absolute last thing I want to happen. I care for him deeply and he cares for me too, so I don't want my OCD to be a reason we break up but I fear it's headed in that direction. I'm starting therapy soon, but until then what are some things I can do to stop my ROCD from impacting him? I know sitting in the guilt and anxiety of not completing my obsessions will help, but I'm wondering if there are other things I can do to maybe remedy some of the damage already done.

Posting here for the first time, please be gentle, not sure if this is applicable! I definitely struggle with reassurance-seeking especially when it comes to real events, but over time have found ways to self regulate and use self-guided therapy apps and worksheets to help fight any challenging thoughts as they come up throughout the day. There are a few times when I’m unable to do the work myself and don’t feel as emotionally strong, which I feel is reasonable considering how exhausting my symptoms can be (for clarification, I am diagnosed with anxiety but not OCD, although I fear all signs lead me here). Only on the extremely difficult days, I’ll ask my partner for reassurance (he is aware of my tendencies and is quite patient) but he has his own baggage, and having a partner asking for reassurance can be triggering for him, as he was accused of several negative things in his last relationship. He quickly gets overwhelmed with me and feels that I don’t trust him. He is convinced that is the motive of my reassurance seeking. Today in particular, I woke up from a nightmare that reminded me of a past event. After struggling with it myself all day I brought it up in the evening to try and get some help, and did bring it up three times after that. I am always soft and gentle when I ask for help, and even asked for a lighthearted “pinky promise”, which actually seemed to bother him. I understand that it’s not his position to emotionally support me whatsoever and that reassurance seeking can become harmful to the both of us, but for the one-off days where I am having a really difficult time, I feel extremely unsupported by him. For context, my partner has broken my trust before. My thoughts took off during that time. It’s been a few months since then, and me openly seeking reassurance from him is not a frequent occurrence, since I’ve started my self-help. I actually feel I’ve come a long way but I do have days like today that set me back. I love and trust him with all my heart, but man does my inner monologue make me work for it. I just don’t know how to get him to understand that it’s me having to work for it, not him. Unfortunately from the way he reacts, I’ve grown to feel unsupported by him, and am now rarely emotionally vulnerable with him. I am curious if there are any suggestions on helping him help me in a sense.. I don’t know how to get him to understand that it has nothing to do with a lack of trust. I have briefly opened up to him about my strong intrusive thoughts and figured it would help him understand a bit better but I don’t know what to do. I want to add: I have tried talking to him about how I felt unsupported. He just tells me he feels accused and would be supporting me at his own expense. He has even told me that I shouldn’t talk to him about these things, even though the thoughts I struggle with are directly related to events in our relationship. I really can’t seem to get through to him.

I have had diagnosed OCD for a while now and I’ve been really struggling with my rocd. My bf and I have been dating for almost 2 years now and it has been great mostly. (I say mostly because of I’m being honest the bad parts are me causing issues due to my rocd) lately I’ve been struggling to trust him in that he will follow through with his word. This was triggered because we had a wedding and a brunch to go to (he doesn’t know the person getting married but was going just to go with me) and he ended up not being able to go due to finals and group projects he had to end up doing work for. This is a completely understandable and reasonable excuse not to be able to attend something, but my brain is now making me feel like he would do that to anything I need him for. And he literally doesn’t. Like we’re going out of town to see family this summer and I’m scared he’ll flake out. We’ve already gotten plane tickets and everything but my brain is like what if . Again it’s so stupid because he comes through almost all the time I invite him to something and when he can’t go it’s usually due to something pretty reasonable that he didn’t foresee. Like he comes to all my family holiday events, goes and runs errands and does things when I ask, comes over everyday to spend time with me. The only times he can’t come to my house is when he has no gas money. We’re both in college and his parents don’t really support him at all so he has to use all his money he makes working during the summer towards expenses and doesn’t often get to buy things for himself and when we are in our hometown, I go to his house more because my parents pay for everything and I help him save his money because he if doesn’t have any he is truly out of luck. Soem days he won’t even eat because he had to use his money on rent of something. But he still manages to go above and behind for me. Always includes me in things he loves to do, picks flowers for me anytime he sees one and buys them when he does have money, he always writes me notes and does sweet things that he knows will make me laugh. He is such a blessing, but of course my brain only focuses on the negative :( he’s so patient with my ocd but I do get tired of bugging him with it.