Today i broke up with my boyfriend because my ocd got so bad asking myself if i actually loved him. i feel so upset as i still what to be with him but feel i can't if i'm not sure how i feel. even though we've broken up i still don't know how i feel and hope i that we can get back together if i figure out i do love him. however i may never know how i feel, am i just giving myself false hope? is breaking up with him itself a compulsion? it all is so painful i still care about him a lot

Yes, breaking up is a compulsion! It works like that. Everyone has doubts, about loving, staying, caring (etc.) his/her partner. But they simply answer "yes or no", like if someone asks you if you want a glass of water. For us with rocd, when a doubt like that came in to our mind, we get super anxious and scared that the answer could be negative. So we MUST prove that the positive answer is the right one, we meticulously overanalize everything that happens or that we feel, giving more and more importance to the toughts (and feeling always less because of the rationalization). But here is the things: you can find proofs for every answer you want to give. So if you look for positive evidences; you will find them, but you will find also "negative evidences!" That will make you question the initial problem, but also the answer that you gave! And that creates a circle of anxiety and make you incapable of accepting uncertainty. YOU MUST FIND ANSWER NOW. (No one has thoose answers, but future so stressing about them is just useless.) So your brain start to see your partner as a potential danger; something that CAN hurt you. And that starts your unconscious defensive mechanism! It could be stop feeling everything (apathy), taking distance, feeling only anxiety, break up urges (thoose moments when you feel so overwhelmed by everything and you NEED to broke up immediately) and a lot of other things that will make you feel super guilty, as I used to say! The positive side: it is a thing that you can heal, you can stop all that circle by simply learning how to manage thoose doubts ! And from experience, I can tell you that it is not the easiest, there are a lot of ups and downs, but it never will be as hard as before starting to heal!! +you can learn to understand yourself better; your ambition, your love language, your attachment styles and heal your past trauma! It's been 4 months since I started my journey, and I can tell that I'm not completely healed, but I already made so much progress and for the majority of the time, all the doubts that used to scare me doesn't anymore! + I gained all my feelings back and now I'm super happy!!