I’m so annoyed that rOCD has taken away my sex drive to the point that I actively feel scared of sex when I used to love it, and I used to love being close to my wonderful partner. Everything feels boring and if it’s not boring it’s scary. What do I do

Hi everyone, I’m a 30-year-old woman, and I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for 5 years. I’ve always felt emotionally close to him — he’s caring, supportive, and we planned a future together, including having a family. I don’t want to leave him. He means so much to me. But for a while now, I’ve been obsessing over the fact that I don’t feel much sexual attraction to him anymore. It’s not like I never felt anything — when we first met, there were butterflies, excitement, emotional connection… something real. He was never “just a friend” to me. But the physical side of the relationship feels like it’s slowly faded, and I’m panicking about what that means. I keep thinking things like: – “Maybe I chose the wrong person.” – “You can’t be in love without sexual desire.” – “If I was truly in love, I would still want him.” – “What if I’ve been lying to myself this whole time?” Sometimes my body reacts — I can feel physical closeness or even arousal — but my mind shuts down and says: “no, this isn’t right.” Other times, I feel tension, resistance, or even disgust during intimacy, and I can’t tell if that’s anxiety or if something is fundamentally wrong. What makes this even more confusing is that I truly believe that real love includes sexual attraction. For me, it’s all part of one feeling — not separate. So if the attraction is gone, does that mean the love is too? Is it possible that this is still OCD — that my mind is obsessing and disconnecting me from my real feelings? Has anyone experienced something similar? Any support would mean so much. I feel so stuck between my mind and my heart.

I am struggling so much with ROCD symptoms, and lately everything feels more and more real, like I am finally “realizing” that I don’t love my boyfriend anymore. When I think about him, about him speaking kindly to me, or about being with him — I feel no warmth inside me, no happiness, no calm. This makes me panic, and I start thinking that maybe this is the truth, that I don’t love him anymore or never did. It feels like my mind is connecting everything to “prove” I don’t love him — I even struggle now to remember good moments with him or any time when I felt love. When I am in his arms, instead of comfort, I feel anxious and disconnected. When he says sexual things, I feel disgust or nothing. I also had a really hard moment with my mom yesterday — I told her I don’t feel love anymore, and she told me that I am lying to myself, that I am hurting both him and myself. I keep hearing her words in my mind now. On top of this, someone on NOCD told me to focus on traits I admire about him, but when I try, nothing comes to mind and this scares me even more — like maybe I never truly loved him, I just liked the idea of having a boyfriend. I know I have read a lot about ROCD, I know about ERP, I know I should “let the feelings be there” and not fight them. But even though I know this, I feel so stuck, hopeless, and burned out. The thoughts feel so real now — like I have a gut feeling that I don’t love him anymore, that I’ve changed, and I’m just forcing myself. I am also afraid that deep down, maybe I don’t want to love him anymore, I just want to feel “normal” again — and this terrifies me. Lately I feel like everything feels more and more real — like the thoughts and this horrible feeling are the truth that I was denying all along. Now I feel almost numb, like I have accepted this horrible idea and I can’t connect to my emotions any I feel desperate. I don’t know what is real anymore. Please, if anyone can relate or give some guidance, I would be very grateful. 💔 (edited)

I just read a post that said “people with ROCD know they love their partners” right when I read it I got this horrible anxiety feeling rush down into my stomach. My partner asked me to be his girlfriend in December and literally since that night It’s like a switch of doubt turned on and I was suffering with consistent doubt about loving my partner, I felt like I didn’t feel anything anymore and I didn’t know what to do and through out the past months it has been an absolute wave of things going on. He is aware of my ocd and in a way I’m glad that this happened because I have had harm ocd for the past 4-5 years and had no idea what it was until 2 months ago when I got an OCD therapist, I just thought I was crazy so I’m happy to know I’m not. Buuuuttt back to the ROCD, my main thoughts and feelings are about not feeling like i love my partner anymore and if we’re compatible, I hyper fixate on the weight he’s gained in the past few months and all the bad food he eats, I think about if our lives even align, we have very different views on some things but are we too different, what if we really don’t know each other at all and we thought we did because we’ve been best friends for 10 years. This is so frustrating because I’ve gotten to the point where my anxiety is barely there, I was have constant outrageous anxiety for 3-4 months and now I’ve gotten to this numb, I literally feel absolutely nothing feeling and it’s not even with just my boyfriend it’s with everything, I just don’t feel happy with anything anymore, I feel like there’s something wrong with me. We got into an argument the other day about how rude I was and I didn’t even feel sad or apologetic when he was talking to me about it, and I couldn’t stop crying, like I just don’t feel anything. I feel like there’s something really wrong with me. All I can describe it as is “blank” does that make sense? I feel like a bad person and I feel like we’re going to break up and I can tell how sad he is. All I do know is that I don’t want to break up. But anytime I think about him or anything along the lines of my ROCD everything like freaks me out. I like scream “NO” and “STOP” in my head all the time. But it’s starting to really feel real. I’m so scared, and now I read that post that said that “people with ROCD know they love their partner” but WHAT IF I DONT KNOW!!! I WANT TO LOVE MY PARTNER. I want to feel the love I had for him before this all started. We were so happy, and we didn’t even get the honey moon phase because my ROCD started right when we made it official. This is seriously so crippling.