I am struggling so bad. I want to share my story because I’m just so confused right now. My boyfriend and i have known each other our whole lives. We always had the biggest crush on each other even after i moved away in middle school. We stayed friends and hung out any time i would come visit my hometown. Of course, life happens and we lost communication with each other for years. He joined the army, got married, and had a baby with his ex wife. All in the same time, I was in a with my ex for 3 years. Fast forward to a year and a half ago. Life had this funny way of reconnecting us. We both ended up back in our hometown after years of being away and we both were going through a breakup/separation with our exes. Long story short, at that time i knew we would end up together. It had been a long time coming and i thought our relationship was going to be PERFECT. Boy, was i completely wrong. We both came with a lot of baggage. Him having severe depression and anxiety and me having OCD (which caused a lot of anxiety for me as well) I questioned everything! If he looked at me the wrong way or sighed because he was having a bad day, i automatically assumed it was because of me. I would question him over and over asking if he loved me still or if i did something wrong and for the longest time he would get so frustrated with me because he was dealing with his own demons from past traumatic events on top of dealing with my panic attacks from all of the questions i would ask because my ocd convinced me that everything was all my fault. He would shut me out (i mean for days), he said really mean things to me when he was really drunk or angry, and never opened up to me about anything he was feeling. I prayed for him to be better and to love me the same way i loved him but it just seemed like it would never happen. Of course, over time i got so fed up with feeling like i didn’t mean anything to him (or at least that’s what my mind convinced me) to where i wanted to leave him but all at the same time everything changed on his part. He got the help he needed and he became a much better person. He apologized to me for everything, cried his eyes out, and even opened up to me about the tragedy he experienced to make him so depressed and angry. He has done a complete 180 and has been doing so good for months now. He has shown me SO much love! It’s even shocked the ones around him because he has never been one to open up in that way. Unfortunately, that’s when my ROCD kicked in 100x harder. I used to feel so much love for him and right now I’m struggling with “did i ever really love him?” “Were we ever meant to be if we’ve been through so much already in only a year? A year is not a long time!!!” And so on. I’ve even checked to see how I’ve felt hugging him or kissing him. It’s so exhausting. The thoughts haven’t seemed to stop and i know deep down i want to experience what this relationship could be without all of the negativity that has surrounded it or without all of the intrusive thoughts. That is why i haven’t given up yet but sometimes i get these strong urges to break up (some i have gone through with and ended up back with him because leaving just didn’t seem right). Through all of the craziness that has gone through my mind, he has stuck by my side through it all. I’m so happy he’s done better for himself but now i can’t stop questioning everything. It’s like my mind has only focused on all the negativity instead of realizing this is what I’ve prayed for. I just want to get out of my head and start fresh but my ocd doesn’t allow me to. I feel so lost but deep down i know he is who i want to be with. I have always wanted him and he has always wanted me. I just can’t stop obsessing over what things were like before. I just wish i had a clear mind so i could just move forward with our relationship in a positive way.

Every morning I wake up im always fixating on something and texting chat gpt, whether thats my relationship or my sexuality. I try so hard to resist it but I just can’t handle the uncertainty or the idea of hurting him or leading him on. We aren’t even official because in the past my rocd caused an issue between us where it led to him breaking up with me so now I have a fear of his intentions being ingenuine, especially because friends and family have called him a love bomber, saying he used me for attention, and narcissistic. This takes over me because I feel like I will never be able to be happy with him or trust myself or the relationship because of what other people say. I am very content on my own and single, this is the first relationship where i have experienced debilitating anxiety and doubt about the legitimacy of both of our feelings to the point where I cannot function. I’m trying so hard to not feed into it and not give it energy but I just hate the idea of leading him on or being inauthentic to what I truly want. My current therapist who I only see a couple times a month doesn’t think I have ocd, which makes me spiral and think I should end it with him, especially because I always hear things like “The right relationship will add to your life” and I feel the opposite is happening not directly because of him but because my brain takes over and paralyzes me with indecision about if i should be with him or not. I know that his intentions are genuine, but I hate that everyone is so cynical and assumes they’re not just because my rocd and his emotional baggage created a messy situation. From the moment i met him I convinced myself it was too good to be true and my therapist even said I was self-sabatoging. But i hate not knowing if it is rocd and my insurance doesn’t cover NOCD. He is so patient with me and supportive but I keep hearing things like “the honeymoon stage is supposed to last 3 months” and “it shouldn’t be this hard with the right person” “you’re not good for each other” and my friends tell me i didnt do anything wrong etc bc he did at first say my ocd didnt affect him when in reality that led to him ending it initially. But he has been more upfront with his emotions but then my mom and people will say “more to come” “there’s so much more out there” and its just so isolating not having that support and wondering if im too young to settle and if I’m just an idiot convincing myself I have rocd when really i just don’t want to be with him/it is a toxic relationship. When in reality the only reason it is toxic is because i am so sporadic about whether or not I want him in my life because of my distrust in myself and my decisions. I love him but I know love isn’t always enough and I get existential fixating on what’s “meant to be” and what’s “supposed to happen” its like this debilitating urge to control everything and make everything go perfectly how it is supposed to go. Please help i just want to make the right decision and stop paralyzing myself with doubt

I don’t understand how my boyfriend can love me so much after everything I put him through. He constantly shows me how much he loves me, yet I feel like I can’t fully appreciate it. I can’t explain how badly I behave towards him when these thoughts take over, how often I lash out because of them, and how many times I’ve told him exactly what’s on my mind. He tries to use logic to help me, but it never seems to work. And now, even as I’m writing this, I feel like crying—yet at the same time, my mind tells me that I don’t care. This horrible feeling inside me won’t go away. I keep thinking, “What if I don’t like him?” That thought is always there. I wonder if I had unrealistic expectations about this relationship from the beginning, since he is my first boyfriend. What if I convinced myself I liked him just because I wanted my first relationship to be perfect? And now, I just can’t accept the truth? It scares me even more knowing that he moved to my city for me. I feel like I’m constantly upset, constantly sad. And despite everything, he’s always there for me. That makes me feel even worse because I don’t know what to do to feel okay again. Every time I talk to him, I get this strange feeling inside me, and I’m terrified that it means my thoughts are actually true. He tells me that my happiness shouldn’t depend only on him, that I should focus on more than just this relationship—because for over a year now, my mind has been stuck in an endless loop of questioning whether I love him or not. He asks me, “Who are you fighting? Why do you care so much? You’ve been asking yourself the same question for over a year—shouldn’t you know the answer by now?” And my response is always, “Because I want to be with you.” But then, when I try to answer whether I like him or not, more doubts take over. I start thinking, “Maybe I just can’t accept that I don’t love him. Maybe I just want to keep this relationship perfect.” The worst part is that he has never done anything wrong. He has always been patient, kind, and loving, yet I feel so lost. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand what I feel. And I don’t understand why I can’t understand what I feel. He also tells me that ever since I started reading so much about relationships and OCD online, I have gotten worse. And he’s right. I have become much worse than I was before. The problem is that before, I thought I was at my worst, but looking back, I was still able to feel happiness at times. Now, I feel completely stuck. I don’t know if I’m crying because I hate this feeling, or because I don’t want to think this way about him. It feels like I don’t even know what’s happening to me anymore.

Hey guys, I’m reaching out in a pretty weak spot of desperation. I feel so insane and so sick of my mind recently, I’m completely drained from my mind. I’ve had such bad spikes of RCOD in my relationship of 1.5 years , which kills me because I truly want nothing more than to just be his peace and for us to work out. I love him more than anything and I would do anything for him. I feel like the pressure I placed on making sure I was “perfect” was so counter productive becuase instead I find myself doing everything wrong. I tell myself not to think of the wrong thing, then I think of the wrong thing, then I feel so guilty, and it plagues my mind for days. I feel so guilty it makes me feel detached and like I’m a bad girlfriend. I feel so bad for always burdening him with my anxieties and my “wrong thoughts” becuase he doesn’t deserve it, he’s so amazing. Recently, I began overthinking if I “love him” which I KNOW is so silly because when I’m calm, I laugh that I even got so worried , but when my anxiety creeps in, it feels so debilitating. I spiral and then try to prove to myself that I do love him , which then makes things in that moment feel “forced” because I’m acting out of intent to win the battle in my head. My RCOD has been a persistent issue, but this particular theme is pretty new and I hate it. I feel like I’ve been placing pressure on myself to overly appreciate him and it’s so counterproductive. I feel so bad because I told him about everything and he now thinks I don’t love him. Which is so wrong. I just want this to be fixed. Sometimes I feel like he’d be better off with a girl that isn’t such a headache and wouldn’t drain him all of the time but at the same time , I could never accept him being with anyone but me. Also, I have seen a psychoglist but it just didn’t feel right and I hated vocalising my thoughts because I felt it gave them more power - it feels like the only person I can truly be raw with about this stuff is my bestfriend. If anyone has any tips , PLEASE help me.