I’m really worried. This past month instead of feeling scared and doing my endless compulsions I’ve just felt completely numb to my long-distance boyfriend. It’s like I don’t care about him or like I’m not attracted to him at all anymore. A month ago he said it was okay if we stopped doing intimate things over the phone because it makes me so anxious and now I haven’t wanted to at all. It’s not that I don’t love him or want to do stuff, it’s just that I spend all of it testing my attraction to him and it takes out any pleasure. Also sometimes in the past when I’d look at him I’d “force” myself to feel attraction but it’s not that I’m not attracted to him, I just don’t get aroused just looking at him. Well I can sometimes if he’s doing things for me I actually like that but not a lot because of my intrusive. Now it’s been a month where I look at him and don’t feel anything and I’m so scared. I also don’t feel desperate to do my compulsions to make sure I still love him. In fact, I’m exhausted from them and want nothing to do with the anxiety so I feel like I’m just talking to a friend but that still terrifies me because I still very very badly want to be romantically and sexually attracted to him. But I know that the more I chase it the more anxiety it’ll bring so instead I just let myself be numb to him and it’s scary because I don’t want to be numb. I’m also noticing every single guy and wanting that attention but I don’t want anything romantic or sexual, I just struggle with male validation and I want to be seen and heard because I feel so alone right now. I feel so guilty for feeling that way but most of all the reason I feel so far away from my boyfriend is because I feel like my thoughts make me so worthless of him. I feel like I don’t deserve him and that my thoughts aren’t his problem and he should be with someone who can be happy with him without being afraid. I feel like all I do is hurt him and I feel so scared and worried that I’m not sexually attracted to him or that I’m forcing it because I don’t get instantly aroused looking at him and because I have anxiety around sex that makes it hard for me to enjoy it. I feel guilty that I can’t enjoy our happy moments or be present in our relationship and it makes me so numb to him and that’s what causes me so much pain that I feel shut off. Because I want to love him and be with him, I want to be confident in my attraction to him and I want to see him and just have that feeling of rightness. I’m also getting ready to go to college and I’m becoming more independent and it makes me feel guilty too like im moving on without him but I don’t want to. Is this part of rocd and soocd as well? This horrible numbness ?

for me it’s getting to the point where i don’t feel in love with my boyfriend anymore. i’m trying to keep myself from compulsing since my compulsions are all mental. it’s like the thoughts consume my mind every second of every day and i can’t catch a break. it’s like i want to be with him so bad but my brain won’t allow me. any advice?

I’ve been really struggling the last week and I need some help. I’ve been seeing a guy for about 2 months who checks a lot of my relationship boxes. He’s so kind and we have a lot of fun together. The first few weeks I was totally smitten but had moments of fear about being committed. We talked about it and decided to take things slowly, and then I would have days of feeling like every thing was perfect with some fearful feelings in between. Two weeks ago now my SO-OCD and ROCD started to come back a little as well as my more anxious-avoidant behaviors. I started to get more scared of the future and it was more intense. At the end of last week, he asked me to be his girlfriend and I said yes. He is exactly the type of person I see myself marrying and has great values and is so secure about me. Until last week, he generally made me feel so safe and secure. Ever since saying yes, I feel so scared and anxious and my SO-OCD and ROCD is on max. I also find myself getting more annoyed and irritated about things that were minor annoyances or non-issues before. I’m having intense physical responses to both OCD themes, and the nagging thought and feeling that I need to end things with him because we aren’t right for each other. It makes me feel so sad and guilty. Sex is becoming harder because of the thoughts too, whereas at first it was perfect. I don’t know who I can talk to about this without them telling me to just break up with him. Everything is so new so I think they’d chalk it up to my intuition. But I do want to be in love and have less fear around relationships, so I don’t want to give into the fear. I think it could help me to set boundaries and have space for myself more often. I think I need some advice or insight. I know I shouldn’t ask for reassurance, but having some around how other people have felt at the beginning of a relationship would help. Why is it that the label is freaking me out so much? How do you guys set boundaries to prioritize yourself when you feel this way?

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.