ROCD

Longish post but please stick with me. Hi everyone. I’m just looking for a bit of insight and if anyone else has felt this. It may sound strange and I’ve not had the courage to ask this for a while…. So I’ve been with my partner (27M) for almost 3 years now, I’m (24F). He recently proposed which I was not expecting so soon. We always joked about it and when he said he looked at rings I was happy. I knew it was coming at some point but not so soon. When it happened it’s immensely triggered my ROCD. And I’m struggling with something in particular, I just want to know if anyone else has experienced it/ what the root cause could be so that I can work on it……. When he proposed it’s like my brain put a time stamp on our relationship. All of a sudden I’m counting the days of my relationship/how long I’ve been in one. It’s like my brain is “keeping track” of the amount of days/weeks that I have a relationship. It’s like my brain wants to be in a relationship for a very long time IMMEDIATELY, which is of course not possible. It’s like my brain is saying “you have to break up with him because you haven’t been together a while yet”. It makes it feel like time is going so slowly. I see couples together for 6/7years prior to my age/time and just think “how did they do it”? Same with married couples. It’s like I think “they’re lucky I wish I was at that many years already”. But at the same time, the thought of being with someone for a long time makes me feel anxious and sick and like I have to “escape” or “get out” urgently. I’ve struggled with this particularly for a month now and am just wondering if anyone else has experienced the same or similar? Or can anyone offer insight into what this really could be deep down/root causes, as I REALLY want to figure out why and where it’s coming from. Sorry for the long post. Advice appreciated ❤️✨

I just saw my boyfriend, and even though everything was okay on the outside, inside my mind it was a storm. I kept having thoughts like: “You don’t like him.” “You’re not feeling anything.” “You’re pretending.” “You don’t care.” And then, he said something sweet — something that should’ve made me feel happy: “We should marry.” And instead of warmth, I felt anxiety. A pit in my stomach. A voice in my head saying: “You don’t want that.” “You’ll never stay with him.” “If you really loved him, you’d feel joy.” And I hate it. I hate that I’m in this state. I don’t feel connected. I don’t feel clarity. I don’t even know what I feel anymore. I just feel… numb. And the worst part? It feels like I don’t even care. But I know I do. Somewhere, beneath all the noise and panic and obsessive thoughts, I care. I want to feel close to him. I want to stop second-guessing every word, every touch, every thought. This is ROCD. It makes me question everything. It makes me feel like I’m lying — even when I’m not. It steals the moments that should feel warm and turns them into confusion. If anyone else feels this awful mix of numbness, fear, and guilt — please tell me I’m not alone.

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.