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Ever since I found out about relationship OCD, I’ve been researching non-stop. Google, Reddit, ChatGPT, this app… I regret it deeply. Before I knew what ROCD was, I still had disturbing thoughts, but I didn’t spiral like this. I didn’t question reality this deeply. But now… it’s like I’ve implanted in my mind that I have a disorder that’s “unfixable” or that only gets better with time. And even though I struggled before, since I started researching obsessively, I feel like I’ve completely lost control. My boyfriend told me that I’ve gotten worse ever since I began searching. And I see it — I used to be able to express love. I used to say “I love you” a lot. Now I can’t even say it. And when I did say it before, I think I was using it like a compulsion — like if I say it enough, maybe the thoughts will stop. But they didn’t. Now I can’t even be intimate without feeling this horrible discomfort, sometimes even disgust. And I remember telling my therapist that — and she said it’s not normal to feel disgust when your partner touches you. That devastated me. It stuck in my head. And now? It all feels real. Not like “just thoughts.” It feels like I’m denying the truth, like I’ve ruined everything by digging too deep. I’m not myself anymore. I’m not the girlfriend I used to be. I feel like I’ve lost everything — even my ability to feel love. There’s a constant pressure in my chest, like a weight I can’t describe. And no matter what anyone says — whether it’s hopeful or scary — it doesn’t bring me peace. I feel completely lost inside my own mind. I don’t even know why I’m posting. Maybe because I just want to feel less alone.

for a few days now I’ve been super anxious about my relationship. I’ve been anxious about it before but lately it’s been worse than normal. I’m in a very healthy and loving relationship, I love my boyfriend so much and he treats me so so well. The only thing is that I’ve been having scary thoughts that what if I’m lying to him and don’t actually love him? What if I don’t find him attractive? And like what if the only way to stop being anxious is to break up with him? I don’t want to leave him and I am so scared. I feel like I’m lying to him by not telling him what’s going on because he might think I’m actually going to leave him, which I’m really not going to. I have had anxiety since before we started dating and incestual and sexual ocd, then I got into a point where I started having religious ocd, and now I have ROCD on top of that I think. I’ve never been diagnosed but I’m going to therapy and figuring things out but I’m so scared. Idk what to do and I feel like if I talk to anyone they’re going to say I have to leave him.

Lately my ROCD has been flaring up, making it difficult to even be around my partner. I’m having so many troubling thoughts with the one that bugs me most being, “maybe this isn’t my OCD, maybe I’m just in a bad relationship and I’m trying to cover it up and blame it on OCD”. This thought really scares me because there are valid doubts in my relationship but my boyfriend and I have openly talked about them and are trying to work through. My OCD won’t take that as an option tho. It makes me feel like I need to be 100% certain that these things can NEVER happen again or else we need to break up immediately. So anything he says in that moment about trying to do better, my OCD will not trust anything he says and just wait until the next “bad thing” happens. When I continuously bring these things up to my boyfriend even tho nothing has happened between these conversations, it exhausts him making it feel like he can never do enough. I feel so bad because I know it’s just my OCD getting in the way. But then that thought creeps in saying I can’t trust him because I need to protect myself. It’s just an ongoing cycle that is so tiring. I don’t even know what I want anymore. We are very opposite when it comes to emotions. I am very in tune and very emotionally intelligent, and he is not. He is the opposite. I do recognize that my anxious attachment style may be hard for him too but I can’t stop thinking about all of his flaws and all of the things he needs to do to make our relationship better. It makes me feel like I’m the only one putting in effort when in reality that is not true. But my OCD does make me feel like he doesn’t really love me or want to be with me and that he feels forced to be with me or do things for me. It makes me feel like him being with me is like a chore. Can anyone relate? My OCD just makes me feel like I can’t trust anything he says to make our relationship better.