How can I overcome intrusive thoughts and rebuild intimacy in my relationship?

Hi there everyone, I’m really struggling with obsessive thoughts over my relationship with my girlfriend. Everything was going so well for the first couple months and one day I started doubting - ever since then I’ve been trying to combat thoughts that our relationship is doomed to fail. I used to love my girlfriend, now I keep getting intrusive anxious thoughts about breaking up with her and scrutinising her appearance. I spent a few years struggling before with HOCD but I’m free of that now, now I feel I’m heading into a spiral of obsession over whether on not this relationship is right. I don’t want my girlfriend to suffer and loose faith in me whilst I act all weird around her. How do I stay present to her and cope through it? Thanks

This is so long ah I’m so sorry. I’m really just trying to get all my thoughts out/ see if anyone feels similarly/ and what they’ve found helps. I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD, but I’ve looked into it a lot and feel that I might have ROCD. (I was once diagnosed with anxiety, but didn’t keep up with therapy because my parents weren’t keen on it.) Now I really want to invest in it to get a formal diagnoses/help, and I’m going to start looking into that. I’m scared that this isn’t ROCD, and I’m truly just in the wrong relationship, or not actually in love with my partner. But then sometimes I’m certain it is? We’ve been together for a year and a couple of months, and it has been wonderful. She makes me feel so loved and so understood. She is my best friend. But this summer when we were on break from school I started getting major doubts once I’d found out about ROCD and some of my thoughts lined up with it’s description. I’d already started to have doubts before the summer. She is the first person I‘ve slept with, and it took a while for me to have an orgasm, and that made me freak out and start to question my attraction towards her/our compatibility. Every time we’d have sex I’d worry over this. (Though I also think it has to do with me not knowing what I wanted/what I liked in bed) Our sex life got better but I still had obsessive thoughts. I have them daily - “what if I don’t love her” or “what if this isn’t the right relationship” or “should I be dating someone else” When I’m with her I’m constantly checking. If we kiss, I’ll analyze how it feels (or how it doesn’t) and the same thing goes for when she compliments me or says she loves me. I’ll say I love her but something in my brain will say “but do you really?” Honestly, I’ve gotten to the point where when I think of her or am with her it makes me so anxious. I literally feel it in my stomach and chest. It’s so hard to deal with. I can’t make it stop. I think part of it is that I’m anxious that I’ll feel anxious/start to have obsessive thoughts, so I get anxious? I just want to be able to think of her and be around her and not feel so scared and anxious and always checking. I feel like my anxiety isn’t letting me truly experience my relationship.

I should start by saying I have never been diagnosed with OCD or any mental disorder, but I’ve been researching ROCD per my girlfriend’s suggestion on and off for 6+ months now, and all of the symptoms and descriptions have hit home for me. However, I worry that I’m using ROCD as an excuse for continuously convincing myself she’s enough for me. The core of my fears is finding others attractive, and more attractive, than her — when I see a cute girl, or someone with features I naturally desire, my ruminations/episodes begin. After that it doesn’t take long to lead to doubting the validity of the entire relationship, and whether I even love her at all or want to be with her. It doesn’t help that we go to a university, so I’m inevitably surrounded by attractive people constantly. My main fear is that I’m settling for her appearance, even though I’m attracted to her and, truth is, I think she is hotter than me. And I feel like I tell myself that the only thing wrong with her is her appearance, because she is everything I want otherwise (personality, compatibility), but she’s just not my physical type. Every time that these fears and doubts build up from rumination, we talk about it. The end factor is that it almost always ends up being a result of intrusive thoughts. In fact, the last time we talked about this (about two weeks ago), we had makeup sex and I had an intrusive thought of a particular girl that’s in one of my classes. I did everything I could to purge this thought so I could enjoy the moment, and eventually it subsided — but I found myself “checking” by opening my eyes and staring at her throughout for reassurance that it’s her I want. I then told her about it right afterwards because of the massive guilt I felt, and she was a bit less understanding (rightfully..). We’re now at a breaking point, where she loves me and I’m pretty sure I love her, but I’m still having these doubts and I don’t know what to do to deal with them. I am convincing myself that they are significant and important because of their consistency now that it has been 8 months of us dating. I have told her I need time to think about this and figure out what I want, and I know this is destroying her, so I need to decide to break up or not now, because I can’t stand knowing she’s going through this. At what point am I just fighting this “gut feeling” because I know I’m settling, or is it just ROCD lying to me because she is so important to me?