Today I was open to my best friend about OCD and that made things a lot worse. She triggered me so much saying that she thinks my current partner is just a phase or that I’m just with him because I don’t want to be alone and it made me feel SO bad. Today my breaking up urge has been so strong and I feel so inclined to give up. 😞
Hiya, I have been in a stable, loving relationship for the better part of 15 years and everyone in my life loves my partner too. Yet, when I tried to tell them about my ROCD when it came on, they triggered me so badly. People said but what's going wrong with your relationship to feel this way? Etc. People don't have realistic ideas about relationships in general so they think any negative emotion means something which is terrible for those of us with OCD. The other thing people do not get is what OCD actually is, they are not used to the idea that it might be able relationships with people, people think it is all about contamination and overt compulsions. What I found helpful was to talk more generally and be open about OCD in general, e.g. ruminating on a thought or a word someone used in a conversation can cause a panic attack etc, that's when people started to understand what it actually is.
@TaraLynC Everyone in my life loves my partner too but since my best friend hasn’t met him yet, she has a weird perspective of him. She told me that I have to stop focusing on my OCD and I have to try to stop focusing on labeling what it is that’s happening to me and just work on myself. I get what she’s saying but not labeling it is scary too. Right now I’m going through a rough patch with my partner so it makes things even harder because I don’t want to add more weight to what we’re going through plus I think talking to others (especially my partner) about my intrusive thoughts is a compulsion.
@yarizard 100% understand, it is so difficult to talk about ROCD to anyone because even doing so can give more weight to it and as you said be a compulsion in itself. I agree as well sometimes talking about it with my partner is my compulsion, because I either want to confess the thoughts or because I know he will reassure me etc. So hard!!
hello you should open up to ur current partner too. this is something you guys could try to combat tgthr. they give u the space to open up and talk abt ur fears and u do the same for them if necessary. also some ppl may not understand rocd its good that u recognized the trigger and maybe u could talk to ur friend and let them know that what they said was triggering
@simplyexhausted I have opened up to him actually, but since I’ve been going through this for so long, I don’t want to burden him any longer. I’m trying to be more autonomous because I don’t want to keep increasing my codependency even though he is my main support. I tried opening up to my best friend but it’s hard, my partners truly the only one who understands.
@yarizard ik its hard but opening up to him will allow u guys to go through this tgthr
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.
My best friend hasn’t spoken to me in months. It triggered some symptoms that I now realize fall along the lines of ROCD. It’s making me behave in a way that chased my other friends away. I’m feeling very hopeless and guilty.
I’ve had relationship OCD for about five months now and it’s been excruciating, I know it’s relationship OCD but my brain can’t grasp it, I was doing very well for about a week a few days or a week. It’s about the only amount of time where I feel that sense of clarity or almost back to normal definitely not normal but life seems pleasant again. I made a bad mistake. I was with my friend on a sleepover and we decided that we wanted to eat some good food and be stoned because we enjoy eating food and being stoned since it tastes much better, no I believe this just made it worse. I know that weed can be worse for some people. It can make them overthink and I think it’s triggered me to relapse, because my worries and intrusive thoughts are about something so much more worrying in a way and it feels so much more real, I guess I’m hyper focusing on every single thing about my partner’s personality every floor and everything he doesn’t do, and my brain is telling me that means I should break up with him, ”if he dosent do this this means the relationship isn’t right” “ or anything happens my brain will tell me that I’m losing interest or losing feelings and I get many intrusive statements. Like “you like being single more” literally any time I’m enjoying myself alone And I’m getting many that don’t make sense “he doesn’t accept you for who you are so that means that you need to break up” over an interest that we both have…… And it’s so frustrating because any time I talk to him about anything serious or obviously I’m not happy about something because that’s normal in relationships not everyone is gonna do everything right so you have to communicate it but then I could get intense urge to break up and it makes me upset, or when I’m trying to tell him how I feel my brain will just say that I need to break up it’s honestly so confusing and I’m falling back into the compulsions and reassurance seeking all over again and my brain is making me believe it’s not relationship OCD because what if it’s not relationship OCD and it’s actually not the right relationship for me? But I don’t want it to be that I love him so much and I honestly can’t imagine not being with him. It’s so confusing and my head hurts and I just need someone to talk to.
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