I don’t know how to love my boyfriend

Hi, I wanted to make a post because I honestly feel really alone. This is going to be long, but please bear with me and let me know if you relate or have any advice. I’m currently dating quite possibly the best guy I’ve ever met. And by FAR the best guy I’ve ever dated. We have such a strong connection and it’s my first healthy, non toxic relationship. He treats me with so much understanding, respect and kindess. But heres the thing. I have truly terrible ADHD, OCD, Anxiety Disorder, PTSD, Panic Disorder and depression. And more specifically I’ve come to realize- ROCD. I constantly have thoughts about him not wanting me, lying to me, cheating on me, etc. I’ve seen a lot of posts about having ROCD where you doubt wanting to be with the other person- but I know with everything in me I want to be with this man. What I obsess about is him leaving me. I have constant anxiety, espescially since my PTSD kicked in about a year ago. Whenever I’m physically with him, I feel incredible. I literally do not get anxiety, and if I do its considerably less harmful- and hes there to hold me and comfort me. I have trouble eating because of my anxiety, but with him that’s never the case. We’ll have a great time- but the second I leave I begin to doubt how he feels. Whether he’s with another girl. Whether it’s too good to be true. Wondering when hes going to leave. These thoughts cycle and cycle in my head in a manner that is so all-consuming I can hardly focus on anything else. If I text him and I don’t get a text back I immediately assumt the worse. I thought at the beginning it was just because we hadn’t made it official, and when we did these feeljngs would do away. But then he made it official. And they didn’t. And then I thought when it got more serious they would go away. But then he told me he was falling in love with me( I felt the same). If anything, it made it worse. I told myself when he told me he was really in love it would get better. He did. We said I love you, and still. Constant worry. He’s not a great texter or caller, but I expressed to him how much I need communication and how much it bothers me when he doesn’t respond- and he apologized (WITHOUT getting defensive) and said that he would work on it. And he HAS. But still. It’s a cycle. The anxiety waiting for a text, the dopamine rush when I get it, respond, then wait and it starts again until he responds. Then again. It’s a vicious cycle and it’s tearing me apart. We’re open with each other- so everytime I get a thought I bring it up to him for reassurance. I explained to him that I’ve been hurt so badly before. The last time I was in love/my first love- was a narcissist who took my virginity by raping me and i stayed with him for a year and a half after that until it got to be too much physical and emotional abuse and he then fucked my best friend. Told everyone I was pathological when I tried to warn people about him. Every guy I’ve started to care about since then has lead me on or used me, and the less attention they gave me the more I needed it and the more I prioritized them. My dad was a narcissist who gave me love then would dissapear, or come back and I would have to take care of him as he was depressed and suicidal (I was 4) and to this day relies so heavily on me that when I don’t respond to him he says hes going to kill himself. I understand that I have severe abandonment issues, as well as trauma, and that I most definitely have an anxious attachment style. I’ve been trying so hard for the past two years to heal myself, but now its all the more important because I can tell that even though hes patient, it hurts him that I don’t feel secure, that I don’t seem like I trust him. I said that as time goes on and I get to knkw him more it’ll get easier, but I’m terrified that may not be the case. I’m so worried that I’m going to ruin this thing, that it will be a self fulfilling prophecy and that I’m missing out on this honeymoon phase, on being happy because I’m constantly worried about when it will be taken from me. I’m in therapy and we tlak about this a lot and I know it stems from my low self esteem and people-pleasing tendencies, but it doesn’t really seem to be helping all that much. Can anyone relate? Does anyone have advice?

This is just kind of a rant but any encouragement would be so much appreciated, thank you ❤️ I’ve been with my boyfriend for 3 years. He is incredible, kind, funny, smart, hardworking, so so loving-just an extremely good person. In 2021 I developed or at least recognized my OCD. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression, definitely quite the list. Each of these conditions mingle with each other and make life very difficult at times. At the beginning it centered around me being a bad person but slowly grew to be relationship OCD. I have fears that I don’t really love him, I’m not actually attracted to him, I’m going to cheat on him, he doesn’t make me happy or that he would be better without me and is a better person than me. Lately I have this fear that one day not to far away he will prepose to me and I won’t be excited. Or that he will feel more for me then I do for him, or that I will have to fake my excitement. I have this vision of myself feeling nothing when he asks me and having to fake it. It’s just such a sickening thought to imagine not feeling the intense joy I always knew I would feel if he proposed to me. It’s so strange because before I had bad OCD I used to dream of that day, I would ask if he thought he might prepose to me one day and if his answer wasn’t certain enough I would feel very sad. It’s terrible because I’ll get depressed and feel nothing positive for any aspect of the world-including my relationship, but OCD will take that and twist it into me not feeling anything positive for him. Which will in turn make me feel more depressed. You ever just want to hide and pause the world for a little while so you can catch your breath? It feels like the weeks go by so slowly but still suddenly I’m nearly grown up.

hi so i am pretty new to discovering ocd and trying to figure out why i am feeling the way i am feeling. i’ve never been diagnosed with ocd and honestly thought my anxiety was just super bad until it started affecting the way i saw my relationship. i’ve never had this bad of anxiety in my relationship and around november of last year is whenever i started noticing the cycle of repeated thoughts of “should i break up with him?” ive been with my boyfriend for almost two years. yes we’ve been through our ups and downs and our relationship has overall been such a beautiful relationship (super healthy compared to old ones) we love each other deeply and communicate and just overall find ways to help improve our relationship healthier and i’ve had a doubt here and there throughout these years but since last November i started feeling disconnected with him a little. i started to question sometimes if i really loved him. other times i told myself and asked myself if i should break up with him. if we really loved each other. i started focusing on his features a lot more. to the point where these thoughts around him made me feel so extremely uncomfortable. i’ve done all my research trying to figure out if I love him or not and trying to find reassurance and other people stories to see if they feel the same way I would also see how I feel whenever I was around him and it got to a point where I overall just felt very disconnected with him and a lot of different forms. I sometimes will forget about these thoughts and I will go out through my week throughout my days and I won’t even think about them and then something good will happen actually and it will trigger that immediate thought or sometimes we’re not even doing anything we’re just hanging out and being together and that will trigger the thought of wanting to break up with him and it makes me extremely uncomfortable and it makes me panic gives me anxiety and it just stresses me out because I know it’s not true, but my brain has tried to fully convince myself it is. I was doing really good and I figured out how healthy I wanted this relationship to be recently and because we’ve been so stressed on talking about our relationship and moving on even further and growing together, it started coming back and now I’m very very anxious again. I also have this type of anxiety of obsessing over things such as my health. When it comes to my gut health to my skin I have a very bad habit of having perfectionism not only within, my body face and everything around what is myself. I have a lot of anxieties, and I always thought it was just very severe anxiety until when I was researching why I was doubting my love for my boyfriend I heard of ROCD and I was super curious to know if I even have OCD, I brought it up with my psychiatrist and she doesn’t think that I have any. I have so much anxiety over this I feel like it’s physically and mentally controlling my body from how much it’s overwhelming me. I don’t know what to do. I keep convincing myself it’s not even RCOD and maybe I truly don’t love him but I have no other proof or feelings that that could be true. It’s just a thought that circles in my head and no matter how many reassurance I give myself it will come back within an hour, if someone could please give some advice I will have my own therapy session here soon and I’m very excited to know how I can overcome this