Navigating relationship issues with OCD (?)

Sorry this is a long one that requires a lot of background and explanation, but thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it. One of the main things my (what I suspect could be but isn’t diagnosed) OCD focuses on is my relationship and a specific ongoing(ish) situation that’s affected us. It’s hard to summarise but the context is my boyfriend has a female friend he’s known for about ten years and over the years they’ve liked each other but previously never done anything proper or liked each other at different times etc. Last year my boyfriend and I had a rough patch and eventually he wanted us to break up, but it ended up only lasting for a month or so. This was partly due to general issues we’d been having, somewhat caused by my behaviour due to my mental health, but also because the previous year his old friend had told him she still liked him and he started feeling like he liked her again and since then he was essentially questioning whether he wanted to be with me or her. Within the time that we were struggling, he was talking to her a lot and flirting and having deep chats, which made me really insecure and anxious, and then while we were broken up he spent a lot of time with her and they kissed once. He didn’t tell me about this until six months after it happened, when we were already back together, but at that point said it had made him realise she wasn’t who he wanted to be with. It’s been a year since that time now and we’ve been a lot more communicative and dedicated more time to us and our relationship is much better than it was. Despite this, and despite the fact that there’s now no evidence of him liking her and he talks to her a lot less, and him reassuring me every day that he wants to be with me, I feel like I obsessively think about what happened last year and what I did that contributed to it happening, and it feels like by thinking about it and going over it again and again I can prevent it happening again by being aware, because I’m so scared of it happening again because it was so awful. But this thinking over/ruminating just makes me feel the emotions again and feel low and anxious a lot of the time and I feel almost constantly on guard for his behaviour/feelings changing or my own behaviour starting to lead us down the same route. As well as this, I get intrusive thoughts of images of the two of them together and of things he said to me when everything was bad that I worry he still thinks. I also sometimes get compulsions to look through his messages with her when he leaves his phone, which I know is bad and I really shouldn’t do and when I did this last year and two years ago I saw messages I really shouldn’t have that hurt a lot to read so I still remember vividly (looking at the messages also makes me feel like such a bad person which is kind of another obsession I have). Plus some of my other compulsions that for a while have related to keeping him safe have become more amplified and related more to keeping our relationship good. This past week I’ve been holiday with my boyfriend and has family, and his old friend and her family have also been in the same area and I was really anxious in the lead up because I thought we’d see her a lot and I didn’t know how I’d react, but we ended up only seeing her briefly a couple of times, and it almost seemed like she was avoiding us because of how awkward it would be. But knowing she was nearby still made me anxious and worry about her feelings for my boyfriend coming up again (although she now has a boyfriend too) or my boyfriend’s feelings coming up. I had a few conversations with my boyfriend about it because of how I was feeling, and we’ve had similar conversations fairly regularly over the last year. Within these conversations I find myself seeking a lot of reassurance from him, but no matter how much he gives my brain always brings something else up to be anxious about and it’s like no amount of reassurance actually reassures me. I know that this is typical of OCD, but I don’t know how to navigate it when this feels like such a genuine and important thing to be worrying about when it’s an actual situation that happened in the past and could happen again, and something that we need to discuss and be aware of in order to keep our relationship good and healthy (although my level of anxiety and reassurance-seeking arguably doesn’t do that). I haven’t talked to my boyfriend about thinking I have OCD yet, and I don’t really know what to do about it or how to prevent it coming into this situation which triggers it so much. From what he tells me my boyfriend has basically moved on from it all and would probably like to just forget it all, but keep being more dedicated to us, but I remember things for ages, especially hurtful things so I don’t know how to move on, but my (potential) OCD is basically making it worse when it could actually not even be a big deal anymore. Sorry again that this is so long and rambling. Thank you so much if you read it all and if you have any thoughts/advice to share I’d really appreciate it.

Anonymous

Date posted: 2y

I can relate to this. Everything that I’ve been learning that has helped (and has been hard) is: 1) Accepting uncertainty (bad things and good things can happen) 2) Accepting that I don’t have control (people in relationships can do what they want) 3) Remembering that even though these thoughts feel so real and so important, if they were real problems I could take actions to solve them but if they are just intrusive thoughts no amount of reassurance will fix them, the only thing that improves them is acknowledging them and directly my focus elsewhere over and over again. Good luck! I’m working through something similar and it’s just focusing my thoughts on what I want to focus on instead of what OCD wants me to focus on that is helping.

itsquietuptown

Date posted: 2y

@Anonymous Thank you. Are you doing this work on your own or having some form of therapy?

Anonymous

Date posted: 2y

@itsquietuptown I’m doing ERP therapy with a therapist and it has really helped. By going through, somewhat scary exposures it has helped to quiet the noise by a lot. It used to feel like the most important thing in the world to fix things and make sure they were just the right way. But with each exposure I’m learning “Oh, that’s not so bad” despite what OCD tells us, there are many different ways to view things.

itsquietuptown

Date posted: 2y

Also my boyfriend has expressed that he feels like he’s been a bad friend to her since last year because after deciding to come back and stay with me he saw her a lot less, basically because of how uncomfortable it made me but also because she’s at uni far away now. He wants to be able to have a good relationship with me and also be friends with her but so far that’s proved difficult, again basically because of me. I feel like a bad person for stopping him having that friendship, and I think I do trust him that nothing would happen just as soon as they spent time together again (though the OCD thoughts make me doubt this), but I just feel so terrified of their feelings coming up again so I don’t want to have to cope with situations where he’s spending a lot of time with her. We all three have some hobbies in common and apparently she’s suggested we all go and do one of them sometime or something, but my boyfriend hasn’t said yes because I don’t feel okay with it, but now I’m wondering if I have to do that. I can’t work out if it’s OCD making me not want to let him have the friendship just in case, or if it’s a genuinely okay boundary to have because of the past. I also think it would just be insanely awkward spending time all together, but I feel even less comfortable with the idea of him spending time with only her so maybe I need to be more mature.

JazzyRoses

Date posted: 19w

Being Cheated On OCD

Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭

marryyyy

Date posted: 14d

ROCD need help..

Hey, I really need your opinion – I think I might be struggling with Relationship OCD, and these thoughts are driving me crazy. I’ve been officially diagnosed with OCD, and I believe I also have ROCD. My obsessive thoughts often focus on one specific girl from my boyfriend’s past. She had messaged him a few times, and I think she liked him – but he never liked her back. He barely knew her, never found her attractive, and never wanted anything with her. She’s just a good friend of his best friend – not an ex or anything like that. He told me that he happened to be in the same group as her a couple of times – once at a birthday party and once at a fair – just because his best friend brought her along. He made it clear several times that she’s not his type at all, neither in looks nor in personality. He described her as someone who likes to go out and party a lot, and said that’s just not what he’s into. He also said he didn’t ask about her – these things were mentioned to him before our relationship. Almost all of this happened before we met – except for one thing: the fair. That was just one day before our second date, back when we had just started getting to know each other. She was with his friend group that night. He said he only said hi and bye to her, nothing more. The next day, when we met again, we were talking about his friends’ heights. He casually mentioned that his friend was the same height as that girl – 1.70 m. Ever since, I keep wondering: If she meant nothing to him, why did he even talk about her? Or did he actually talk to her that night, even though he said he didn’t? I know he said they barely exchanged a word, but somehow he still knew that detail. I just find that strange. Another example: He once said she was “kind of slutty.” Then, one or two months later, when I brought it up again, he said he didn’t know if she was or not, and that he didn’t care at all. That really confused me. I keep wondering: Why did he say something like that in the first place if he supposedly doesn’t care about her? I also notice this really frustrating cycle: When I talk to him about something that doesn’t make sense to me, I feel brief relief. But then, almost immediately, another thought or detail pops up that feels “off” again – and I feel like I have to bring that up, too. I can’t tolerate the uncertainty. It’s like an endless loop. These little “inconsistencies” – or what I perceive as inconsistencies – make me spiral, even though I do believe he’s being honest with me. I want to trust him. But I have this constant urge to bring up every little thing that doesn’t feel logically right. Every detail stays in my head for days, and it’s really hard not to talk about it. Does this sound like Relationship OCD to you? Do any of you go through this constant analyzing and doubt? I’d really appreciate your thoughts. I’m slowly ruining my own relationship..

Relationship OCD

marryyyy

Date posted: 12d

need help please ! 🫩 ROCD

Relationship OCD

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Navigating relationship issues with OCD (?)

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