- Date posted
- 1y
Looking for help/advice on Relationship OCD (rOCD)
Hello all. I am a 24 year old female suffering from pretty severe OCD. Although my OCD is exhausting and takes a toll on me, I have been able to lead a healthy and normal lifestyle. I was able to graduate college cum laude while being a dual sport athlete and a member of multiple clubs and organizations. I am proud to say that I now hold a full time job post graduation and live on my own (with roommates). My compulsions are primarily mental (counting, repeating, ruminating) and I also tap, go back and repeat things, and reread (to name a few). My main obsessions are the following; scrupulosity, fear of sex/sexual things, bad luck, death, and doing something until it “feels right” or I stop feeling that terrible feeling of fear and anxiety inside. I feel that I often “get stuck” mentally with my obsessions and my compulsions and I am not able to “move on” from thoughts and continue living my life. This has worsened over the years and I feel very alone with it. I’m not sure if anyone else gets that “stuck” feeling but it’s the absolute worst feeling ever. It’s important to note that I have kept my OCD a secret since my diagnosis. Only my parents, brother, and therapists know of my condition. I have never told any friends, boyfriends, or other family members as I am embarrassed and ashamed of my disorder. I often feel extremely alone suffering with OCD. Now to the rOCD, I was dating a 24 year old male until a month ago. We dated for 6 months. When I was younger, my first OCD therapist told me that one day I would most likely suffer with rOCD. Although I did not experience this when I was in my first relationship in college, I am undoubtably experiencing it now. My current therapist I am seeing has told me that I often ruminate about him. Once I start talking about him, I get “stuck” and feel I need to continue to talk about him/share details of our conversations, adventures, etc. and it makes no sense to me why I do it, but I am aware I do it. That’s another thing that I believe is OCD, is that I feel I must know the “why” behind everything and I often feel I NEED to get answers to things. I have talked about this in therapy, and my therapist says I need to sit with the “maybe.” This is quite difficult for me. I often think about the past and the future and I worry and obsess about both that I cannot focus on the present. Being mindful is hard for me. Back to my relationship anxiety, as I write this post seeking advice. I’d like to preface by saying although I’m about to disclose all of the terrible/ugly things about my boyfriend, I was with him for a reason. We had fun, I enjoyed spending time with him, I found him extremely attractive, and we had common interests. When my boyfriend and I first started talking (we mostly snapchatted) and his location is visible to all of his friends on Snapchat. I saw that he was at a strip club. As I mentioned before, sexual things trigger me (although I have been able to have consensual, safe (GOOD) sex with my 2 ex boyfriends and that has truly helped me heal). I noticed that he ended up being at the strip club many nights. I know he was still single at that point, but it made me uncomfortable and anxious. Since he is trying to make it as a pro athlete, he goes to the strip club with his 60 year old (single) male sponsor which I find totally strange that a 60 year old and a 24 year old are hanging out all the time, but I digress. Flash forward, there were a lot of problems in our relationship and I broke up with him a month ago. I found out that he has issues with alcohol (and though I hate to call him an alcoholic, I believe he is one). I have communicated my concerns with his drinking and I have asked him to seek help, but he refuses. One night he was so drunk he pissed the bed and I woke up covered in pee. There have been many nights where I’ve had to drive him, help him get dressed into his pajamas, or even help him stand upright and walk. We dated long distance for about 2 months. Now we are in the same area again. I have broken up with him 3 times throughout our relationship. The first time I broke up with him was because he got so drunk one night he started to become verbally abusive and aggressive in my face. I really thought he was going to hurt me. He screamed at me for no reason and called me a cu**, f***ing b****, and other hurtful things. I minored in psychology in college, and truly believe that he suffers from multiple personality disorder or Narcissistic personality disorder. The multiple personalities are heightened when he’s drunk. He apologized profusely and I took time to reflect on everything and decided to give him another chance since he was so drunk that night and had never treated me like that before drunk or sober. The next time I broke up with him was because he ignored me and disappeared. We had plans to get dinner and spend time with each other when he was in the area (while we were doing long distance) and he chose to ignore me for an entire day (and I could see he was active on social media). Then I forgave him again and we got back together. Not even a week had passed and he had promised me he was going to treat me better, turn over a new leaf, never get aggressively drunk and verbally abusive again, and not go to strip clubs (he hadn’t been at all for months since we started officially dating!) but he called me one night and said he was at the bar and I looked at his location and saw it was the strip club and I screenshotted his location and sent it to him and said “we’re done.” He blocked me on all social media after that. A month went by and I tried to call him to talk and get answers as to why he did that/why he lied to me and broke his promises. I didn’t get too many answers and was left completely broken hearted. I thought about him every day for a month and cried about him almost every day. He reached out to me on my birthday and I cried most of that day thinking about him. I stupidly asked him to get together last week and we met up and talked. I thought I got my closure but then I felt the urge to ask him to spend time together again the next night and we did and ended up having so much fun like the good old times. I stupidly slept with him (I wanted to!) but I feel terrible/guilty for doing so after how poorly he treated me. Things have become very complicated now and he has asked me out on a dinner date tomorrow night where we plan to discuss getting back together. After I slept with him the other night, he fell asleep and I went through his phone to find that after we broke up, he has been texting a stripper. He invited her over to his sponsor’s house (the 60 year old man) at 4 AM and I confronted him about it and admitted I invaded his privacy and went through his phone and I apologized for that, but I told him I don’t trust him after his lies and broken promises. He claims that all he did with the stripper was kiss but I worry they had sex and I worry that now I’ll get an STD. I have been experiencing very severe and heightened levels of anxiety since he and I reconnected. I have been obsessing about all of this and worrying about this stripper and him going to the strip clubs. In fact, he is at the strip club right now. He and his sponsor are “VIP” there and I googled what happens VIP and was very anxious and triggered to hear what they do in there. He apologized for everything and for blocking me and admitted that he has had a hard time with this breakup/he has cried about it many times. He told me he still loves me and cares about me and he has been talking to me every day and he doesn’t want to hurt me. I know it would probably be best for me to not put myself through any more hurt, but I love him (I could be obsessed with him?) and feel that it was so miserable and lonely without him that I want him back in my life. I fear that I will be cheated on, hurt again, and he will continue to drink, lie, and break promises to me. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? If so, I would really appreciate your advice.