I’m so lost and confused

I don’t understand how my boyfriend can love me so much after everything I put him through. He constantly shows me how much he loves me, yet I feel like I can’t fully appreciate it. I can’t explain how badly I behave towards him when these thoughts take over, how often I lash out because of them, and how many times I’ve told him exactly what’s on my mind. He tries to use logic to help me, but it never seems to work. And now, even as I’m writing this, I feel like crying—yet at the same time, my mind tells me that I don’t care. This horrible feeling inside me won’t go away. I keep thinking, “What if I don’t like him?” That thought is always there. I wonder if I had unrealistic expectations about this relationship from the beginning, since he is my first boyfriend. What if I convinced myself I liked him just because I wanted my first relationship to be perfect? And now, I just can’t accept the truth? It scares me even more knowing that he moved to my city for me. I feel like I’m constantly upset, constantly sad. And despite everything, he’s always there for me. That makes me feel even worse because I don’t know what to do to feel okay again. Every time I talk to him, I get this strange feeling inside me, and I’m terrified that it means my thoughts are actually true. He tells me that my happiness shouldn’t depend only on him, that I should focus on more than just this relationship—because for over a year now, my mind has been stuck in an endless loop of questioning whether I love him or not. He asks me, “Who are you fighting? Why do you care so much? You’ve been asking yourself the same question for over a year—shouldn’t you know the answer by now?” And my response is always, “Because I want to be with you.” But then, when I try to answer whether I like him or not, more doubts take over. I start thinking, “Maybe I just can’t accept that I don’t love him. Maybe I just want to keep this relationship perfect.” The worst part is that he has never done anything wrong. He has always been patient, kind, and loving, yet I feel so lost. I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand what I feel. And I don’t understand why I can’t understand what I feel. He also tells me that ever since I started reading so much about relationships and OCD online, I have gotten worse. And he’s right. I have become much worse than I was before. The problem is that before, I thought I was at my worst, but looking back, I was still able to feel happiness at times. Now, I feel completely stuck. I don’t know if I’m crying because I hate this feeling, or because I don’t want to think this way about him. It feels like I don’t even know what’s happening to me anymore.

Hi everyone. I’m really struggling and I need to let it all out. I’ve been dealing with ROCD (or what I think is ROCD) for a long time, and I feel like I’m at my breaking point. I’m in a loving relationship with a boyfriend who is kind, understanding, and patient. But ever since I started reading a lot online, googling symptoms, talking to AI like ChatGPT, searching for reassurance, things have gotten worse and worse. And now… I feel completely disconnected from my feelings. I don’t know what’s real anymore. My boyfriend told me that he believes I’ve convinced myself that I have something that needs to be treated, and that all this constant researching is making me feel worse. And honestly, I think he’s right. Before I fell into this cycle, I could be more intimate with him. I used to say “I love you,” I used to feel warmth. Now I don’t say it anymore. I haven’t in a long time. And it hurts him. And I know I’m hurting him, and that makes it even worse. He also said that maybe I’m having these obsessive thoughts because I don’t have a daily purpose, that I need to get occupied, to stop being consumed by this. And others in my life have told me the same. He even suggested taking a break from each other for a week, just to give me space. But I’m terrified of that. I’m scared that the thing I fear most will become “the truth.” I’m scared I’ll feel relief, and that will mean everything I fear is real. But he told me that if I don’t want the break, maybe it means I still care. Still love. Still want this. The problem is, I don’t know anymore. And that’s what’s killing me. I’ve also had a psychologist who told me that just because I feel guilt or “care,” it doesn’t necessarily mean I like him — and that sent me spiraling. She said that maybe I care about people in general, but it doesn’t mean I love him. And it made me feel like I’m just lying to myself. That maybe I’m holding on out of obligation, or because I set in my head that I “have to be with him.” And even when he tells me beautiful things — logical things — things that SHOULD make me feel safe and seen… I don’t feel better. I just feel more empty. And then I start spiraling again: “If this doesn’t help me feel better, then something must be wrong.” “What if I’m just pretending?” “What if I’ve been lying to myself all along?” I feel like there’s something wrong inside of me. Like no matter what anyone says, or how much love I’m given, I can’t feel it. I just want to know what to do. I want someone to tell me what this is. I want to stop feeling like I’m running after a version of myself that used to feel, used to love, used to be calm. I don’t know if this is ROCD or if I’m just slowly facing a truth I’ve been afraid to accept. Please, if anyone has felt this way, I need to hear that I’m not alone. And if you’ve come out the other side… how? My relationship is perfect and he is perfect, i just deal with this and i am far from happy.

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.