Advice on anxiety with dating

I’ve been going on dates with this guy. He is so so sweet, respectful beyond belief and what I want in a guy to date. My anxiety/ OCD keeps getting to me because I see him active on Facebook and Instagram and he hasn’t responded to my message for over an hour yet it active on socials. I don’t want to sound obsessive or crazy but I get worried he isn’t as interested. I try to tell myself he could just need to a break from talking to people, he may be bored and forgot I messaged him, etc. but my OCD keeps telling me he isn’t interested, is annoyed with me, etc. I’ve been cheated on before and had more than one time where this exact thing happened and the guy was not interested and kept ignoring my messages and it’s freaking me out. When he does message me back regularly he always sounds very interested in me still and says he wants to go on more dates still but my OCD won’t shut up. Any advice?? I hate that my OCD does this and I refuse to keep messaging over and over first. I don’t wanna look or seem desperate…. Help.

Anonymous

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 1y

For me what has helped in situations like this is to notice what reassurance seeking behaviors I’m engaging in and then refrain from engaging in those, and allow myself to be fearful/uncomfortable without trying to solve it or fix it. Essentially the situation is fundamentally uncertain - you can’t know how this person actually feels - but since that uncertainty is uncomfortable, it sounds like you want to try to seek certainty by doing things like (1) checking whether he’s been active on social media and (2) trying to reassure yourself by coming up with reasons he may not have messaged you. As odd as it sounds, even #2 is not helpful or necessary! Because even though you might be thinking reasonable things like “there are plenty of good reasons he might not message me back”, it’s still fundamentally uncertain, so as long as your doubt is there you really won’t feel comfortable and it’s possible to go back and forth forever thinking about it. So what has helped me is if I notice a strong temptation to do something like check the last time a person was active, or go reread a text I sent, I just don’t allow myself to do it even though it will mean I’ll temporarily feel quite anxious and uncomfortable. Or if I think “why hasn’t this person texted me back, did I do something wrong?” instead of trying to come up with a good answer, I might just say “I don’t know! Don’t need to be afraid of it though” and move on. It’s really really hard at first but over time it gets better and now after a few months of doing this I feel way less stress about this kind of thing. Another note though is not to be too much of a perfectionist about “never giving in” because that has also made me feel not great. I think the important thing just knowing that 1) the situation is fundamentally uncertain 2) it’s okay to feel anxious and uncomfortable for a while and you don’t have to respond to that to make it go away - it’ll go away on its own, and 3) that responding to anxiety by engaging in a compulsive action will encourage that anxiety to come back later in a similar situation. And then you can act accordingly

Anonymous

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 1y

@Anonymous Another thing that helps me is to know that dating is really an experiment - there’s not a way to know the outcome ahead of time. All I can do is try to act reasonably with the information I have at hand. So for dating that means even if I’m worried that a person might not like me, or I might not like them, I know that isn’t something I need to worry about - I can focus on the action I want to take and then eventually I will find out whether or not they like me or I like them

Doopydoowa

Date posted: 25w

Some Advice? Social media usage

Hey everyone so I am having a really terrible bout of anxiety due to an exam I have tomorrow. It has sent me spiraling. And unfortunately my ROCD/anxiety has gotten ridiculously triggered. So I had a birthday party this past weekend. I got all dressed up and put on some cute makeup. It was a lot of fun. I then posted some pics from the party, some of them included him. They were cute! I had never posted him in anything in my feed. So I was a little nervy. I was hoping he would comment something on the post or repost or something, but he just dropped a like. I feel like he usually comments on posts that he is tagged in, so for some reason this really hurt me that he didn’t comment or interact more with it. Like he doesn’t like I posted it? Or is he ashamed of me? I don’t want to be shallow, but some validation on social media would be nice? Or maybe him just posting me would feel nice. I want to talk to him about this, but I am so terrified that this will make me seem so shallow and a fein for public validation. I’m worried he thinks this of me, as I have posted on social media. I’m worried this makes him like me less. Someone please provide some expertise on how it would be best to handle these circumstances, as silly and minescule as they may seem. I’ve read a lot online (I know it’s not good) about how to handle relationships online. I know it’s more important obviously how the relationship appears offline. But I’ve been pretty obsessive about this and have a hard time letting it go. Part of me wished I never posted anything. All of this anxiety could have been avoided.

Relationship OCD

geminileo

Date posted: 24w

Not doing well (vent)

Hi, I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been struggling for the past month, it’s been a mix of ocd flare ups and depressive episodes. I recently got into a new relationship, one I was not expecting at all as I had just broken up with my long term boyfriend over the summer and was expecting the cycle of being alone for a few years and then dating again. But anyways, my current boyfriend is amazing and so caring and sweet, I told him before we even started dating about my ocd and how I sometimes need constant reassurance and that it can be a lot to deal with it and that I can become clingy and annoying and he didn’t even bat an eye, he just said he likes me as I am and that he will be able to help and support me. We’re dating long distance rn as I’m finishing up college but we constantly text and video chat/call almost every night. My ocd has been constantly gnawing at that and it’s causing my abandonment issues to flare up horribly, I’ve told him a little bit about my ex boyfriend as he was not a very good person, he was much older than me (12 years) and at the start of our relationship he was amazing and said he could deal with my mental health issues (I know no one is obligated at all) but I would communicate to him that it scares me when he doesn’t talk to me for weeks at a time, and at first he said he would try to be better about that but then it turned into him saying I’m annoying and clingy and that I bother him and that he just wants alone time but during that alone time I wouldn’t hear from him at all for two weeks. He also stopped caring about my interests and said I was annoying when I would talk about them and would even get mad when I tried to talk about my day. Anyways being in this new relationship has caused me to fear that my current boyfriend is going to leave me, lost interest in me or that he’s annoyed with me and hates me, which unfortunately has caused me to give into my compulsion of reassurance so I’ve been asking him a lot “do you still like me?” “We’re still together right?” “Have I annoyed you?” And I hate myself for doing that. He is so sweet and I don’t want to be like this, I don’t want to drain him, i genuinely have never felt this way about anyone I’ve dated but it’s like he was meant to be in my life and we clicked instantly like it felt like we’ve known each other forever and I don’t want to lose him. My avoidance is getting bad and I’m trying to stop myself from pushing him away but I just feel so guilty and ughhhh it’s so frustrating. I just don’t know how to handle this, I want to be with him and I want to make him happy but I hate that my brain works this way.

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 😭

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Share your thoughts so the Community can respond

Advice on anxiety with dating

Related posts

Be a part of the largest OCD Community

Be a part of the largest OCD Community