I really want to talk about my OCD with my boyfriend, I've talked about anxiety and self harm intrusive thoughts before with him and he was really helpful, but I really want to talk to him more about it. However, he used to have depression and I'm worried if I talk alot about my mental health it will trigger his mental health. Also I know how emotionally draining it is to help someone with a mental illness and I don't want to put that feeling of responsibility on him. Should I talk with him about it or not?

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 😭

Posting here for the first time, please be gentle, not sure if this is applicable! I definitely struggle with reassurance-seeking especially when it comes to real events, but over time have found ways to self regulate and use self-guided therapy apps and worksheets to help fight any challenging thoughts as they come up throughout the day. There are a few times when I’m unable to do the work myself and don’t feel as emotionally strong, which I feel is reasonable considering how exhausting my symptoms can be (for clarification, I am diagnosed with anxiety but not OCD, although I fear all signs lead me here). Only on the extremely difficult days, I’ll ask my partner for reassurance (he is aware of my tendencies and is quite patient) but he has his own baggage, and having a partner asking for reassurance can be triggering for him, as he was accused of several negative things in his last relationship. He quickly gets overwhelmed with me and feels that I don’t trust him. He is convinced that is the motive of my reassurance seeking. Today in particular, I woke up from a nightmare that reminded me of a past event. After struggling with it myself all day I brought it up in the evening to try and get some help, and did bring it up three times after that. I am always soft and gentle when I ask for help, and even asked for a lighthearted “pinky promise”, which actually seemed to bother him. I understand that it’s not his position to emotionally support me whatsoever and that reassurance seeking can become harmful to the both of us, but for the one-off days where I am having a really difficult time, I feel extremely unsupported by him. For context, my partner has broken my trust before. My thoughts took off during that time. It’s been a few months since then, and me openly seeking reassurance from him is not a frequent occurrence, since I’ve started my self-help. I actually feel I’ve come a long way but I do have days like today that set me back. I love and trust him with all my heart, but man does my inner monologue make me work for it. I just don’t know how to get him to understand that it’s me having to work for it, not him. Unfortunately from the way he reacts, I’ve grown to feel unsupported by him, and am now rarely emotionally vulnerable with him. I am curious if there are any suggestions on helping him help me in a sense.. I don’t know how to get him to understand that it has nothing to do with a lack of trust. I have briefly opened up to him about my strong intrusive thoughts and figured it would help him understand a bit better but I don’t know what to do. I want to add: I have tried talking to him about how I felt unsupported. He just tells me he feels accused and would be supporting me at his own expense. He has even told me that I shouldn’t talk to him about these things, even though the thoughts I struggle with are directly related to events in our relationship. I really can’t seem to get through to him.

I’ve struggled a lot with mental illness (severe social anxiety, depression, OCD), but have done a lot of work to get to the great place that I’m at now. I feel like a different person compared to how I felt a few years ago. Here’s my question: I started seeing someone really important to me. We’re not official yet, but we’ve been in each others lives for years and it feels like it’s the real deal. He struggles with OCD, and it’s much worse than mine ever was. My question is, do you think this is healthy for me, as someone who has done the work to get to a better place? He’s not in therapy, he’s against medication (I love my meds — they changed my life), and is generally in a different place than I am mentally.