ROCD-being in control. Comments pls!!

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.

in an ROCD spiral these past few days. i have a very sweet boyfriend who i love very much but i’m so scared my OCD is gonna drive him away. i get really freaked out when he doesn’t say certain things back every time like “i love you” or “goodnight” etc and also as of late he makes jokes about like fictional women being hot and we’ve had convos about like are we not allowed to also appreciate someone else’s attractiveness without reading into it (we’ve both expressed we are monogamous—i’m also demisexual so wondering if my brain just doesn’t think the same way his does) or like he made a joke about how it would be hot to see me kissing another girl (i’m bi) and i think yeah in a perfect world where i don’t have OCD i get the logic behind not reading into these things but every time he makes these jokes or we have these convos it sends my OCD into a major spiral like. if he really loved me and only me why would he even say these things? he is just very blunt and logical and straightforward and sometimes he’s really good at gently challenging my OCD and for him he doesn’t think these things seriously like ik he would never ever cheat on me (we have had discussions about our thoughts on cheating before). but like comments that he makes like this i am sure have no meaning to him other than just jokes or pointing stuff out but my OCD spirals every time he makes them. i’m really scared of ruining this relationship because i feel like i can’t just be the chill girlfriend who doesn’t read into this stuff. please help i’m spiraling and can’t even focus on work ): and it sucks because he really otherwise shows me how much he loves me in many ways and it’s just this thing that i can’t figure out and i keep feeling like having these convos with him will drive him away. or like telling him i don’t want him to make those jokes around me will make him feel like he is walking on eggshells around me and can’t be himself and that will eventually end the relationship which i don’t want. i just want my brain to stop panicking and reading into every single thing but my brain won’t understand what is normal or okay until someone tells me it is. i’m gonna go back to therapy soon but in the interim just wanted to come here. thanks in advance for any words or insight anyone can offer ❤️

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.