Constant need for reassurance

I can’t stop thinking about my boyfriend with old crushes or people he found attractive I play images of it in my head on repeat all day long. So I have started a system where I make him promise he only likes me, gets turned on by me, and finds me attractive currently. It has gotten excessive and I make him promise at least multiple times and hour and if I see anything that reminds me of the old crushes I get triggered. I know me asking him to promise and reassure so many times is a compulsion and I physically can stop but everything in me screams no. My therapist and I have been trying EMDR which I really dislike because when talking about the “traumatic event” which is a dramatic way of saying me finding out about my boyfriends old crushes I feel the need to reach out and find validation from him. I think my therapist thinks that I have OCD because of some traumas but I really feel like i was born like this and that I have always had compulsions since I could talk. I am not sure what to think or do but I seriously need help with the whole asking for reassurance thing because when he doesn’t do I have panic attacks and threaten stuff I don’t mean in order for him to realize I need to hear. I don’t know how to stop and he didn’t say tonight before bed and its really bothering me so I have to reread his old messages again or something bad. I just wish someone who relates could give me some advice or suggest therapies for OCD other than EMDR and CBT which is what I am doing. I hate having to let this affect my relationship and hurt him but I feel like I have to be reassured.

Anoynmous

Date posted: 40w

Reassurance can get addictive, OCD feeds off of reassurance making it worse and causing you to spiral, which then leads you to wanting more reassurance. It’s a loophole. That’s why reassurance is so bad for us folks with OCD. Try writing down whenever you feel like you are about to find yourself making him promise and just keep it there. I also suggest clicking the SOS button on the bottom right corner. Use it whenever you feel the compulsions arise. Sometimes, with OCD, you just have to learn how to sit with the thoughts even if its bothersome. That’s also the whole point of ERP. OCD is a battle and it takes practice to learn how to cope with our reoccurring thoughts and feelings, but it’s nothing that you can’t beat. If your boyfriend has already promised, trust him. It’s just your OCD coming back around making him promise over and over. Good luck to you!

Anoynmous

Date posted: 40w

To kind of clear up what I said by the way, not all reassurance is bad. It’s only not good for us if we find ourselves constantly wanting it and leeching off of it to feel good temporarily.

forensicbeast

Date posted: 40w

I definitely relate to this. I’m not sure if this helps, but it did get better for me over time. I had to do a lot of work on my self esteem, and had to explain to my boyfriend what was going on in my brain. He understands that I cannot help myself when I ask, but that reassurance feeds into my anxiety. He will stop answering my questions after a couple times, and tries to help make me aware of the cycle I’m in (I know this is extremely hard and painful at times). I agree with the other commenter, try writing down how you are feeling. Sitting in that uncomfortable feeling and facing it head on is the only way I have been able to improve with this. Just try to stay grounded and remember that this relationship is good because you can trust them. If they were to break that trust, there is nothing you can do to prevent that. You can only have value in yourself and find something better in that case.

geminileo

Date posted: 25w

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.

Canes12345!

Date posted: 21w

My life with ocd

I’m a good man and I know that. My OCD revolves around relationships. While dating someone a truly enjoy, I find myself needing to compulse everything on my mind or else I feel like I’m being a liar or keeping secrets. I also am pretty confident I suffer from false memory ocd. I don’t like to put a label on things but I’m 99.9% sure I do. My compulsions a lot of times come from things I’m not even sure are real. The more thought I put into them, the more I start to believe they are real. One of the worst compulsions I had in my relationship was I had a thought “what if I find my ex more attractive” and “what if I thought the sex with them was better”. I ended up compulsing these things to my gf. After lots of time to think and get a ahold of myself I was able to remind myself that these things weren’t true and I was just in a downward spiral. There was a 2-3 month period where every time I was relieved of something then I would instantly think of something else. These compulsions have caused insecurity in my gf and I feel like a terrible person. Never meant to hurt her at all and was just trying to find a sense of relief. While I know it is not true, I can’t fix things with words and I feel terrible. I would love to hear from people with tricks and strategies that can help. I love my gf and want to fix things and understand this is not a relationship fixer app but I would like to know what are some ways you are able to deal with these kind of things.

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 😭

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Constant need for reassurance

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