- Date posted
- 35w
friendship ocd...? relationship ocd??
so i have a best friend who i am very close with. her and i used to date, but we broke up months ago (back in february). things were hard at the beginning but we've made a ton of progress and are so happy with our friendship. breaking up really was the best option for us and being just platonic is the best option for us right now too. i know this and fully agree with it with my whole heart. however, lately i seem to get relationship OCD intrusive thoughts about it. like "what if i'm lying to her and myself and i do actually want a romantic relationship?" when i know for a fact i don't :( i imagine being in a romantic relationship with her or anyone at this point in my life and feel a lot of discomfort. it's just not what i want or need right now. i spoke with her about the intrusive thoughts to which she was helpful. she was really helpful with my relationship OCD when we were dating as well. she never judged me and fully understood that obsessions/intrusive thoughts weren't true wants or desires. anyways, my point is that she's always been understanding of my OCD and this discussion was no different. i had a lot of anxiety during the conversation because i was really afraid of being misunderstood or misconstrued. not being heard/being misunderstood is a huge trigger for me. but she reassured me a million times that she understood me and knew very well that it was just intrusive thoughts. the conversation was lengthy and required a ton of reassurance but i came out the other side of it feeling a lot better. one thing that sort of helped me was i think radical acceptance. i said to her, aloud, "even if i did have romantic feelings for you, it wouldn't be the end of our friendship." and she agreed with that! and even just saying/realizing that solidified to me that i definitely did not want a romantic relationship. thinking about the same idea now is really helping me too. i got triggered again after a few days because i looked back on some videos i took of us when we were dating. i listened to a voice recording i took of us and it made me want to look back on some videos i had taken as well. so, i watched the videos. they were nice. they didn't make me miss the romance, i just sort of thought they were nice to reflect on and remember. garnered nothing but positive emotions from me! part of me thinks that me not feeling sad/envious or feeling any sense of longing kind of proves that i definitely don't want anything romantic right now. but the more irrational part of my brain, the OCD part, sort of fixated on it and was like "what if you even looking at these videos proves that you do want a romantic relationship?" and also "what if looking at these videos will cause a series of events in which the universe punishes me for looking at them?" i think i'm feeling calmer from both thoughts, by reminding myself of the radical acceptance i mentioned earlier. and then typing all of this out has helped too! also i think maybe the universe is too vast and has much more important things to be doing like creating new stars. i'm just some random girl. i am not the ruler of the universe and the universe also does not have a vendetta against me, it has a vendetta against no one.