ROCD has sucked the life out of me

I know you’re going to say to talk to my therapist about this but honestly just looking for a little support. I have had intense rocd for pretty much the entirety of my relationship, (1.5 years) to the point where I question whether It’s rocd or just intuition that I pushed down from the beginning. It’s gotten better in general but i still have really bad days and sometimes weeks. That combined with the fact that I haven’t had a case this bad in any of my previous relationships (definitely it was present but not in the all consuming way it’s been in this one) has just made it extremely difficult not to think that if I were in a different relationship I wouldn’t have to deal with all of it. It’s a constant battle between my intrusive thoughts and compulsions about the relationship being wrong and my feelings not being enough, and knowledge that the ocd is something prevalent in many aspects of my life that i am going to have to live with regardless of what relationship I’m in. I’m just so tired of feeling guilty and not knowing what the right thing to do is, and fighting between the desire for escape and peace, and the desire to conquer my illness, and not truly believing that either result is possible.

Relationship OCD

Abbeyma513

Date posted: Yesterday

You’re not alone

Anonymous

Date posted: Yesterday

I feel you. I truly do. I’ll start by saying there is hope. In my case, I have deep intrusive thoughts that not only am I with the right / wrong person, but are they cheating on me. It gets very intense at times. This coupled with unfortunately well practiced compulsions of various sorts to gain certainty of if the person I’m with is in fact cheating on me. This obviously brings on the question of am I with the right person. The struggle is real. I am working with a great therapist now and that is / has helped but I will also add sometime things just click— diversions, distractions and others things to redirect. For almost a month I have been able to stay off social media. That I took on as my own sort of ERP totally independent of the previous therapist I was working with. I wasn’t only using social media as a compulsion but it was part and so empowering to know I could and can do it. I’m coming off a 4 year relationship where I was dealing with all this. It’s rough but there is hope. In my case several things were going on def my ROCD but we were a bad fit and mismatch … I love closeness and she loves space… she was beyond avoidant and I’m clearly anxious. So it wasnt just ROCD and what was worse is she would constantly try to hide behind and blame me as the problem or my ROCD. Point I’m making is you too can do it. There is hope and there will be harder days and periods but don’t loose hope. I don’t want to make your ruminations worse, but the desire to want to run is TRY to acknowledge the thoughts and almost distance yourself from them view them as birds just flying by. I apologize if it comes across then I’m over simplifying this. I know it is beyond not that easy and takes a tremendous amount of work the point I’m really trying to make and sorry for the long winded Answer is stay strong there is hope and you will be able to get to the other side of this.

Anonymous

Date posted: Yesterday

You are not alone here. Navigating potential incompatibility vs ROCD is a beast. I've dealt with these feelings in every relationship I've been in. From experience, I can tell you it will get better and become more clear but it will take a lot of work and soul searching. One thing that helped me was to identify what needs my partner was meeting. What was their effort to meet them? We can get so hung up on the details, but basic needs can't be understated. Identifying the basics for yourself may help you see what is perceived vs real. Then you can go from there. Trust the process and lean into it. It feels like the most crushing thing in the world... but there is hope, and there is healing ❤️ From these experiences, if we let them teach us right, we emerge more empathetic and compassionate people -- something the world desperately needs more of. Stay the course.

melly07

Date posted: 20w

rOCD

I wanted to talk about my experiences with rOCD since I currently do still suffer from it but I know if I talked about them. My thoughts are just gonna get stronger, but I’ll do it for the sake of talking about my experiences to others who feel like they’re alone. I have a very loving relationship actually my first healthy relationship we are currently still dating one year and six months. I would say these intrusive thoughts started to happen once I hit the one year mark with him. Nothing in the relationship has made me think these thoughts, but it just came. Like when my mind tried to make me think I liked another guy other than my boyfriend and that I was losing feelings for him. I started to panic because I knew that my heart belonged to my boyfriend and having thoughts that were against that belief it made me really anxious cause I never had those thoughts before. I was in and out of the care center at my school constantly having anxiety attacks, and it was affecting me day by day. I talk to my boyfriend about it because my mind can never keep secrets from him because then I would feel like that I’m lying to him… my mind just kinda works that way and I believe it’s due to the situation I have with rOCD. Luckily, he was really supportive.. in thoughts I’ve had was what if I don’t like him anymore or if he doesn’t do this does that mean he likes me or if he’s even the one just a lot of doubts about me and him in the relationship. And for anyone who’s experiencing stuff familiar to this you are not alone invalid only what you believe is what is true. And I know it’s gonna be hard to know what’s true or not because these thoughts that you have versus what’s in your heart you get confused but if you know that you love that person then that’s what true. Also, the only reason why it affected me a lot was because I kept trying to solve it and the only solution is to let those thoughts in and accept that you have those thoughts. I don’t mean as an accept that these thoughts are true, but accepts that those are the thoughts that you’re thinking because if you keep on trying to find a solution to remove them, it only just get worse.

ale03jandra

Date posted: 14w

ROCD Spiral

I’ve been dealing with rocd for about 9 months now. Off and on I’ve been able to manage it. When it first presented in the beginning my boyfriend and I had just celebrated our one year anniversary and about a month later I started getting random thoughts questioning if I really love him or things telling me I’m incapable of love and then my brain trying to get me to break up with him. I started therapy a little after and she explained rocd to me. Fast forward to now I had been doing decently but we’ve been under a lot of stress lately. He has three kids from his previous marriage who started staying with us full time Monday through Thursday. He lost his job so now we both work for mine doing grocery deliveries. But the day before last I was feeling really anxious and it feels like any anxiety opens the door for intrusive thoughts. So I decided to put a post on a different ocd community forum. And a lot of the times one of my thoughts is what if you don’t really have rocd and you actually want to break up with him. In a persons response to that post they basically said what if you don’t have it and you really do want to break up but what if you do have it and you don’t want to break up. I wasn’t prepared for the first part of that sentence and I went into a full blown panic attack after reading that and my boyfriend had to help bring me out of it. We talked and I messaged my therapist after but haven’t gotten a response. And for the rest of the day I felt drained and like the anxiety was still there and the thoughts were still running around my head. And last night he had fallen asleep and I felt like crying and I came into our bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror as I was and the thought that came up was look at you crying here this is your sign that you need to break up with him. But then I challenge my mind and ask why why do I need to do that and I can’t think of a single valid reason to break up with him. I love him I do. When I’m not spiraling we do so well and have amazing communication and he cares for me so much. But now I woke up this morning still really anxious and fighting my thoughts. Another thing too is that we have about a 9 year age gap and that had never ever been an issue in my mind. I love that he’s older than I am. Any guy my age was never something I looked for or wanted. Yesterday during the drained and still attacking thoughts I saw this younger guy at the store and then my mind immediately was like well this would be better for you he’s older and that’s why you should break up. I really really hate this and don’t want to feel like this anymore but I don’t want to leave him. He’s the person I see when I look into the future as my husband. But that’s also another thing I struggle with time and that creates more of an anxiety it’s like can I really do this for 20-30 years. But that’s not even just with my relationship I do that with anything that is long term and then I hyper focus on the time duration of everything and thinking I can’t do something for that long.

Relationship OCD

unkindledhis...

Date posted: 7w

SO-OCD and ROCD Struggles

It’s been pretty hard lately with my SOOCD and ROCD. While some may struggle with other manifestations, I on the other hand have to deal with the chronic anxiety that OCD brings. The thoughts feel like they’re in the back of my mind saying things about me and my relationship. They’re always there whispering and it’s gotten quite frustrating cause I can’t really enjoy the things I want to do. There are good times but damn is it annoying having to deal with the nausea the anxiety causes, the groinals and the false attraction that SOOCD brings. I’m thankful for my girlfriend that she tries to understand me and she really is my lifesaver. I know that my SOOCD and ROCD targets my love for her that’s why it gets stronger whenever I spend time with her. Fuck you OCD cause you ain’t ruining my love tor her. I try to be strong but damn is it hard. I’m finding myself back at square one where all symptoms are back and bad again. I’ve been doing compulsions, some occasional searching but more on constant rumination, repeating the same phrases and yeah admittedly compulsively looking here in this app to see if I relate to anyone. It sucks and I hate this. I hope you guys have tips on how to manage SOOCD and ROCD while in a relationship. I’ve had these themes for almost 2 years.

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ROCD has sucked the life out of me

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