Anybody with HOCD/ROCD that can relate? Sometimes when I’m around my girlfriend I get really irritable and anxious cuz I’m so in my head and I feel bad because all I want to do is be away from her in those moments when she doesn’t really understand what’s going on. I have a tendency to focus on her negative attributes and they get so loud in my head that I just can’t function around her sometimes. What can I do? I feel like I can’t escape these thoughts anywhere I go.

Hi there everyone, I’m really struggling with obsessive thoughts over my relationship with my girlfriend. Everything was going so well for the first couple months and one day I started doubting - ever since then I’ve been trying to combat thoughts that our relationship is doomed to fail. I used to love my girlfriend, now I keep getting intrusive anxious thoughts about breaking up with her and scrutinising her appearance. I spent a few years struggling before with HOCD but I’m free of that now, now I feel I’m heading into a spiral of obsession over whether on not this relationship is right. I don’t want my girlfriend to suffer and loose faith in me whilst I act all weird around her. How do I stay present to her and cope through it? Thanks

This is so long ah I’m so sorry. I’m really just trying to get all my thoughts out/ see if anyone feels similarly/ and what they’ve found helps. I’ve never been diagnosed with OCD, but I’ve looked into it a lot and feel that I might have ROCD. (I was once diagnosed with anxiety, but didn’t keep up with therapy because my parents weren’t keen on it.) Now I really want to invest in it to get a formal diagnoses/help, and I’m going to start looking into that. I’m scared that this isn’t ROCD, and I’m truly just in the wrong relationship, or not actually in love with my partner. But then sometimes I’m certain it is? We’ve been together for a year and a couple of months, and it has been wonderful. She makes me feel so loved and so understood. She is my best friend. But this summer when we were on break from school I started getting major doubts once I’d found out about ROCD and some of my thoughts lined up with it’s description. I’d already started to have doubts before the summer. She is the first person I‘ve slept with, and it took a while for me to have an orgasm, and that made me freak out and start to question my attraction towards her/our compatibility. Every time we’d have sex I’d worry over this. (Though I also think it has to do with me not knowing what I wanted/what I liked in bed) Our sex life got better but I still had obsessive thoughts. I have them daily - “what if I don’t love her” or “what if this isn’t the right relationship” or “should I be dating someone else” When I’m with her I’m constantly checking. If we kiss, I’ll analyze how it feels (or how it doesn’t) and the same thing goes for when she compliments me or says she loves me. I’ll say I love her but something in my brain will say “but do you really?” Honestly, I’ve gotten to the point where when I think of her or am with her it makes me so anxious. I literally feel it in my stomach and chest. It’s so hard to deal with. I can’t make it stop. I think part of it is that I’m anxious that I’ll feel anxious/start to have obsessive thoughts, so I get anxious? I just want to be able to think of her and be around her and not feel so scared and anxious and always checking. I feel like my anxiety isn’t letting me truly experience my relationship.

My rocd flared up around the time my girlfriend and i were starting the process of getting an apartment. At the start, I was very excited and so happy to be moving together. then my mind kept thinking “she’s not going to let you have any say in anything, she doesn’t want you decorating, you guys don’t like the same things” and i started to believe that, which eventually led to me saying all that. and from there on, it gradually got worse. I started having thoughts like “do i even love her? am i in love with her? having i been faking it this entire time? do i have feelings for anymore? etc” and then i would have thoughts of breaking up and i’d get so anxious. now i wake up every morning thinking “i don’t love her, i don’t want to be in a relationship with her” and i get sooooo anxious. i know i love her, i know i don’t want to break up with her, i know the apartment is something i genuinely want, i just can’t feel any of it right now. every time i think of breaking up, i try to imagine my life without her and it doesn’t seem right. i genuinely can’t imagine not being with her. my feelings and thoughts before all this were very much happy and healthy, like i was smitten but now my thoughts affect me everyday, they’re all i think about. it’s all i research, i talk about it too much to other people, the thoughts are making me feel like i’m faking everything. does anyone have tips. i just want to feel like i used to feel