I didn’t realize it, but my OCD started when I was about 16. To everyone else it looked like anorexia, but in truth I was compulsively counting everything in my life. I wouldn’t eat a food if I couldn’t construct its total calorie count (no home cooked meals), and at any point in time I knew exactly how many calories I’d consumed that day. In private, I was engaged in long rituals about touching certain parts of the house in a certain order, maintaining certain postures meant to control my body, and counting far more than just calories. Fast forward 18 years (I’m 34), and OCD has been a debilitating part of my entire adult life. Though it shows up in a few ways, it is most aggressive in romantic relationships. I have horrible, continuous obsessive thoughts about my girlfriend with other people sexually. For example, if a friend of hers recounts a time they went dancing years ago, I will spend the next few weeks obsessively replaying scenario after scenario about how she met someone while dancing and will envision them together, even though no such event was mentioned by her friend. I’ll take an ordinary experience and imagine it in the most threatening of possibilities. In these obsessions, my girlfriend meets and is with someone strictly preferable to me. Someone with a more attractive body, someone who is better in bed, etc. I obsess about the actual number of people she’s slept with and any activity or place that might have some association with an ex. If I learn she went to a national park with an ex, I get nauseous even thinking about the state in which the park is located. Obviously I don’t believe that her past is actually problematic. I was very promiscuous for most of my 20s, primarily in an attempt to feel better about these insecurities, and yet I appreciate her more than anything. I strongly believe nothing about these choices should matter to me. Still, whenever I love someone, my mind basically becomes an infinite film of that person with other people. I’m forced to continuously watch them appreciate someone else more than me - their body, the way they look, how they have sex. In response, I spend hours, even days, seeking reassurance from my partner. That the imagined scenario is made up, or if it isn’t, that they’re more attracted to me, prefer my body to that of a previous sexual partner, etc. I’m 34 years old and have never had a very serious relationship. In every case, the distress I feel about these imagined scenarios makes relationships so painful that I am constantly nauseous. Ultimately I conclude it to be unbearable and break up with them, using some other excuse. And of course that only hurts them. I’m hopeful to try NOCD but just felt like sharing my experience. I guess I’m curious if others have had similar manifestations of OCD.