aegyominnie
- Date posted
- 4y
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 4y
You have relationship obsessions: of course your partner triggers your ocd! What else would? Do your best to resist compulsions (checking how you feel about his jokes, mentally reviewing the jokes again and again, asking for reassurance from others that the jokes were acceptable, avoiding him and his jokes altogether, etc.) allow the jokes and your reactions without judgment. Let them be and pass. Stop trying to figure out why they make you feel the way you do and searching for explanations like your period that could render your reactions somehow meaningless. Maybe you do have some mild annoyance or upset. And maybe that is okay or means nothing important. Or not. You don’t need a 100% certain answer.
Dany Dany
- Date posted
- 4y
You need to talk with him about this, every feeling it's valid. You're not dramatic or over reacting, and it's important. So please tell him how feel.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 4y
Talking out every single feeling you have is going to be terrible for your relationship. Some feelings do indeed need to be able to pop up and pass. If you have to have a discussion about each and every one, it’s absolutely a compulsion.
aegyominnieaegyominnie
- Date posted
- 4y
@pureolife It is a compulsion of mine, I feel the urge to tell him about everything, I want to change the way he is so that he won’t trigger me. I always feel the need to talk about everything to fix things that don’t even need to be fixed. And whenever I try to talk about this, he says that I keep circling the topic over and over again (which I don’t really realize) which makes him annoyed because he already said what he wanted to say. That leads to me being upset because he is upset and I make the meaning out of it, that he doesn’t care about me or he ignores me.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 4y
To clarify: it sounds like the poster is more so struggling to deal with mild imperfections (perfectionism being a common struggle with ocd) rather than obviously harmful behaviors that need to be addressed, so working on accepting uncertainty and mild discomfort would probably be better in this case than searching for certainty with unnecessary conflic resolution. If anything written seemed seriously harmful, I’d absolutely advocate to speak up.
pureolifepureolife
- Date posted
- 4y
@aegyominnie Yup, that’s exactly what I assumed from your initial post and that’s very very common for ocd sufferers. The thing is: it’s not up to him not to trigger you. It’s your job to deal with being triggered. If you can only be around people who never say or do anything triggering you won’t have anyone. It’s okay for not everything to be 100% fixed all the time (which, by the way, is an impossible goal and an illusion if you ever feel like you’ve ever achieved it.) I would recommend this book: https://g.co/kgs/9WYtnP — Needing to Know for Sure: A CBT-Based Guide to Overcoming Compulsive Checking and Reassurance Seeking Book by Martin N. Seif and Sally M. Winston. It’s great for the compulsion you’re dealing with here.
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kittea
- Date posted
- 19w
ROCD spiral — seeking advice
in an ROCD spiral these past few days. i have a very sweet boyfriend who i love very much but i’m so scared my OCD is gonna drive him away. i get really freaked out when he doesn’t say certain things back every time like “i love you” or “goodnight” etc and also as of late he makes jokes about like fictional women being hot and we’ve had convos about like are we not allowed to also appreciate someone else’s attractiveness without reading into it (we’ve both expressed we are monogamous—i’m also demisexual so wondering if my brain just doesn’t think the same way his does) or like he made a joke about how it would be hot to see me kissing another girl (i’m bi) and i think yeah in a perfect world where i don’t have OCD i get the logic behind not reading into these things but every time he makes these jokes or we have these convos it sends my OCD into a major spiral like. if he really loved me and only me why would he even say these things? he is just very blunt and logical and straightforward and sometimes he’s really good at gently challenging my OCD and for him he doesn’t think these things seriously like ik he would never ever cheat on me (we have had discussions about our thoughts on cheating before). but like comments that he makes like this i am sure have no meaning to him other than just jokes or pointing stuff out but my OCD spirals every time he makes them. i’m really scared of ruining this relationship because i feel like i can’t just be the chill girlfriend who doesn’t read into this stuff. please help i’m spiraling and can’t even focus on work ): and it sucks because he really otherwise shows me how much he loves me in many ways and it’s just this thing that i can’t figure out and i keep feeling like having these convos with him will drive him away. or like telling him i don’t want him to make those jokes around me will make him feel like he is walking on eggshells around me and can’t be himself and that will eventually end the relationship which i don’t want. i just want my brain to stop panicking and reading into every single thing but my brain won’t understand what is normal or okay until someone tells me it is. i’m gonna go back to therapy soon but in the interim just wanted to come here. thanks in advance for any words or insight anyone can offer ❤️
Mk3
- Date posted
- 13w
Rocd
I thought I was doing so well. But then my partner accidentally & unknowingly triggered me by jokingly saying about himself that “he’s pretty ugly anyways.” My thought of thinking he looks ugly sometimes is the main thing my ocd revolves around. Now I feel like I SHOULD be distressed over this thought after him jokingly saying this. Ugh
ellij
- Date posted
- 10w
ROCD flare up
Lately my ROCD has been flaring up, making it difficult to even be around my partner. I’m having so many troubling thoughts with the one that bugs me most being, “maybe this isn’t my OCD, maybe I’m just in a bad relationship and I’m trying to cover it up and blame it on OCD”. This thought really scares me because there are valid doubts in my relationship but my boyfriend and I have openly talked about them and are trying to work through. My OCD won’t take that as an option tho. It makes me feel like I need to be 100% certain that these things can NEVER happen again or else we need to break up immediately. So anything he says in that moment about trying to do better, my OCD will not trust anything he says and just wait until the next “bad thing” happens. When I continuously bring these things up to my boyfriend even tho nothing has happened between these conversations, it exhausts him making it feel like he can never do enough. I feel so bad because I know it’s just my OCD getting in the way. But then that thought creeps in saying I can’t trust him because I need to protect myself. It’s just an ongoing cycle that is so tiring. I don’t even know what I want anymore. We are very opposite when it comes to emotions. I am very in tune and very emotionally intelligent, and he is not. He is the opposite. I do recognize that my anxious attachment style may be hard for him too but I can’t stop thinking about all of his flaws and all of the things he needs to do to make our relationship better. It makes me feel like I’m the only one putting in effort when in reality that is not true. But my OCD does make me feel like he doesn’t really love me or want to be with me and that he feels forced to be with me or do things for me. It makes me feel like him being with me is like a chore. Can anyone relate? My OCD just makes me feel like I can’t trust anything he says to make our relationship better.
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