I’m really struggling today, my thoughts are so aggressive, they won’t stop. They keep telling me you don’t wanna be with him, and so much more and they are the exact opposite of how I feel. It’s been like this for days and gotten increasingly worse, I just feel so tired of fighting, I feel so alone. I feel so betrayed by my own thoughts and so out of control of my own mind. My birthdays coming up and my partner called to ask me what my ring size was, the minute I got off the phone I burst into tears. I had a very short therapy session this morning as part of a trial run free therapy thing being offered within the UK. The therapist was very kind, although it was only 20 minutes she said it sounds like you are really are struggling with anxiety, depression & intrusive thoughts, for a moment I felt relief. I felt believed, I didn’t feel so alone or like I was going insane. She encouraged me to challenge the thoughts, to hold onto the good things & to not let my negative subconscious thoughts destroy this relationship they on a conscious level I know I very very much want. I know that OCD attacks everything and over the last 7 weeks the spectrum of doubts, questions & thoughts I’ve had have been so broad and intense. But I honestly think this has to be the worst, feeling like your fighting your own mind to be in a relationship you want is a new type of torture. I just feel so defeated today.

Hi everyone. I’ve been struggling deeply with what I believe is ROCD for about a year and a half. I’ve read so much, I’ve learned about ERP, I know that I’m supposed to let the thoughts and feelings pass without reacting — but even knowing all of that, I feel stuck. More than stuck — I feel broken. Lately, I can’t stop thinking that maybe I never loved my boyfriend. That I only loved the idea of being in a relationship, and now I’m just trying to hold on to a fantasy. These thoughts feel incredibly real. When I’m next to him, kissing or cuddling him, I feel like I’m faking it. And that scares me. It feels like something inside me changed and I can’t go back. And now I can’t even remember what love felt like — it’s like I’ve lost myself completely. Yesterday was especially painful. I was overwhelmed and my mom, who usually notices when I’m not okay, tried to talk to me. She loves me a lot and has been carrying her own burdens lately. When she saw how much pain I was in, she reacted strongly — not because she doesn’t care, but because it hurts her to see me like this every day. She told me I might be lying to myself. That I’m hurting both myself and my boyfriend by holding on if I don’t feel love. She asked me to imagine what I would feel if he broke up with me — and I couldn’t answer. I froze. The thing is, I don’t know what I want anymore. I feel hopeless. I try to remember good memories and feel nothing. I used to cry when we said goodbye — now I feel numb. It makes me think that maybe I’ve always been in denial. That maybe everything I believed was love was just me forcing it. And yet… I still don’t want to lose him. But even that feeling feels far away now. These thoughts aren’t just whispers anymore. They feel like truths screaming in my head. “You don’t like him.” “You don’t love him.” “You’re just used to him.” “It was all fake.” And I can’t stop ruminating. Every second of my day is consumed with doubt, fear, guilt, sadness, emptiness — and above all, confusion. I just want to know if anyone else has felt this. Felt like they were losing everything, like nothing feels real anymore, like they’re trying so hard to do the right thing and nothing works. I’m trying to sit with the feelings. I’m trying not to seek reassurance. But I also need support. I feel so alone in this. Thank you for reading.

I’ve had relationship OCD for about five months now and it’s been excruciating, I know it’s relationship OCD but my brain can’t grasp it, I was doing very well for about a week a few days or a week. It’s about the only amount of time where I feel that sense of clarity or almost back to normal definitely not normal but life seems pleasant again. I made a bad mistake. I was with my friend on a sleepover and we decided that we wanted to eat some good food and be stoned because we enjoy eating food and being stoned since it tastes much better, no I believe this just made it worse. I know that weed can be worse for some people. It can make them overthink and I think it’s triggered me to relapse, because my worries and intrusive thoughts are about something so much more worrying in a way and it feels so much more real, I guess I’m hyper focusing on every single thing about my partner’s personality every floor and everything he doesn’t do, and my brain is telling me that means I should break up with him, ”if he dosent do this this means the relationship isn’t right” “ or anything happens my brain will tell me that I’m losing interest or losing feelings and I get many intrusive statements. Like “you like being single more” literally any time I’m enjoying myself alone And I’m getting many that don’t make sense “he doesn’t accept you for who you are so that means that you need to break up” over an interest that we both have…… And it’s so frustrating because any time I talk to him about anything serious or obviously I’m not happy about something because that’s normal in relationships not everyone is gonna do everything right so you have to communicate it but then I could get intense urge to break up and it makes me upset, or when I’m trying to tell him how I feel my brain will just say that I need to break up it’s honestly so confusing and I’m falling back into the compulsions and reassurance seeking all over again and my brain is making me believe it’s not relationship OCD because what if it’s not relationship OCD and it’s actually not the right relationship for me? But I don’t want it to be that I love him so much and I honestly can’t imagine not being with him. It’s so confusing and my head hurts and I just need someone to talk to.

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.