Any tips for starting a relationship when you keep finding yourself picking apart every single thing about them? Every hobby, everything they've mentioned, their looks, their personality, everything?

I just need to get this off my chest but I feel like every time I develop romantic feelings for someone, it’s never genuine, it’s never love, it’s a placement of feelings and what I ideally want out of a romantic relationship onto a single person and it’s just not fair to them. It’s an obsession, obsession with an idea of someone and not for what they truly are. Picking out traits that I like and value in a partner, picking apart a person like they aren’t real. It’s just not healthy. I want to be able to love and be loved. I know that this person will never feel the same and it is not their fault, but I’m still hurt over this idea of them that I’ve built in my head. I’ve constructed a false persona for this person just because they embody something that I am seeking, and to be honest, I can’t tell if that’s a friend or just someone to give me the time of day because I’m so desperate to be heard and seen, I want attention, to be wanted even if it means being used or just given a moment to be in their presence. I don’t think I could ever be in a relationship, I feel like I am clouded by delusion, I feel crazy. Maybe that’s simply because I just am not emotionally stable enough to engage in a meaningful relationship to any degree. There was this person that I took a liking to and saw as a potential someone to become a large part of my life, but they don’t think anything of me, so for the long periods of time that I received nothing but radio silence, I was left with alone with my thoughts and holding onto whatever sliver of hope that they might feel the same. None of it is real. I want to feel normal and not get so emotional over every relationship I ever form, especially those that come with romantic feelings. I don’t know how to overcome this, all I can think about is them. Do I just confess my feelings and get it over with? Face the rejection so I can move on? Or just be left wondering and seeing out how this relationship progresses…even if that risks fading into absolute nothingness and never interacting again? I’m just so caught up in my head over someone who will never ever think twice about me. Sometimes I feel they may hate me even and just be responding with kindness out of courtesy and the fact that they are just a genuinely good person. I have no hard feelings towards them, they’ve done nothing wrong. I just can’t help but be mad at myself for feeling this way, allowing myself to fall into this again. It happens every time I get close. Do you think I’m being crazy or is it normal? I don’t even know what I wanted out of this relationship, maybe relationships aren’t something written for me. Do you think I’ll ever be able to get to a point where I can develop a healthy, non-obsessive, truly meaningful relationship? Any advice??

seriously someone pls give me advice 😭 I think last week I posted about how I have a crush on my friend and how my brain was making me question everything (mostly my sexuality). Well now I know he has a crush on me too and I’m already worrying about not liking him anymore, even though I was thinking about him all day before he confessed to me. I went to look at pictures to make sure I still think he’s attractive and I didn’t feel the same. Now I’m worrying about if I’ll no longer feel attracted to him when we hangout in person. Why can’t I at least have a simple crush? Why must I question everything??? WHY CANT MY BRAIN JUST FUNCTION NORMALLY THIS IS DRIVING ME INSANE!!?? If you have any tips on how to deal with this please let me know 😭.

This is going to be long and all over the place. To give some context I’ve dealt with SOOCD for a long time now and it had very bad effects on my past relationship. I had a hard time being intimate with my past partner because I was always subconsciously checking if I was getting aroused enough, if I was attracted to him, if I truly liked him, or if I was lying to myself (yk the whole deal). I literally felt nothing but anxiety when we did things which made everything worse. I was also extremely depressed which made my libido and attraction towards men completely vanish (still have low libido and my attraction is kinda the same). Me and the guy broke up and a couple years ago we reconnected. When I saw him again I was extremely attracted to him, romantically and sexually. This made me so happy because I finally felt some confirmation that I knew who I was and my thoughts weren’t real after years of being tortured by them. We didn’t end up lasting because my feelings started to shift but I truly blame that on the fact that it was just a dumb old high school relationship, he was a terrible boyfriend in the past, and we had nothing in common. However while we were together, I had dealt with really bad relationship anxiety. I found other people attractive which gave me reassurance, but also made spiral because I thought it meant I didn’t like him anymore, I was lying to myself about my feelings, and I questioned everything about the relationship. Fast forward to now, I am now in a new relationship and I’ve known this guy for a long time. I developed a crush on him which again made me really happy bc I haven’t had a crush in a VERY long time. I made a couple of posts on here about how I started to overthink everything (pls read those to get more context I don’t want to make this even longer). I started to get really anxious and had more intrusive thoughts about lying to myself about my feelings/and sexuality, not really liking him, not being attracted to him, yk all that. I was able to manage it by watching a video about rumination where the guy basically just said “stop thinking about it.” He said to just let it float there, don’t engage with it, don’t try to solve or understand, don’t try to replace it, don’t say a mantra, don’t be mindful, just let it be there and move on. I also went on reddit and this guy said to stop hyper focusing on the attraction/ the “right” feelings bc the more you try to look for them the less you will feel it. Anyways, I took the advice and the next time we hung out I felt comfortable and just so much better. It was the sweetest date and I truly had a fun time. However, when we kissed I immediately started over analyzing and questioning everything. I had bad experiences with my ex because I kept trying to analyze my feelings like do I really like this kiss? Am I actually attracted to him? Why am I not feeling super excited right now? Why did all these good feelings just go away? It was so annoying and heartbreaking for me because I just want to be normal, I want to truly enjoy this relationship. I want to stop automatically checking and over thinking everything. We’ve discussed sexual things and it automatically made me hyper analyze everything making me feel more anxious and unsure about the relationship and my sexuality. There have been times where we talked about them and I’ve thought about it with no worry, and I even got turned on by it (tmi i’m sorry). But I’m worried that I’ll have the same bad experiences I did with my ex and it’ll ruin how I view the everything. I was so excited for this but now I feel so scared and anxious again. I really want to enjoy this, he’s truly an amazing person and I want to be with him without being bombarded by this shit 😭. Sorry if none of this made sense. Please give me advice if you have any!!!!