All OCD themes are, at the end of the day, just OCD. And no theme is worse or easier than the other, as themes are related to our values, so whatever theme we have is going to feel excruciating. I want to vent a little about ROCD, though. I think I just need to let this out. It's so heartbreaking to have OCD attack your relationships. I believe that relationships of all forms are the most important thing in the world & are what make life meaningful. So to have OCD attack my experience with romantic relationships & connections is just so fucking painful. Do you know how much I wish I could just be like my friends or other people without OCD?? They don't get major anxiety about dating or liking someone or being in a relationship. They don't have intrusive thoughts about whether they find the person they're dating attractive or not. They don't question and question and question every little thought and feeling. They probably don't have low libidos. Sometimes I feel like I'm suffering. I start to think that it shouldn't be this hard. Dating & starting a potential relationship with someone shouldn't be so hard, but it is for me because of ROCD. And I can't talk to any of my friends about this because they don't understand OCD. If I tell my friends that I'm worried about whether I truly find the guy I'm dating attractive, they'd probably say that if I have to question it so much, then I'm probably not attracted to him. This is also another reason it's so difficult having ROCD. You just can't go to other sources who don't understand OCD & intrusive thoughts. Because going to them for answers or certainty or reassurance or to help you figure things out is a compulsion! But instead of telling you that there is no answer, they might say some triggering shit like trust your intuition or if you know, you know. And another thing that makes ROCD heartbreaking is that another person is involved. I feel like it's so common for us with ROCD to constantly feel like we're hurting our partners. I feel like I'm so hot & cold. I'm probably sending mixed signals to the guy I'm dating right now because sometimes I feel sure that I like him & other times I'm questioning it. It's the insidious nature of OCD. When we get those moments where there's little to no doubt, things are amazing. We feel great & start to think, wow I finally have certainty that I like/love this person. And that's such a trap because if we treat those moments as evidence against OCD, then we're still trapped in the obsessive-compulsive cycle. We have to accept uncertainty, which is so hard. We can enjoy those moments when there is little to no doubt, intrusive thoughts, or anxiety, but we can't use those moments as proof that our OCD is wrong. ROCD is just so complicated.

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.

Themes constantly switching. I’ve been suffering with real event ocd the last year and am currently in therapy treating it. it’s nowhere near as bad as it was last year and it’s felt like a nice break. there’s days where it gets bad but i can’t compare it to the stress of last year. However i’ve noticed every time i overcome a theme a new one hits me out of nowhere. i’ve suffered with ocd since i was 9, and ive had multiple themes. i’m in a 2 year relationship with my partner and it’s amazing. she’s probably my second proper relationship due to the fact my first relationship gave me so much fear to get into another one as i was cheated on, and needed a few years to get over that. i kind of guessed that ROCD would creep in at some point as it just felt inevitable. anyways, i know my partner is not cheating on me, she’s beyond loyal, we are so so in love but i think due to that first relationship i had, being cheated on really messed with my head. it’s like my brain is telling me my partner has someone else even though i know in my heart nothings going on, and i trust her with my life. i also think because im in the happiest relationship of my life, anything that would indicate loosing her makes me feel sick and riddled with anxiety. and i know that’s completely normal for everyone. i think the most frustrating thing is, is knowing that my OCD has finally crept into my relationship which is something i never wanted it to do. this is a brand new theme and i have no idea how to treat this. i will speak to my therapist but if anyone has been through this theme and any advice in the meantime i would really appreciate it :).

I wanted to talk about my experiences with rOCD since I currently do still suffer from it but I know if I talked about them. My thoughts are just gonna get stronger, but I’ll do it for the sake of talking about my experiences to others who feel like they’re alone. I have a very loving relationship actually my first healthy relationship we are currently still dating one year and six months. I would say these intrusive thoughts started to happen once I hit the one year mark with him. Nothing in the relationship has made me think these thoughts, but it just came. Like when my mind tried to make me think I liked another guy other than my boyfriend and that I was losing feelings for him. I started to panic because I knew that my heart belonged to my boyfriend and having thoughts that were against that belief it made me really anxious cause I never had those thoughts before. I was in and out of the care center at my school constantly having anxiety attacks, and it was affecting me day by day. I talk to my boyfriend about it because my mind can never keep secrets from him because then I would feel like that I’m lying to him… my mind just kinda works that way and I believe it’s due to the situation I have with rOCD. Luckily, he was really supportive.. in thoughts I’ve had was what if I don’t like him anymore or if he doesn’t do this does that mean he likes me or if he’s even the one just a lot of doubts about me and him in the relationship. And for anyone who’s experiencing stuff familiar to this you are not alone invalid only what you believe is what is true. And I know it’s gonna be hard to know what’s true or not because these thoughts that you have versus what’s in your heart you get confused but if you know that you love that person then that’s what true. Also, the only reason why it affected me a lot was because I kept trying to solve it and the only solution is to let those thoughts in and accept that you have those thoughts. I don’t mean as an accept that these thoughts are true, but accepts that those are the thoughts that you’re thinking because if you keep on trying to find a solution to remove them, it only just get worse.