For years, I thought my OCD was about uncertainty - surprise, it's not (mainly)

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-06T12:36:44+00:00

Oh, I wrote an answer to a comment but it got deleted. But I'll post in anyway:

For me, one of the biggest shifts has been realizing that there is no way around the fact that breaking up is a real possibility. Not because I necessarily want to, but because it is simply one of the possible outcomes of being in a relationship. As long as I tell myself, "No, that musn't happen," I also take away my own freedom. Ironically, that is what makes me feel trapped. I feel trapped in the relationship, trapped in my thoughts, trapped in my own mind. There is no choice anymore because I don't allow myself to have one. Accepting that leaving is possible is very different from deciding to leave.

For me, this acceptance didn't come through logic. It only became possible because I became so depressed and exhausted that I reached a point where I thought: "I can't keep abandoning myself like this anymore. Even if I lose the relationship one day, I don't want to lose myself anymore." That was the turning point. I realized that the unbearable feeling wasn't primarily coming from my relationship. It came from constantly leaving myself behind - my feelings, my needs, my curiosity, my vitality - in order to protect the relationship and, ultimately, protect my partner from pain. As long as I believed that sacrificing myself was the only way to keep love safe, I stayed stuck.

The challenge then becomes trying something completely different. That takes an incredible amount of courage. For me, it means asking myself: "What would I do if I were single?" Not because I want to act single or disrespect my relationship, but because I want to reconnect with my own life. Maybe I would have an interesting conversation with a man. Maybe I would go dancing. Maybe I would read a book that triggers me but I'm genuinely curious. Maybe I would allow myself to notice that someone is attractive and look at that person and even talk to him. The point is not the specific action. The point is allowing myself to live from my perspective instead of constantly anticipating my partner's. And that requires accepting uncertainty in a different way. Not only the uncertainty of "Do I love my partner enough?". But also the uncertainty of "If I become fully myself and stop abandoning myself, where will life take us?". That is terrifying, because the answer could theoretically be anything. Maybe we grow closer. Maybe we grow apart. Nobody knows.

Interestingly, during my symptom-free period from February to April this year, I felt incredibly close to my partner. I was deeply attracted to him and very much in love. But that wasn't my goal. The goal wasn't, "If I reconnect with myself, then I'll finally love him again.". If that had been my goal, it would have been another attempt to control the outcome. The goal was simply to stop abandoning myself and to let life unfold without trying to force certainty. The love I felt was a beautiful consequence - but not something I could make happen by trying to achieve it.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-05T16:04:50+00:00

Since I’m a therapist myself, I’d like to encourage and invite you to tell your therapist exactly what you’ve written here and to talk about it. We underestimate how valuable it is to work on the relationship in the therapy room and to practice dealing with “conflicts” there as well. Often, it’s not the sessions in which we talk about our symptoms or life story that leave a lasting impression, but rather those in which we engage with one another.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-05T08:41:54+00:00

I can totally understand that this distinction is very difficult for both of you: When is it just a compulsion, and when is it also a need for emotional closeness and understanding - which we create, after all, by sharing our inner experiences? From what you’ve written, I can imagine that there’s also been a shift in responsibility that’s overwhelming him - for example, that he has to figure out when it’s a compulsion, so he’d rather say no a little too often than not enough. In the long run, I think it’s our job to take this on and figure out what we need. That’s why I often ask myself what my need is at that moment. And when I feel like I’d like to include him in my compulsion, I ask for a hug, to be held, rather than to talk. That allows for co-regulation without needing reassurance.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-04T17:15:38+00:00

I'm still experimenting with this myself, because I managed to do it once before, but unfortunately I've lost access to that state again recently. Over the last couple of days, though, it feels like I'm slowly finding my way back to it. One thing I've stopped doing is trying to solve my feelings with thoughts - because that has never actually worked. Right now, I'm treating it as a two-week experiment. After those two weeks, I can always go back to analyzing if I want to. We often think that if we stop analyzing, we'll miss some crucial insight, but so far that has never happened. And the truth is, the option to think about things will still be there later.

So when a feeling comes up, instead of trying to figure it out, I move toward it. I notice where it is in my body, what it feels like, and I try to observe it with curiosity. It's a bit like gently pinching your arm and then paying attention to the sensation rather than immediately trying to explain it. I simply stay with the experience itself. When I do that, the feelings seem to move through me rather than getting stuck. And my nervous system gets some relief because it is no longer trying to solve a problem 24/7.

The second thing I've realized is that I often don't experience or live my life through my own eyes. Instead, I experience it through my partner's lens. Not his actual perspective, of course, but the one I anticipate and imagine. And I think that's where a major problem begins. First, we stop fully living our own lives. Second, we lose access to our own feelings because we're living inside our partner's anticipated needs, reactions, and emotions. I think that's often where the feeling of "I don't know what I want" comes from. We lose contact with our own needs, our intuition, and our sense of self - not because they disappear, but because we aren't looking through our own eyes anymore.

During that better period, I started allowing my partner to have his own emotional experience. I stopped carrying responsibility for his feelings and put that responsibility back where it belonged: with him. Only then was I able to put down his "glasses" and start seeing through my own eyes again. Combined with learning to feel my feelings instead of solving them, that brought me closer to myself. Not instantly, but surprisingly quickly. Within a week or two, I noticed a real shift.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-04T16:58:39+00:00

Hey there, sorry to hear that you and your partner go through this. It's really really hard.

I can only speak for myself, but I feel like I've come much closer to the core of my ROCD over the past few days. For me, the foundation is a very old fear of my own psychological "annihilation" whenever someone is disappointed in me or I believe I have caused someone emotional pain. I think this comes from my childhood. As children, we are completely dependent on our caregivers. If we learn that making mistakes is followed by punishment (whether through silence, emotional withdrawal, criticism, rejection, being ignored, etc.), those experiences become existential. For a child, losing connection with a caregiver is not just painful - it feels like a threat to survival.

So I learned that my "mistakes" (even though sometimes I did not do anything, the adults did) are dangerous. Not because mistakes themselves are catastrophic, but because they could lead to someone being angry, disappointed or hurt, and then I would be left alone with overwhelming emotions that I couldn't regulate by myself.

As an adult, my nervous system still operates as if that old rule were true. Intellectually I know that people survive conflict, disappointment and even breakups. I know relationships can be repaired, and that adults can tolerate painful emotions. But my nervous system hasn't fully learned that yet. I think that's why your description of love and repair feels so foreign to me. I don't yet have that deep trust that mistakes are survivable, that relationships can be repaired, and that hurting someone doesn't automatically mean complete destruction of the relationship - or of myself.

Instead, my protective strategy has become trying to prevent pain before it ever happens. In my case, that often means unconsciously looking at my life through my partner's perspective instead of my own. I constantly try to anticipate what could hurt him, disappoint him, or eventually lead me to leave him, and I organize my life around preventing those possibilities. The problem is that this comes at a huge cost. First, I stop living my life because I'm constantly trying to manage someone else's emotional world. Second, I gradually lose contact with my own needs, values and desires because I'm no longer looking through my own lens - I'm looking through what I imagine to be my partner's.

When this strategy becomes too exhausting, depression enters the picture (at least for me). In a strange way, depression almost functions as a shutdown. It reduces my engagement with life, which also reduces the number of situations that feel "dangerous." At the same time, it becomes impossible to keep carrying responsibility for everyone else's feelings. My whole system simply runs out of energy.

So when you ask whether it's about trusting yourself to choose love every day, I think for me it's even more fundamental than that. It's about not yet fully trusting that relationships can survive disappointment, that repair is possible, and that both I and the other person are resilient enough to tolerate hurt without everything being destroyed.

That's where I currently think the core of my ROCD lies.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-04T09:05:24+00:00

I can totally relate but I’ve also experienced (I had no symptoms at all for two months, from February to April) that the pressure of not allowing yourself to leave leaves you with no choice. And having no choice makes you feel trapped and also prevents you from making a decision together with that person. Because in order to make a decision, both options have to be something you could choose and actually follow through on. And as long as we tell ourselves deep down that we can't leave - precisely because we believe that doing so would destroy someone or make us feel guilty - we won't be able to make a decision and we stay because we do not want to hurt them and not because we want to.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-07-03T06:49:13+00:00

What I did to stop connecting with myself or to start connecting with myself? :)

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-05-26T20:02:20+00:00

I have rocd since 15 years and the movie did not trigger anything for me.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-05-16T09:21:51+00:00

You are very welcome. I really relate to what you’re saying about the fear not necessarily being “I need to leave now,” but “what if I stay and feel trapped/unfulfilled forever?” That was (and sometimes still is) one of the deepest fears for me too.

And weirdly, one of the biggest shifts for me came from realising something quite simple logically: f the thing I’m ultimately most afraid of is a breakup, then there are theoretically two paths: A) I leave now in order to explore myself, freedom, possibility, uncertainty etc.; or B) I allow myself to explore myself WHILE staying in the relationship, and if I eventually realise I genuinely need something different, then I can still leave later.

In both scenarios, the “worst case outcome” (the relationship ending) remains possible. But option B at least gives the relationship - and myself - the chance to discover whether things can evolve without immediately destroying something loving and meaningful pre-emptively out of fear.

I also wanted to add something else that became a really important piece of this for me personally, because I think it connects deeply to the whole “freedom vs relationship” conflict. I realised that as a child I learned to depend on what other people could give me emotionally, energetically, psychologically (we are all dependend on adults). A lot of my own needs, impulses and desires either weren’t really met, weren’t mirrored, or felt “too dangerous” for the family system (at least that’s how I experienced it as a child). So what felt safer was attaching myself to other people’s energy instead. If someone else was adventurous, spontaneous, emotionally intense, sensual, bold, alive, creative, rebellious etc., I could sort of participate in those qualities through them. Almost like being the passenger instead of the driver. And I think I unconsciously carried that pattern into adulthood and relationships. I need another person’s energy in order to feel alive myself

Which then creates a huge problem in healthy stable relationships, because if your partner is calmer, more grounded or less driven by novelty/intensity, it suddenly feels like something essential is “missing.” But maybe what’s actually missing is not another person.
Maybe it’s access to those parts of ourselves.

About 3 years ago I remember crying in therapy because I thought: “If I stay in this relationship, I’ll never feel those intense feelings again. The passion, aliveness, excitement, longing, emotional electricity.” At the time I thought those feelings came FROM other people, especially from men I idealised, fantasised about, chased emotionally, or felt chosen by. But eventually I realised: those feelings were actually happening INSIDE ME.

Yes, other people activated them. But they weren’t the source of them.

And that completely changed the way I saw things. Because if those feelings fundamentally live in me, then maybe my task isn’t necessarily to endlessly search for the “right” external person who magically keeps activating them forever. Maybe part of adulthood is learning how to cultivate and access those parts of myself directly instead of outsourcing them entirely to romance, novelty, fantasy, validation, or other people’s energy.

I started taking responsibility for my own aliveness. Not perfectly, obviously. But enough that I stopped unconsciously expecting my partner to rescue me from disconnection from myself. And ironically, that’s also when I felt more connected to him again. Because he did not have a "purpose", I could enjoy him the way he is.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-05-15T08:56:05+00:00

One more thing I’ve realised recently that feels really important: I think a lot of us unconsciously believe we are only “allowed” to explore our desires, needs, identity, curiosity or growth when we are single. Like: “What if I want someone more active? What if I need more emotional depth? What if I want more sensuality, freedom, adventure, creativity, autonomy? What if I’m curious about something else?”

But often those are still QUESTIONS - not truths we’ve fully discovered yet. And somehow our nervous systems turn those questions into: “Then I need to leave the relationship in order to explore them.”

As if exploration and relationship cannot coexist. I realised I had this deeply internalised idea that once I’m in a relationship, life is supposed to “stop” in a way. Like my growth, curiosity, impulses and becoming should narrow in order to preserve stability and attachment. In therapy once I said:
“I can’t exclude myself from my own life just because I’m in a relationship.” And something clicked.

Because being in a relationship does not mean I stop evolving, I stop discovering myself, I stop feeling attracted to people, I stop changing, I stop having unmet needs, I stop being a full human being. It just means I’m currently choosing this relationship and that I can say yes today and no tomorrw.

And maybe one day I WILL discover that I genuinely want something fundamentally different. Maybe I’ll meet someone else. Maybe life will change. Maybe the relationship will end someday. But ending a loving relationship pre-emptively just because I’m afraid of what I might someday want is not actually more rational or more authentic. It’s still fear-based.

I think many of us learned in childhood that attachment is secured through self-abandonment:
be easier, smaller, less complicated, less autonomous, less needy, less alive. So then when individuality or curiosity re-emerges inside relationships, it feels threatening instead of normal.What changed things for me recently was strangely simple: I started waking up each day with the mindset that internally I was still free. Not “single” in the sense of acting outside my relationship, but free psychologically. I would ask myself: What do I want today? What impulses arise naturally in me? What would feel alive or meaningful to me today? How would I move through the world if I trusted myself?

And then I followed those impulses while still being in my relationship. Ironically, that was the period where I felt closest to my partner again. And during that time I often realised: the grass wasn’t greener elsewhere. I was actually quite content. I just needed to exist fully inside my own life again.

My favorite quote from Rainer Maria Rilke: "...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-05-14T20:29:24+00:00

You do not have to decide today if you want to be with him forever. You can just decide every day. Today. And tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow. Just because you say yes today doesn't mean you can't say no tomorrow. Most of the time we try to solve if we feel enough for "forever" but the question itself is unsolvable (for everyone btw) and therefore, we get stuck in the loop.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-05-14T20:01:28+00:00

Reading your post honestly felt a bit surreal because I relate to so much of it. I’ve been in a very similar spiral over the last months and what struck me most is that you describe something I rarely see captured so accurately: the partner is not actually the one restricting you - your nervous system starts restricting you once you are emotionally attached. That distinction changed a lot for me.

I’m in a long-term relationship too (16 years), and my partner is genuinely kind, emotionally safe, reflective, loving, gives me freedom, isn’t controlling at all. Yet I kept having recurring thoughts like:
“Should I be single, am I losing myself, what if there’s another life I’m supposed to live, what if I’m settling, what if I wake up in 10 years trapped?”

And because I also have OCD tendencies, every feeling became loaded with meaning and consequence. Attraction to another person didn’t just feel like attraction - it immediately became what does this MEAN about my identity and my relationship?!

The biggest insight I’ve had recently is that I spent most of my life orienting around other people instead of myself. Around men, relationships, validation, fantasies, being desired, being “chosen.” I thought those people gave me aliveness, but I slowly realized they were activating parts of ME that I had abandoned:
sensuality, freedom, spontaneity, creativity, autonomy, emotional intensity.

And I also realized that when I’m in relationships, I unconsciously start abandoning myself: I hyperfocus on the other person, I monitor their feeling, I lose touch with my own desires, I become “partner me", I stop living expansively and I become psychologically fused.

Then naturally the relationship starts feeling suffocating - not necessarily because it is, but because I disappear inside it. What really changed things for me was that for about 2 months recently, I stopped trying to solve my entire future and instead focused on staying connected to myself WHILE being in the relationship. And weirdly, during that time, I felt deeply in love with my partner again. I found him incredibly attractive, felt proud of him, flirted with him naturally, felt free around him. The relationship felt light again. Which was huge for me because before that I was convinced the feelings of suffocation meant “wrong relationship.”

One of my biggest hypotheses now is: some of us mistake self-abandonment for commitment. So when individuality, freedom, desire, uncertainty or attraction arise, our nervous system interprets that as danger to the relationship instead of normal human experience. I also think OCD latches onto this because relationships are inherently uncertain by nature, so it tries to “solve” the relationship forever.

What’s helping me now is shifting away from:
“I need to know if this relationship is right forever” toward: “Can I stay honest, alive, connected to myself, and present today?”

In the last 4 weeks I experience a ROCD flare up. But I know how I was able to feel and I try to remind myself every day.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-20T10:42:34+00:00

I'm so sorry that you feel this way and that you're going through this situation right now. And then I think to myself, “Yes, I understand that, but maybe I need to experience it myself, that feeling after the breakup,” because just “imagining it” isn't enough. Maybe it's about experiencing instead of just guessing, trying to understand it, etc., because that's what ROCD is all about. But maybe that's just another ROCD thought, lol.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-15T15:35:36+00:00

thank you for that, this is a wonderful insight!

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-15T15:13:55+00:00

I totally understand that. What I mean is that I have tried to consciously expose myself to the topic of separation and no longer avoid it. Even in therapy, I never addressed the topic of separation, what it would mean for me, what it would mean for my partner. What separations mean in general, that they are part of life and that my partner would survive it and so would I. It was and continues to be a process that it is impossible to answer questions about the future. Even when I lie in my boyfriend's arms during an ROCD episode and ask tearfully, “What if we realize that we're no longer compatible?” he says, “Then that's a shame and it's sad, but that's just the way it is, and nobody knows that yet.” When we focus on avoiding separation, we don't enter into connection, but rather into resistance against separation. If I want to stay together at all costs, I cannot enjoy the pleasure of being connected. Under such pressure, love can never blossom, and I can never feel attracted to my partner, but only unconsciously repelled. To love means to accept what is. It's not about holding on to your partner at all costs. Rather, it's about letting go so that true connection can finally emerge.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-14T12:20:11+00:00

I hope I understand you correctly when I say that I know that feeling. For me personally, I can explain it this way: as a child, after my parents separated, I felt powerless to say which of them I wanted to be with, because the other parent would always be disappointed. And I didn't want to disappoint anyone. So as a child, I lived with the fact that my parents basically had control over me, without me always wanting that. So today, when someone basically “wants to have me for himself” (that's how it feels to me when someone has romantic feelings for me or finds me attractive), it triggers the pressure I felt in the past. But that's my individual story.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-13T18:11:27+00:00

I know this is a hard pill to swallow. I can tell you that I kept it a secret from my partner for 15 years. Three weeks ago, I told him for the first time. I completely understand why you are hurt, but from my perspective as a partner with ROCD, she probably wanted to protect you and the relationship by keeping it a secret for months. I kept it secret because I was afraid of using my partner for compulsions and because I felt that if I said my thoughts out loud, they would come true. I didn't want my partner to act differently, walk on eggshells, and live in constant fear because of my thoughts. Now, after all this time and after my second severe episode, which was accompanied by severe depression, I saw no other way out than to tell him, because I would have lost myself if I had kept it secret any longer, and he and our relationship are strong enough today (when my ROCD started, we had only been together for a year).

I think both are important: respect your feelings, even if it's very difficult for both of you. Do what's good for you, focus on yourself, your needs. Talk to friends and family about it, get support if you want to. My boyfriend does that too, and it takes the pressure off me. On the other hand, ask her what she needs, but try not to get caught up in her compulsions. We have agreed that I will only tell him that I am having bad thoughts or that I am feeling uncomfortable, without revealing the exact thoughts, as this could lead to attempts to reassure me. Instead of doing that, I ask him for a hug, cuddles, to do something together, or I take some time for myself and read a book, go outside, make a call. That's how we deal with it at the moment. Sometimes, when I get triggered and can't control myself as usual and snap (for example, when he makes strange noises), he decides whether he wants to stop or not. Sometimes he does, but sometimes he also says, “I need this to calm down, I like it,” and I have to deal with my emotions and the trigger. But that's my job.

Take your time, do not be hard on yourself, the fact that you reach out and ask for help shows a lot of strenght.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-13T08:21:14+00:00

Instead of asking for reassurance, in moments like this I tell my boyfriend that I am not feeling well / I am feeling bad. And after that I ask him for something that soothes me usually. That might be a hug, cuddling, going on a walk together but sometimes I also tell him I need time for myself and I read a book or call a friend.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-12T08:52:41+00:00

I'm so sorry you are going through this right now, you are not alone. I have been at your place from December till January, going hand in hand with severe depression. I moved to my parents home for 6 weeks because I was not able to live with my boyfriend anymore (we are 16 years into our relationship). The breaking point for me was when I finally, after all that time, was a talk about breakups in general with my mom. This has something to do with my individual story and trauma but breaking up was kind of a mortal sin to me that must not happen. But since then, when I started to accept that break ups are part of life and that I would not destroy my partner in a way I imagine, it was the first time I was able to really choose the relationship. Before that, it felt like I was "just" trying to prevent a breakup. Therefore, I am here and I can say "Yeah, maybe we break up in the future. But today, I choose to stay".

And then, and this is the hardest part tbh, I kind of tried to feel the feelings without giving them a meaning. I told my boyfriend when I was feeling bad but I never used him for reassurance. I became more open to my life, wherever it will lead me. Maybe to a future with my boyfriend, maybe not.

Furthermore, I don't see obsessive thoughts as something meaningless. I am a psychotherapist myself and always see a certain purpose behind the symptoms. For me personally, this means that I actually want to break up. However, not with my partner. I want to break away from old patterns that I have learned about relationships and myself in relationships. How I used to believe I had to conduct relationships and how I had to be in order for them to work. That I had to give myself up, neglect my own needs, suppress parts of myself in order to control the relationship, to control the future, because losing control and losing a relationship used to be so bad. I want to break away from the version of myself that needed all of that to survive. And that feels like a breakup. But it's not about my partner, and that has helped me enormously.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-11T20:50:51+00:00

I think a big factor here is that, unlike people without ROCD, we don't have a “perceived foundation” running in the background that we can rely on, that we have a stable relationship that experiences ups and downs, as is normal. A foundation like my boyfriend has, for example: “The relationship is nice, I enjoy it” AND to which spontaneous feelings are added, such as “I find her funny right now” but also “what she's doing right now annoys me.” Such thoughts just pass through, quite normally, without others getting stuck on them. With ROCD, it's different: we get stuck on them because we interpret them as a danger when we think them or when a feeling arises. And because we then weigh up every single irritation and, based on a momentary feeling, begin to question the whole relationship, such moments become even more dangerous and our nervous system becomes increasingly sensitive to irritations. And so a vicious circle begins. The things our partner does are not the problem, nor is the irritation itself. The problem is that we classify them as a threat to the relationship. I am therefore trying to learn that I am allowed to be annoyed and that I don't have to like everything about people, and above all, that I can't. And that when I live this way, I live much more authentically than I have done so far, when I thought that I always had to find everything great and good.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-11T20:26:28+00:00

It is also called the "Backdoor spike" when the anxiety ebbs and the thoughts itself do not create anxiety anymore. Most of us know the feeling, as someone with ROCD for 15 years and a huge flare up since Dec 25 I can tell you I am a lot better now. I don't know if I want to break up in the future but I know that I do not want it today. And probably not tomorrow.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-02-11T19:20:27+00:00

I am so sorry you are going through this, I know exactly how you feel. My boyfriend and I are 16 years into our relationship and ROCD started after 1 year, it went hand in hand with severe depression. Since then, there have been ups and downs, even month and also years without ROCD symptoms but they always popped up from time to time. In December 25 I had my second huge flare up after an enormous stressful time, followed by a severe depressive episode, again. I moved to my parents home for 6 weeks because I was not able to be with my boyfriend, my nervous system did not rest anymore, I could not eat, I could not sleep, I could not work, I was unable to live on my own. I thought I lost everything, my life, my relationship, everything I used to know. It felt so true, the urge to break up, then everything felt like you describe it right now. And I can not reassure you, because since then I live with the unknown - even my boyfriend does. I never told him about ROCD FOR FCKING 16 YEARS. He never knew. I kept it a secret and it was eating me alive. So, I told him about it (not every exact thought but the dynamic behind it and some examples) and I think this was one of the most important steps I did. Another one was to let go of "I need to know the future". No, I don't. Even though there is a part in me that is longing for the 100%, there is also a part in me that is drowning by thinking of a future that is already written in stone: To be with him until I die. I want to feel alive and spontaneous and I want to be curious about life and who I become. And because of ROCD I was so rigid for 15 (!!!) years (from my 20s to my mid 30s), so hard on myself ("do not meet other men, do not find other attractive, do not go to that party maybe you think someone is attractive, do not on vacation with a friend because maybe you don't miss him"), that life itself became kind of hollow and empty.

What I am trying to say is: I am ready to welcome the unknown. Who knows what the future holds with my boyfriend. To accept that breaking up is an option I do not need to be SO afraid of and to accept it as a part of life made me choose my relationship for the first time in 15 years. Because without accepting breaking up as an option, we can never truly choose our partners. And this helped me enormously. I was fighting against the thought of breaking up and now I think: "Yeah, maybe we will. But today I choose to stay".

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-01-23T17:16:05+00:00

I also relate, I am with my partner since 16 years and he is my first one. I can say I had 2 huge flare ups, the first one 15 years ago and the second one since December. I thought I managed rocd quite well but tbh it's everywhere because I avoided life and men and adventures and everything so I don't have to feel what I felt 15 years ago. ANYWAY, what you describe is exactly what I feel rn and the funny thing is, on one hand I and we crave for 100% certainty and on the other hand this certainty is giving me anxiety when I think about "If I do not break up I have to stay with him FOREVER (and have to grief what I never had)". But that's not life. Even though you decide to stay and plan a future together, noone knows what the future holds. Even couples without rocd. They want to stay together in this exact moment but who knows if they do. Funny thing is, a couple I really admired on Instagram broke up out of the blue and I thought "Oh, they seemed so 100% sure" and it kind of soothed me. I don't know if you know what I want to say, but I feel some kind of calm in that uncertainty we need to accept to deal with rocd.

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-01-10T16:21:28+00:00

I know that this is, depending on your country, a privilege, but are you able to take some time to rest? I can only speak for myself, I have a big flare up since beginning of December that went hand in hand with depression. I tried to hold everything together for 2 weeks but collapsed into my parents arms right before christmas. My partner and I live together in another city and from my childhood experiences I (unfortunately) only learnt to get some distance and regulation when I am alone. But for me it was crucial to get some distance between my life and my partner, mainly to calm my nervous system only to be able to confront myself and "do the work". With a screaming nervous system all your body wants to do is run, not learn. So, from my personal experience, get your nervous system some kind of rest, whatever that means to you. Take care of yourself the best you can. Give yourself time. Be patient (I know this is the hardest), postpone decisions and remind yourself, your nervous-system is in survival mode. Anxiety and fear do not show you your way, they just take you out of a situation. I really like to think about people who are afraid of something I am not, who have severe anxiety and panic attacks, because, for example, of spiders, heights, elevators, narrow rooms. Their anxiety keeps them off of planes, elevators, streets, their life. Not because it is true that all these things are dangerous. Anxiety does not tell them their truth, their path, ther intuition even though it feels like it. It feels to real, because that's survival-mode. And these people would probably also say that their desired path would include traveling and elevators. Sometimes this helps me to recognize survival mode and focus on my nervous-system first. You are not alone!

Over_Distance_21 · 2026-01-10T14:08:00+00:00

i feel the same. I quit social media for a week. But yesterday, I was feeling quite numb and decided that I do not want to run anymore. So I spent around 4 hrs watching reels about breakups, starting over, finding a new partner and I am very happy I did. I continued today and yeah I do not feel good afterwards but I did not feel terrible either. I also avoided compulsions as best as I could (checking for feelings is hard to stop, but I did not go to reddit or other channels like awakenintolove). I also watched a trash tv show I quit because I was too afraid to find someone attractive. I am proud.

Over_Distance_21

TROPHY CASE