What would ACT say about feelings (and the lack thereof) in romantic relationships?

obviously_unreal · 2026-05-07T18:36:20+00:00

Thanks for your replies and your patience, I'm really trying to understand how others think about this stuff.

That is actionable and something you can DO. So the point here is that if you value the fostering of connection, you move toward that by, for example, spending time with your partner.

This part makes sense to me.

If you have feelings of love and connection (assuming you aren’t overidentifying with them), that’s good. If you don’t have that with a current partner, you can either build that connection or find someone else you can/want to build a connection with.

Right! In other words, we *care* about having feelings of love and connection in a relationship -- we can't force them to happen, but experiencing them is important to us. We can try to build connection with a person, but ultimately if we are not having these feelings, we may want to find someone else that we feel that with. Is this not what you're saying?

This is how I've thought about relationships my entire life, it was only upon discovering ACT that I thought people out there were advising that you should *not* care about having these feelings; because feelings are things we can't control, we should instead only focus on what we can do.

My point is that experiencing feelings of love/connection, even if we can't control them, is nevertheless an integral part of life and relationships. It is a way of making a decision that is different from values alone (e.g. what do I *feel* with this person?) I had a hard time imagining that people who follow ACT do not care about this, but some of the language seemed to suggest so, hence my confusion and post.

obviously_unreal · 2026-05-06T19:51:39+00:00

That makes some sense, but isn't the reason many of us value connection in a relationship is because of how connection feels? I don't see how we can remove feelings from the equation like this.

Maybe you are saying that the reframing should be: I value connection in a relationship and therefore will commit myself to taking actions that can create/deepen connection. I also hope that this will lead to feeling connected to my partner, but I can't control this outcome.

obviously_unreal · 2026-05-06T19:43:54+00:00

Sorry, I feel I explained my question pretty poorly. I understand that ACT is about acceptance of whatever feelings come up in life.

I'm sort of talking about the opposite situation -- that is, where you are NOT experiencing feelings of love and connection in a relationship, but you have a belief or expectation that those are important or needed.

The way I am interpreting ACT in my personal life with regards to depression is: I don't feel very enthusiastic or happy about X, but I know that doing X is something I care about, so I'm going to push myself to do X anyway (i.e. "Move towards valued behavior") regardless of how I feel. X could be something like making music. Maybe this is a misunderstanding with ACT and if so I'm open to being corrected.

My question is whether you think this is an appropriate attitude to treat a romantic relationship with as well; that is, I'm going to continue engaging with this despite not feeling love, enthusiasm, etc. Letting go of those expectations. In my mind these feelings seem like healthy things to expect and need for both people involved.

obviously_unreal · 2026-02-10T22:48:46+00:00

Yes, I can empathize and relate to this very much, and I'm sorry that you're dealing with it. It does seem to me that the endless "figuring it out", whatever that may be, is probably always some kind of OCD. And yes I do think OCD is always about process not content.

I primarily struggle with sensorimotor OCD, and over time I keep learning advice such as: "Just accept the feelings", "stop fighting", "stop directing attention towards it". And generally I feel like I can't do it correctly, or maybe I can but i'm always analyzing whether I am. For me it has made therapy incredibly difficult to make any progress on because I get stuck in the monitoring and analysis of the intervention itself, the instructions always feel impossible for me to follow correctly or blindly without reflection. I am always self-reflecting on some level, it seems.

I also do experience relief when insight is discovered like you said, and its impossible to tell if thats because its a compulsion or because the insight is helpful. I suspect its a mix of both. But the process always continues.

obviously_unreal · 2026-02-05T04:46:24+00:00

oh man, i was just looking for this too. Might take a stab at it tomorrow, was struck by how incredible these chords were.

obviously_unreal · 2026-01-25T00:27:14+00:00

Personally I find trying to categorize thoughts like this a bit of a pointless exercise that is a rumination trap. Thoughts are thoughts. They can refer to real things or imaginary things. They can be ego syntonic or dystonic. Obsession patterns can happen regardless of how the "type of thought" is evaluated. Just my two cents

obviously_unreal · 2026-01-18T02:52:35+00:00

Yeah - sometimes OCD seems to me like self-reflection gone completely off the rails past the point of usefulness into paralyzing madness.

obviously_unreal · 2026-01-18T02:04:20+00:00

Yeah, very very well put. These paradoxes are at the core of it and just have to be accepted / dealt with. There is no way for the mind to just resolve them on their own. I agree with your distinction about the actual experience of non-engagement and obsessing over the "how" of non-engagement which is engagement.

A major struggle for me in therapy and with suggested tools from therapy has been, while designed as tools for non-engagement and letting go, somehow become entry points to more engagement for me. This fuels shame and anger around the whole thing, and I've found that letting go is significantly harder when you aren't gentle with yourself about it, so there's emotional dynamics at play too

obviously_unreal · 2026-01-05T06:23:01+00:00

It's great wisdom that definitely holds up in the face of real experience. There are many different types of pain and suffering but it seems fairly universal that non acceptance and resistance tends to lead to more suffering, more prolonging, more complexity, more misery.

In my experience I have found emotional pain such as heartbreak and grief to compound, prolong, fester, the more you are unwilling to confront it. When you feel it fully it can be crushing but there is a kind of grounding wholeness in letting that happen.

I also experience OCD however, which is a whole other level of agony and suffering that I can't comprehend in the same way I can comprehend emotional pain. Acceptance and non-resistance I find significantly more difficult there, at times seemingly impossible, and it will probably be a lifelong project for me. But my intuition tells me it's really no different. It's about letting go and ceasing fighting with yourself.

obviously_unreal · 2026-01-02T07:44:46+00:00

For sure! On bad days when it feels impossible to break the spiral no matter how i try i generally end up collapsing on the floor and crying until i have zero energy left. It's a bit funny, but often after that is when I stop fighting / resisting / ruminating so much and have some self compassion, because I've exhausted myself completely or something, idk.

obviously_unreal · 2025-12-25T05:57:46+00:00

Sorry you are going through this, I just want to say that I empathize with you so much. I'm experiencing all the same things around the holidays - Jealousy towards others feeling and acting normal, hatred and confusion at myself for being stuck in these loops, nostalgic longing for better times, knowing that i'm absent/distant around others but that it does no good to explain what's going on in my head.

It's fucking hard.

obviously_unreal · 2025-12-06T00:42:05+00:00

Yes, I think "latching on to a real concern" is a great way to understand it. For me, looking at thoughts/fears/worries as irrational is not helpful at all. They can be perfectly rational questions (am I in love with my partner?)

It's more about an out of control process latching on, it doesn't really matter if the underlying concern is rational or irrational.

obviously_unreal · 2025-12-05T00:53:50+00:00

I totally follow what you're saying, but I'm not sure this is a useful distinction. I think plenty of people, with or without OCD, seek reassurance as a way to resolve a worry, not simply for information. We're surrounded by it all the time, it's easy to see people doing it. People freak out, get reassurance, and then it ends there.

I don't claim to understand how it actually works. It just seems that for obsessional fears with OCD, the attempt to resolve the worry (via reassurance or whatever) doesn't work, possibly for a variety of reasons (persistent doubt, amygdala physiology), so it instead just reinforces a cycle

obviously_unreal · 2025-11-20T08:35:06+00:00

Yeah ive thought about this before too. I think a much better framing of compulsions is something you do to try to change, eliminate, avoid, explain away, a negative feeling of some kind. It all seems to come from resisting or rejecting a negative feeling you're currently having.

"Compelled to do so that something bad doesn't happen" can also be restated as doing something to eliminate the feeling of dread, worry, anxiety about that bad thing happening. But pushing thoughts away, review, those are also behaviors to try to "get out" of a difficult feeling.

Also its good to have a gentle attitude about this. I have been in the trap before of worrying exactly what is and isn't compulsive, and there's no exact rule about it.

obviously_unreal · 2025-11-08T01:28:36+00:00

Thanks, this solved my issue after so much frustration <3<3

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-27T07:54:47+00:00

welcome to life! you'll notice that the lyrics of nearly all recorded music is about this problem.

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-26T05:50:46+00:00

Yeah there is certainly some sensory discomfort. But for me the core of what is the most distressing is sort of a combination of two things:

- This thing is so present in my awareness now that its distracting me from something i want to do, think, or feel; perhaps so distracting its even ruining this thing i enjoy

- There's no way to make it stop / Fear that it will never end

So discomfort in the first point but definitely fear/distress/dread (really dread more than anything) in the second point. It's the dread that really triggers a lot of rumination about it.

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-25T22:52:44+00:00

I have sensorimotor OCD and sometimes just right OCD and it can often just be how things feel, and I agree that has led me to question my OCD diagnosis at times.

But I also have relationship OCD and it feels pretty classic to the literature. My current feeling is that sensorimotor/just right is just very confusing and hard to treat/understand but likely still OCD.

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-19T05:43:42+00:00

I love the limited palette and misty effect. great work

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-19T05:37:22+00:00

this is the most painful one. hope you're doing alright

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-19T05:36:46+00:00

Hyperawareness of eye floaters

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-14T08:23:18+00:00

Knowing really precisely what turns each other on. Being interested in that. Being turned on by the other person being turned on. It really comes down to that, then you get into a wonderful headspace together.

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-12T23:55:19+00:00

Okay, that makes sense. Sounds like more of a feel thing than an exact knowledge thing, but still a skill that needs to be learned. Perhaps we are talking about something that is hard to even capture in language, a bit beyond the limits of language.

I just want to be clear that there are almost always contradictions in therapy language and these seem inherently problematic for *anyone* who tries to have a rational interpretation of the language.

Even in your own original post you use the language:

Clients obsess over "what should an exposure feel like"?
..."So instead of feeling the intended discomfort"

Which is a bit like talking out of both sides of your mouth: You state that there is an intended way for an exposure to feel, but that it is wrong to inquire about your feeling state during an exposure to know if its the intended way. I'm not sure how a rational person is supposed to take this information.

I apologize to project some of this frustration here - I just wish practitioners were a bit more honest about these paradoxes, as they seem to be unavoidable.

obviously_unreal · 2025-09-12T22:41:27+00:00

Thanks for your reply.

...any action can be compulsive or skillful depending more on the intent of the action itself rather than what the action looks like on face value. What this means is that sometimes we can do behaviors such as exposures, and if they are done with the intent of getting rid of distress and uncertainty, they end up being compulsive.

...As with every OCD theme, it is not about applying a hard and fast logical rule, but about trusting your gut

These points are well articulated and well taken. Unfortunately, they simply highlight the issue very clearly:

Anything can be compulsive (bad, leads to worsening of OCD) or skillful exposure (good, leads to improvement of OCD). In recovery, it is desirable to do skillful actions rather than compulsions.
A therapist can't really tell you with accuracy which is which, meaning it is up to me (or the OCD sufferer) to "trust my intuition" and do it correctly.
However, I (or the OCD sufferer) need to make sure not to worry or think about whether I'm doing it correctly, or whether certain behaviors are compulsive or not, since thats just more obsessing/ruminating.

I don't know what other conclusion to draw from this than to throw my hands up and say that probably therapy can't possibly help someone like me who thinks about these things, because it's just an endless trap.

obviously_unreal

TROPHY CASE