My boyfriend (26) and I (23) have been together for over a year now. He is my first relationship. I spent a lot of time in my single party phase throughout High school, which I now regret everything I did back then. At first I had a confession compulsion of telling my boyfriend every slutty, cringy thing I did in that time of my life. Even though he didn’t wanna hear it, he understood and accepted it even though it did bother him and make him feel sick hearing all the details (because I always need to over explain)
Now my ROCD has taken a new turn where I’m constantly questioning my feelings, or if he’s right for me. When we get into fights my boyfriend has a habit of saying hurtful things that hit deep, he always takes it back within the hour and feels very bad & regretful afterwards and always apologizes and tells me that’s not how he truly feels. I’ve done it sometimes too, I’ll say bad things I don’t mean and take it back. But for me since I have ROCD, those things really stick. I begin questioning: is this how I want to be treated? Is there someone out there who will treat me nicer? Am I falling out of love? Would I be better off if we broke up? Do you really love him or just want a relationship? Do you miss men from your past?
Which are all thoughts that I don’t want to have because 99% of the time my boyfriend is the sweetest, most generous, caring and protective person. He’s everything I want in a future husband. He’s successful, a hard worker and has a good head on his shoulders and he always supports me with my mental health issues. So I love him and I want to be with him, forever. But these thoughts make me question myself, and now since I’ve shared them with my boyfriend (felt like I had to or I was hiding something, and I felt really guilty) he now is starting to feel like I’m falling out of love. I’m sick of feeling like I’m falling out of love in my head, when my heart doesn’t feel that way. It’s like my head is one place, my heart is somewhere else.
I really don’t know where to go from here cause I’ve been in a constant state of ROCD, stress and anxiety for 7 months straight now. I’ve tried different medications (I don’t want to rely on meds and they didn’t work) I’ve tried therapy (ERP too) and NOTHING has helped. Nothing has stopped the negative thoughts or my OCD. It’s hard because I’m in a relationship where I’m not happy. But not because of him, but because of me and how my brain works. I’m terrified I’ll never be happy again. I was soooo happy in the first 6 months of our relationship before OCD destroyed it. I wish more then anything I could go back to enjoying our relationship because I really love him so much and love being with him, and I know he loves me so much too. I NEVER want to leave him so please do not suggest that, I want to get through this and learn how to be happy with him and not let OCD ruin it. Please help.
**EDIT: I should also mention that we are in a long distance relationship, he lives in the USA, I live in Canada. So that makes it 100x worse and causes us so much more stress. Just got home from visiting him the other day and I started feeling wayyyyy worse. When I’m with him, I’m a bit happier. I still have the thoughts but then I remember why I love spending time with him so much. I’m forced to stay here for the next year to complete school so I feel trapped.