I (29M) have a crush on (23/24F) I met at a school event and things were looking good until..
We met at a cool school event about a couple weeks ago at this point. We displayed strong interest in each other and the first time we were together we had an amazing time together. My approach to her was I made her a gift and a fun gesture. I actually was stuck between two people to approach but when we made eye contact I picked her. We then talked, and then hung out for the next couple of hours. It was probably the best school night I have ever had in college if I’m being honest. But then because I have OCD and intrusive thoughts things started to distort things days later. The texting was great, we had planned our first date but unfortunately the date didn’t happen she got sick and I wasn’t feeling well either. I actually had insomnia because my OCD attached to her cause I would look at her photos and the fear made me believe I was doing checking behavior and started making me feel guilty about myself. But at the same time, I would look at her and say to myself she’s perfect and gorgeous. I want to treat her well and nice. I want to be with her. I would even take casual selfies with the intent to send them to her (never sent them). Why would I feel guilty you might ask? Because when I started checking her out an instructive thought came into my head and I didn’t like the thought at all. It felt like I had judged her and at the same time I judged myself for what could have just been a random thought and started making me feel terrible about myself. Then anytime I would check her photos just to see my crush and the woman I liked, the OCD started getting worse. Eventually I started to believe the doubts that I was actually judging her and that’s why the intrusive thoughts didn’t go away. The fear became stronger and derailed me mentally leaking into my personal life and I lost 5 nights of sleep and I just now started to recover. I missed job interviews. Not her fault but I made myself lose myself through this whole batch, my OCD wasn’t even about her anymore it was about everything. I had to disconnect from her which really sucked but for the mean time that is the only thing I could have done to balance my mental health back. I’m much better now. Keep in mind this may or may not have to do with much but I am graduating next week and have job interviews lined up I had to cancel as well and now starting to get back to again. Yesterday I bumped into my crush at the gym and conversation was pretty mixed.. actually she was hanging out with another guy I assume it was just a friend since what we talked about was about each other and she didn’t just dismiss me. We essentially talked it out and I reassured her that it was my fault I ghosted her. I was going through some trouble and it wasn’t anything about her. I tried to tell her that I wanted to potentially take things slow and while I spoke to her the intrusive thoughts came back again and maybe a bit of checking behavior, at one point some of the stuff in my head didn’t make sense. Like “why would I say this?” I didn’t say it. So no ruminating on my thoughts there.
I think a big piece of this is that I let the fear overtake how I actually feel about this woman. But I fear that this thought will never leave me alone. I also want to feel like myself too. I think I’m creating myself grief over her and that’s not cool for me. She’s done nothing wrong here. When I bumped into her yesterday I actually left school cause I felt bad and that I failed her but I decided to go back and maybe give talking to her a try, which just left things more mixed. I think she is extremely beautiful. Any advice is greatly appreciated.