u/Impossible-Ad-8691

hi everyone. 26 F here. i’m sure this is very REPEATED and maybe annoying question..but how on earth do you actually figure out if it’s OCD or really a relationship issue? i have been with my boyfriend for 7 years. we even have a child together who is 5 years old. i had an inkling for the last year that i might have had OCD based on numerous things over the course of my life but i never knew OCD fit those things. finally, i went into a mental health clinic for an evaluation because i also thought maybe i had like just anxiety? nope, textbook OCD according to the therapist. but here’s my issue… me and my partner have always been very rocky. we met so young—18 years old. we practically grew up together into our adulthood. so many times our relationship should have ended or at least taken a break. but then i got pregnant, and i gave him ample opportunity to not be part of the journey. but he insisted, and we stayed together. every year or so since, our relationship just got harder and harder. No cheating or anything. Just always fighting, yelling, screaming, always about who’s right and who’s wrong. At first, maybe the year we had our daughter, I always gave in and cried for the relationship to work. i loved him so much, ached at the thought of us not being together. never in my mind did i actually consider breaking up. but over the years, something changed. eventually sex with him became a tool I used to not give in whenever I felt he was being dismissive or disrespectful to me. and things just got so bad. Now for the last 2-3 years, I’ve really been struggling with deciding if i love him or not. I’ve never been this confused before. I think about it constantly, every day for hours. what if we broke up, do i actually love him? What if i do but it’s not romantic love? What if I don’t and I’m lying? What if I think I don’t but then I leave him and find out that i actually do? so much noise that makes me so anxious. Sometimes I’ll look at him and think “see I do love him because seeing him just now from afar feels warm and tender, if I didn’t love him then I wouldn’t feel that.” Or “whenever I think of him, I feel like home and that HAS to mean I love him.” Now he feels the extent of my avoidance. We haven’t had sex in 5 months (too long as he puts it) because the thought of having sex with him makes me feel so anxious and just..idk not right? I have such a hard time explaining to him this disease, and I feel he doesn’t understand it. But even myself, I don’t understand if this is really ROCD or something actually real that I feel about us. And what’s harder is I’ve always been trying to figure out my sexuality. I’ve always wondered even as a teen. But seeing as how I most likely have had ocd even THEN makes me wonder too what the HELL is actually really me and what’s ocd…how do you figure this out? Does anyone ever actually figure it out? I might take meds soon, so I guess I’m wondering also if after the meds kick in, if I still have these thoughts then maybe that means it was never ocd that was causing them and maybe it was what I really feel…