perhaps OCD in relationships?

[milton]

I don’t know the etiquette about making multiple threads. I am writing this because I am interested to see if anyone else can identify with these behaviors. I do not know if they are classified as OCD and that probably does not matter. If no one can, then I will try somewhere else sometime. (In addition, I guess this will remain on the internet for a long time, so maybe some person in the future will be able to identify.) I don’t think I’ve ever told these things to someone who then said “yes, that also happens to me,” and I guess that is what I’m looking for. I was thinking that the reason I want to hear this is that at the moment (and throughout my life), I have always thought that this happens only to me, and thinking this way makes me wonder whether there is truly any way out of it, or truly any way to improve it, since the behavior would then seem to be “uncharted territory,” and therefore no existing methods would work. Of course when I think about it more, this seems to be irrational: all behaviors and thoughts will be unique to the person experiencing them, and even if you wash your hands a thousand times a day, you will never find another person who washes their hands exactly the same number of times you do, at exactly the same times. This of course does not mean that there is no way to get relief from these things. In any event, I still have this fantasy in my mind that finding someone else with similar behaviors will make me feel better.

 

Whenever I’ve been in a relationship, everything goes well for a couple of months. I am excited and life is good. At some point I start to get disturbed by either the behaviors or the words (or both) of the person. For example, maybe the person says something to me that I find insulting (even mildly). Then this cycle of behavior starts in me. I have usually called it “the doom,” and it can happen daily, or I can even get weeks of relief from it (usually by very strongly policing my thoughts).

 

I will get upset about what the person said or did. It is usually objectively not a big deal. They may jokingly make fun of me. In high school a girl used to wear sandals, and I was convinced that since I did not like sandals, she was doing this in spite of my thoughts about it, and this was insulting. (I know this sounds borderline delusional, and most of my thoughts these days are not as control-y as those used to be.) At this point I get upset and I keep thinking things like “why would they do that?” or “I would never do that to them. They clearly don’t care about me as much as I care about them.” Then I might say something like “that was not very nice.” At this point I usually think that I overreacted, and I think something like “oops. That was a mistake. I should not have said that.” But the damage has been done. The other person will get upset (maybe just mildly) and then I feel like things are “weird.” I then shut down and stop talking completely. I keep going back and forth between thinking they have hurt me and thinking that I am insane and wrong. Sometimes I will blurt something out, like “I’m sorry I said that,” and sometimes the complete opposite “I still can’t believe you said that.” I then feel embarrassed seconds later and think that I should not have said that. Anyway I decide at some point that I cannot help the situation, and I am just digging a deeper hole in the ground, so I stop talking and actually usually become physically immobile. I will then lay down and stay there without moving sometimes for hours. The whole time I am going back and forth about whether I was right, and also thinking that I am insane and I hate that this always happens. Sometimes I will go to sleep and then feel a little better when I wake up, but I am always extremely embarrassed later on, and ashamed about my behavior. There have been times when I have been immobile, staring at walls for hours around other people, and I am terrified of this happening. I don’t seem to have much control over when this happens to me, and so I have often tried to stay away from other people when I am dating someone.

 

Anyway does anyone experience anything like this? I was looking on the site, and there is a category of OCD called “intrusive thoughts,” where some of the thoughts include relationships issues. I would guess most people are obsessed with whether their partner is cheating on them or something, but I have not often thought this. I have gone through the cycle I described above literally hundreds of times in my life, and often day after day after day. I think it has severe implications for my relationships, and at some point I took medication, which seemed to help. One side effect (I think) is that I completely lose interest in intimacy after several months. This is not good and has been a problem in my marriage for many years. I think this is also related to a compulsive addiction to pornography that I seem to have acquired over the years. I am in recovery to deal with this addiction, but I think that I will not make so much progress until I have a way of coping with “the doom.” I have been successful in the past by using REBT techniques to combat my irrational thoughts related to the doom in the past, and this seems pretty well in line with the Schwarz OCD book (and probably this “breaking free from OCD” that was mentioned here, which has not arrived at my house yet). However I’ve never been able to be free from this behavior (the doom; the addiction I’ve been able to deal with at times for long stretches) for longer than a couple of weeks (and then it still remained internally), and I think this fact is related to the fact that I have not been able to reinvigorate any sexual attraction to partners for any substantial amount of time.

 

Thanks for reading.

[Handy]

OCD about a person is called by this beautiful word, Limerence.

Avoiding people in a relationship is called Avoidant Personality Disorder & about 55% of those with ocd have it. Frankly, I’m surprised these two things don’t get more discussion on the forum.

[PolarBear]

I have never heard of avoidant personality disorder or its alleged connection with OCD.

[kaheath80]

Suffering from borderline personality disorder (BPD) myself I can confirm that avoidant personality disorder is a real thing. However I’ve never heard of it being so closely linked to OCD, let alone in such large numbers. It doesn’t seem very likely, it doesn’t have huge similarities with OCD as far as I know.