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Anxiety in my relationship


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Does anyone else find their OCD worsens when they're supposed to be happy? My partner and I recently got engaged and we are in that lovely phase of telling people. I'm so happy, but every few days my mind finds a way to convince me he is having an affair. I basically keep latching onto things (e.g. finding an unfamiliar but innocuous item in our room) and then running through possible scenarios. Another example is him encouraging me to go away on a pre planned trip last weekend (id just had covid so had been stuck indoors for a while) and I jokingly suggested it was so he could have a girl round (which he found funny/annoying).

I won't list every example but it seems to be taking over my thoughts in a similar way to previous OCD themes. However, it's hard to know what to dismiss as OCD and what to take seriously.

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It does sound like your OCD is latching on to your insecurity. Do you think getting engaged has heightened your insecurity?

I suppose the approach you could try is focusing on the happy thoughts and scenarios and not let the negatives ones have any traction.

I'm not sure the 'jokes' indicating your insecurity, help.

Allow yourself to be happy and enjoy this special time. Good Luck.

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Hey, 

I had a very similar fear to yours when I started dating my first girlfriend. If your OCD latched onto that, and you are in this very anxiety-driven state, you should simply try to focus on other things - like Howard suggested. You should only take things seriously, if it is 100% clear, that there is something going on. And with that, you try not to give into all these "...but what if's" in your head - no matter how reasonable they seem to you in these moments. The only reason they do seem so, is because you have distorted perception of reality, where you interpret everything the worst possible way. 

Sadly, I wasn't diagnosed with OCD back then and thus, the only reason it went away, was because it got replaced with another theme I obsessed about. But once it got replaced my the other obsession, I also stopped doing any compulsions regarding my old obsession. With that, I wasn't on the lookout for any suspicious behavior regarding my wife, but instead was cringing about my old behavior, because of how ridiculous it seemed to me in the aftermath - and that's just because I started fixating on other things, then my wife possibly cheating on me.

And that's the very same thing that will happen, once you stop giving it any attention.

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It's getting worse. We ran out of condoms and now I'm convinced he used them with someone over the weekend as I was away. Normally they're in his bedside draw and I'm desperately trying to remember if they were there before I went away.

The only thing makeing me think (hope?) its ocd is that there keeps being new worries. And I'm dealing with them in the same way I dealt with old obsessions. 

I just want to be able to enjoy our engagement but I feel like I'm falling apart. 

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23 minutes ago, howard said:

Maybe it's just going to take you a while to accept and enjoy your new status of being engaged. It is quite a big step.

Potentially. I mean we decided on this step together and I know I want to marry him, but the whole process can be overwhelming.

I want to message my sister for reassurance but she will, understandably, be annoyed. And I can't confront my partner as he will be annoyed. I don't know what to do. 

 

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I'm so fed up of this. I want to go through different scenarios in my head to work out how an item got into a particular place (basically a pair of goggles appeared under the bed on my side. Not strange in itself as we both go swimming but my partner is very tidy. He wouldn't have put them there and I didn't put them there).

My worry scenario is: he had someone stay and they had goggles in their bag (eg they were going swimming the next day). She ended up leaving them behind next to the bed and they ended up getting swept under (which isn't unusual- half the things I leave on the floor end up getting swept under the bed). I really hope its ocd. 

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9 minutes ago, Jen_90 said:

I'm so fed up of this. I want to go through different scenarios in my head to work out how an item got into a particular place (basically a pair of goggles appeared under the bed on my side. Not strange in itself as we both go swimming but my partner is very tidy. He wouldn't have put them there and I didn't put them there).

My worry scenario is: he had someone stay and they had goggles in their bag (eg they were going swimming the next day). She ended up leaving them behind next to the bed and they ended up getting swept under (which isn't unusual- half the things I leave on the floor end up getting swept under the bed). I really hope its ocd. 

I think you have to go on the basis that this is OCD. You don't have to listen to all of OCD's what if scenarios though with any sort of weight. Focus on what you value which I think in this case is enjoying your engagement? Where OCD can cast doubt, it will cast doubt. If you go with the idea it is OCD then it allows you if it turns out (and it could or it might not - that's the reality of life - uncertainty) to be not OCD then you can deal with it then. Another way to look at it is, if this is OCD then by doing all these compulsions like ruminating over whether or not your partner is cheating on you, the loss is that you aren't getting to spend the time you want with your partner. Whereas you can still have these thoughts there but not ruminate whilst being with your partner and live with the uncertainty instead.

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