Do I REALLY Have Relationship OCD? (What If My Relationship is Wrong?)
If I could write a list of the top three most commonly asked obsessions when working with clients and course members, it would look something like this:
1. Do I really have Relationship OCD? (What if I don’t? And what if the relationship is wrong?)
2. What if I find out I have to leave? (Is this my truth?)
3. What if I am the only one that can’t heal? (What if I can’t get better?)
In those moments, I typically say to my client, “Let me tell you something. This is the most commonly asked question that I get every single day.”
Once I say that, they usually relax their shoulders, take a deep sigh of relief, smile and say, “Really? Wow. I thought I was the only one.”
These moments of validation, I know, release shame — but usually they only provide a split second of relief. The peace does not always last, because going through a list and reassuring ourselves constantly that we have Relationship OCD doesn’t bring about healing and freedom. For many people with Relationship OCD, going through a list and making sure they fit every single thought, obsession and feeling can become a compulsion. And on the flip side, if a person with Relationship OCD realizes that they don’t fit every single thought, or their specific experience is missing from a list, then this can cause them more anxiety which can reinforce the cycle.
But as we start to do the deep work of healing and awakening into love, we start to normalize every single thought, feeling, and sensation as just… being human.
As Relationship OCD and relationship coaches, we bring validation and acceptance to all of your thoughts, feelings or sensations. It’s simply the experience you’re having. In turn, this starts to create a sense of healing through radical compassion, acceptance and trust. This is what we mirror to our clients and our course members.
As you start to read this article, and as I talk about Relationship OCD and what it means to have Relationship OCD, I invite you to bring compassionate awareness to yourself. Notice if you are seeking immediate relief from this blog post and also notice if you start to feel down about your experience if you don’t see yourself in certain parts of this post. Because that’s okay. You don’t need to. What we are doing here is bringing normality to being human.
This part is my reminder to you that nothing is black or white. The work with awakening into love is to start bringing grey to the mind that craves certainty and control.
For today, let’s tackle the first obsession…
Do I really have Relationship OCD?
If someone asked how we can tell if someone has Relationship OCD or not, we can usually tell by three things:
Is the individual experiencing obsessive thoughts, perhaps intrusive, unwanted thoughts about their relationship, partner or about their feelings toward their partner? Are they experiencing compulsions with the thoughts? These could be compulsions such as reassurance, confessing, avoiding, and even ruminating.
Is there a sense of urgency with the obsessive thoughts? A need for control and/or certainty?
Does the individual experience anxiety with the obsessive thoughts? Keep in mind that anxiety can sometimes look like the typical forms of anxiety (pacing, panicking, rocking back and forth, shaking, hyperventilating) but it also may look like not sleeping, not eating, feeling numb, avoiding, replaying scenarios constantly in one’s mind, spacing out, and more.
These are the typical ways one exhibits Relationship OCD. Again, the list can be endless, so in these moments check in with yourself to see if you are seeking a deeper list for reassurance. What matters in these moments is bringing normality to whatever situation you’re in and working from there.
… Now, what usually comes after this question is the thought that says, “Well, then how do I know if the relationship is ‘wrong?’”
The first thing that we go after when asked this question is the preliminary obvious and important consideration (although we have never actually had an individual with Relationship OCD in these types of relationships, which is why we don’t bring it up often).
Red flags.
These are signs that a relationship has emotional, physical, and/or spiritual abuse. For example, if a partner is narcissistic, abusive, bullies you, manipulates you, makes you feel unsafe, constantly cheats on you and constantly breaks your trust — these can be red flags, indicative of an abusive relationship.
Every relationship has its difficulties, its shadows and its “toxic” parts. However, if a relationship has red flags as mentioned above, then this is where we can label a relationship as “wrong”, and one should seek professional help. If you feel as though you’re in an abusive situation, please reach out to a professional if your relationship is abusive.
However, you may still experience Relationship OCD over the possibility of red flags. I know Relationship OCD too well, as I and many clients have said they’ve ruminated over the past and present to make sure there were no “red flags.” This can happen if one is feeling anxiety and starts obsessing over if the relationship is perfect or not, bringing about the desire to be certain that there is nothing “toxic.” Again, my invitation for you is to bring awareness to the fear-based mind and its need for certainty. This is Relationship OCD.
Now, we’ll go a step further with the acknowledgement that there are no red flags in your relationship. We can then bring up the question of “wrong” in a relationship, and we’ll remember the simultaneous black and white thinking that you might experience. This black and white thinking can lead the Relationship OCD mind to create categories for “wrong” and “right.”
With Awaken into Love, our mission is to help you get through Relationship OCD without leaving your partner. This means that yes, we help you find freedom from Relationship OCD, but we also believe that intimate relationships are about work, about growth and about evolution. This means that we recognize and know that relationships are never perfect. Relationships will all have things that are “wrong” within it, and it is not the idea of “wrong” that matters, really, but rather the couples’ willingness to work on their relationship, to grow, to evolve, and ultimately to awaken into love.
False Narratives About Intimate Relationships Create Confusion
Most of us were not taught about intimate relationships, which is why they can at times feel so foreign and so scary. This can be due to a combination of growing up without education on intimate love, of not seeing our parents in a healthy, functional relationship, of having Wholeness Give Away Syndrome and codependency, of looking externally into the world of “Honey-wood”, and social media and more.
Our understanding of love and relationships can come from a combination of factors, which is a big reason why so many people with Relationship OCD feel confused about love and relationships. For so many, we’ve grown up with a check-list in our mind and read articles titled, “5 Ways You Know Your Partner Isn’t The One,” “3 Reasons You Need To Leave,” “How To Know If Your Partner Isn’t Right.”
We’ve heard stories from friends and parents saying, “Well if you feel it’s wrong, then it’s wrong” with their own projections and insecurities splurging out that say, “If they aren’t ‘a, b, c’ then you need to leave.”
So, we’ve developed our own understandings of relationships and love based on the opinions, fears, and beliefs of others, and we’ve further understood love and relationships from our own experiences.
For individuals with ROCD, overarching across these stories about what love and relationships is the need for certainty within their relationship.
Most likely, this pattern of needing certainty comes from a dynamic that arose during childhood. A need to feel and be perfect as a child, needing certainty in a place of chaos — all of this can arise from trauma that inflicted one to be in a state of survival or develop attachment issues and other wounds that create the coping mechanism of ROCD.
Over time, the cognitive distortions, the need for certainty from childhood wounds, the black and white thinking of what is right and what is wrong and what is love become more and more ingrained. And the articles, stories, and words only reinforce black or white thinking and catastrophic thinking, both of which are cognitive distortions that are evident with Relationship OCD.
For so many clients, Alexis and I help break apart stories that have been passed down unconsciously through clients’ parents’ narratives and developed from external sources, allowing a client to experience more freedom.
The work in Awakening into Love has to do with dissecting stories and realizing we have the choice and freedom to create our own. Many others without ROCD blindly go through unawakened love, not realizing that they are playing with their parents’ narrative, society’s narratives, their own fears and wounds, and not living a life they’ve consciously chosen.
It’s Time to Rewrite the Narrative of Love (Hint: There is No Narrative)
These stories cause individuals to feel as though there is a certain idea of “wrong or right,” “perfect or not,” “safe or unsafe,” and has played a part in the cognitive distortion to keep one “safe,” which is why this question of “What if my partner is wrong,” is so very common.
It plays into the idea that there is “right” or “wrong” (red flags aside) without the beauty and capacity of bringing in grey.
It also plays into the idea that we cannot choose our reality or our relationship. The black and white feeds into the idea that we cannot create growth, evolution and expansion with our partner. Almost as there is a set-in-stone measurement for “right” and “wrong” in a relationship.
With us, as always, the awakening is deeper. We would invite you, reader, to recognize your craving of “right or wrong,” (as though there is some “right or wrong,”) and then ask yourself these questions instead:
What if it wasn’t about right or wrong in a relationship, but more on how you’re using the situation in front of you to awaken and grow together?
What if “wrong” and having a couple of wrong things within a relationship is part of being in partnership? What if there will be things within a relationship that will never be 100% perfect?
What if wrong was just an opportunity to deepen the relationship with yourself and partner?
What if you could use this opportunity to first see what you may be blocking within yourself for your own individual healing and journey?
What if the relationship that felt so wrong, the masks of anxiety and fear were really just guides and messengers to point you back to the relationship of what was really so right?
What if?
