Relationship OCD (ROCD)

Have you ever found yourself questioning whether you really love your partner? Perhaps you’ve spent hours analysing your feelings, searching for reassurance or trying to work out whether you’re in the right relationship. For some people, these doubts become so consuming that they begin to dominate their relationship and everyday life. This is something I frequently encounter in my work with people experiencing Relationship OCD (ROCD).

Relationship OCD is a theme of OCD that is commonly overlooked or misunderstood. It can be incredibly debilitating, causing significant distress for both the individual and their partner. Sadly, it can also place enormous strain on relationships, sometimes contributing to them ending.  Many people experience insecurity or doubts in their relationships. This can be especially understandable if they’ve had difficulties in previous relationships, such as infidelity, or if their current relationship has significant problems. Low self-esteem, fears of rejection or abandonment, and previous experiences of being hurt can all contribute to relationship insecurity. But when do these kinds of difficulties become OCD?

What is Relationship OCD?

Relationship OCD involves recurring doubts about a relationship, your feelings towards your partner, or your partner’s feelings towards you. These might include questions such as:

• “Do I really love my partner?”

• “Does my partner really love me?”

• “Am I attracted to my partner?”

• “Is my partner attracted to me?”

• “Are we right for each other?”

• “What if there’s someone better suited to me?”

• “Will our relationship last?”

On the surface, these all sound like perfectly reasonable questions. And they are! People wonder about these things in relationships all the time. The difficulty with ROCD isn’t necessarily the doubt itself, but what happens afterwards. Rather than being able to acknowledge a doubt and move on, someone with ROCD can become increasingly preoccupied with what it means, feeling a desperate need to find an answer. There are two things that I think are particularly important here.

Firstly, many of these questions are fundamentally difficult, if not impossible, to answer with absolute certainty. How can we know for certain that we’re with the right person? Or predict how we’ll feel about someone in ten years’ time? Relationships, like much of life, involve uncertainty. Secondly, there’s the significance we attach to having the doubt in the first place. We might assume that if we’re questioning our relationship, there must be something wrong with it. After all, surely someone who’s happy in their relationship wouldn’t be having these thoughts? And so, the doubt itself becomes a problem that feels important to investigate.

What does Relationship OCD feel like?

Sometimes these doubts seem to come completely out of the blue. You might be enjoying a lovely evening with your partner when you suddenly wonder whether you really love them. Other times, something relatively ordinary might trigger the doubt. Perhaps your partner does something irritating, you notice someone else is attractive, or you don’t feel quite as affectionate as you think you should. The thought might be followed by a sudden feeling of anxiety or dread.

“Oh my God, what does this mean? What if it’s true?”

We start wondering what the thought means about our partner, our relationship and ourselves. Why did I think that? Does thinking it means something about how I really feel? Would I be having these doubts if this were the right relationship? And because the doubt feels so significant, it can become incredibly difficult to leave alone.

Some people also experience what’s sometimes called partner-focused ROCD. Rather than questioning their feelings about the relationship, they become preoccupied with perceived flaws in their partner. Perhaps it’s something about their appearance, personality, intelligence or behaviour. They might find themselves repeatedly noticing these characteristics, comparing their partner with others, or wondering whether they could be happier with someone else. Again, the difficulty isn’t necessarily noticing something about your partner that you don’t like. Nobody is perfect, and neither are relationships. It’s the significance we attach to these observations and the seemingly endless need to figure out what they mean.

The endless search for answers

Because the thought or doubt feels so important, we naturally want to investigate. This means… thinking. A lot! We might spend hours ruminating, analysing and trying to work things out. Searching for evidence that supports or contradicts the doubt. We might review past experiences, compare how we feel now with how we felt before, or imagine different scenarios to see how we respond. We might start checking our feelings.

“Do I feel attracted to my partner right now? Am I enjoying spending time with them? Do I feel sufficiently excited when I see them? Do I miss them when they’re away?”

The problem is that when we constantly monitor and evaluate our feelings, it becomes increasingly difficult to experience them naturally. Imagine trying to enjoy a romantic evening while simultaneously assessing whether you’re enjoying it enough. It’s hardly surprising that things might start to feel a little forced. And, of course, that can become further evidence that something isn’t right. We might also start Googling or asking AI questions.

“Does this mean my relationship is over? Is this a sign I don’t love my partner? How do I know whether it’s ROCD or genuine doubts about the relationship?”

We might ask friends and family for their opinions or seek reassurance from our partner themselves.

“Do you love me? Do you still fancy me? Are we going to last?”

Sometimes the reassurance helps, at least temporarily. But often it doesn’t quite do it. We might feel the need to ask again, perhaps phrasing the question differently or offering more information, hoping for an answer that finally feels convincing. Sometimes we might start avoiding things that trigger our doubts. Perhaps we avoid intimacy, romantic occasions, or conversations about the future because we worry about how we might feel or what we might think. We might even find ourselves repeatedly considering ending the relationship, not necessarily because we want to, but because leaving can feel like a way to escape uncertainty and distress. Before long, we can become totally consumed by internal rumination, checking, reassurance seeking, researching, and avoidance.

These activities can feel compulsive, hence the OCD. Even when we recognise that they’re not helping, resisting the urge to investigate can feel incredibly difficult. There’s often a sense that we simply cannot afford to leave the question unanswered. What if we’re ignoring something important? What if we’re making a terrible mistake? The uncertainty can feel intolerable, and so we keep searching for answers.

How Relationship OCD can affect your relationship

It’s understandable that feeling this worked up takes its toll. It can affect our mood, concentration, sleep and enjoyment of everyday life. But perhaps most painfully, it can start to affect the relationship itself. We might find ourselves behaving differently around our partner. We might second-guess our interactions, feel unusually self-conscious or struggle to be affectionate and spontaneous. Instead of simply enjoying their company, we monitor our thoughts, feelings and reactions. Our partner might notice that something has changed. They may feel confused, rejected, or hurt, especially if they’re repeatedly asked to reassure us or if our concerns focus on their appearance, personality, or behaviour.

This can create tension. And here’s where relationship OCD can become particularly cruel. We can start to feel as though we’re falling into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we worry about our relationship, the more our distress and behaviour can begin to affect it. We might feel less connected, become more irritable, withdraw emotionally or find ourselves having arguments that wouldn’t otherwise happen. These changes can then seem to confirm our original fears.

“See, things don’t feel right between us anymore. Maybe there really is something wrong with our relationship.”

But what we’re experiencing may be, at least partly, a consequence of how we’ve been responding to our doubts, rather than evidence that those doubts were correct in the first place. And so, the cycle continues.

Getting help with Relationship OCD

Relationship OCD can be incredibly distressing, particularly because it involves something that matters so much to us. It’s also important to recognise that having OCD doesn’t mean a relationship is necessarily right or wrong. Treatment doesn’t aim to convince someone they love their partner or that they should stay in the relationship. Instead, therapy helps people understand and change the patterns of thinking and behaviour that keep them trapped in obsessive doubt, so they can approach their relationships with greater flexibility and less compulsive questioning.

Written by Dr Tom Davies, BABCP-accredited CBT therapist specialising in OCD.