OCD A to Z: R is for Relationship OCD

I'd never seen the acronym ROCD before until I came upon it on a OCD self-help list called Stuck in a Doorway. It stands for Relationship OCD, and another one was HOCD for Homosexuality OCD. They are both ways that OCD latches onto whatever is important to us.

OCD wants definitive answers, and when an obsessive thought or question centered around being with the right person(ROCD) or gender(HOCD), my desire was to answer the questions so I could breathe, so I could not be vigilantly checking to make sure I was making the right decision, and not be haunted by it later.

I was shy, and didn't date in highschool. I had a friend who lived in a cooperative community and most of her mother's friends were lesbians. This friend and I loved talking about big questions, the meaning of life, the nature of history. She gave me feminist theorists to read, and I gave her books by Madeleine L'Engle and C.S. Lewis. She didn't believe in God, but I wanted to be a minister, but we still talked for the enjoyment of spirited talking. She didn't date either, and rumors abounded that she was a lesbian. We went to see Entre Nous, a French movie about a woman who leaves her husband for another woman. This haunted me, because my father had left my mother that year, when I was 16 and my sister 13. My friend said that this woman as becoming free, but I kept seeing the shot of the daughter waiting for her mother.

I moved away after I graduated, and she gave me 3 cassette tape of "Womyn's Music" to listen to, Meg Christian, Ferron, Chris Williamson, Sweet Honey in the Rock, and I loved the songs. Reading about women in history was one of the few things that kept my interest in college, and I ended up majoring in feminist theory, but slowly this evolved into a way to try and figure out if it was safe to be with a man. I had fallen in love, with a man, and my OCD was tenaciously throwing out barbed questions that perhaps I was a traitor to my gender. I wondered if the feminist songs I loved meant I was a lesbian, or the many women friends I felt safe with or found attractive meant that as well.

In spite of all this rumination, and reading and analyzing, I agreed to marry the man I was in love with, at age 25. My OCD fears were that marriage was inherently dangerous, and I would be mocked by those who came after me for being part of that institution. It took all I had to carry through when we went to apply for a marriage license, and the form said that $25 of the fee went toward a fund for victims of domestic violence. I didn't know I had OCD, but I knew I was filled with anxiety, and I clung onto the fact that I couldn't imagine being with anyone else, and that I had to ride through the anxiety, and that without getting married, I would have no health insurance after I graduated.

I used to wonder if I was suppressing my "true" self by being with my husband, but the exposure of being married, and enjoying his company until the anxiety subsided helped my obsessing about this to recede to the background as my health anxiety and perfectionism came to the forefront and sucked up much of my energy and life.

After I had my hair cut short, I remember some people calling me a boy, but how I looked didn't determine who I was. My fears didn't determine who I was. The healthy part of me knew I loved the man who became my husband.

If you've read this far, take courage. OCD can be treated with Exposure Therapy. You can learn to listen to the voice within you that knows who you are. You can learn to deal with your evolving self. No one gets a lifetime guarantee that they've chosen the right person or right gender. Just look at the divorce rate. OCD compulsions of analyzing and checking and figuring out will corrode a relationship, causing the very thing we fear, the loss of love, the fear of haunting memories.

Relationship OCD: Two Hard Things at Once

The post on Exposing OCD with the most comments and reader resonance is Relationship OCD and Fear of Choosing the Wrong Person or Gender.  I wrote it over 2 years ago, and it still gets comments.  There is a thread of pain throughout the comments, which I find sobering.  

I am not a professional.  I am not a therapist.  I am someone sharing my story and my experience.  If there's any lesson, it's not that my readers need to marry the one they are with, or not marry the one they are with, or find another gender, but that OCD latches onto what is important to us, such as love or connection, or a particular person, or imagined ideal person.  

Relationship struggles are hard enough without OCD, and there's nothing magical about OCD treatment that will make relationships struggle-free, but it can give you the chance to choose to live your life, and choose who you love.  

OCD is offering a false promise that you can banish all fears and doubts, all unwanted thoughts, all gnawing anxiety, if you just come up with the right ritual of analysis, research, checking, double checking, monitoring feelings or repeating certain phrases.  

When I married my husband 20 years ago, I could've made the wrong choice.  Many marriages end in divorce.  The brave part was making a choice, without having absolute omniscient knowledge of the future, which of course no human gets.   Getting married didn't make my OCD go away, but I did have the victory of choosing what I wanted(or rather, my best guess of what I wanted).    

Professional help and OCD support groups are about making an investment in your future, an investment in your life, in facing the disorder that barrages you with thoughts that go against the core of your being, and yet the more you wrestle with them, the more they cling.

Living with Me and My OCD: An Interview for Claire's Documentary

ClaireJaneOCD on twitter is creating a documentary about the experience of having OCD, and invited me to contribute a video.  Claire and Jane are twins in the UK, who just completed running a marathon in order to bring awareness about OCD.  This is my first time recording myself!  And definitely an exposure to make it, but hopefully will be helpful to other people who struggle with OCD.

Dealing with Feared Consequences When they Happen: The Impossibility of Coming Out in Advance

A post by Pure O Canuck got me thinking when she about her relationship OCD(ROCD) and homosexuality OCD(HOCD),

When does this horrible urge/need to find the answer end? And why does it seem like others have found the answer and I can't? It seems like others are living happily ever after. Can I say that I feel that way about my relationship at the moment? Definitely not. (Spend too much time on that and the ROCD starts up - but that's for another post.)

This desire to live happily ever after is seductive for all humans, and when you have OCD, there can be a gnawing, erosive need to figure out if you actually are living happily, or whether you have made a huge mistake in who you choose to be with by compulsively analyzing or avoiding all triggers of the fears. I read lots of "coming out" stories in college(which is one of Pure O Canuck's exposures right now), and I longed for the click, the final puzzle piece going into place, the revelation or vision that these stories seemed to offer. But I am realizing that the OCD is latching onto the metaphor of "coming out" as a form of absolute certainty, which in actuality it is not, and OCD is very opportunistic and picks up on other images like being "in denial about being gay." As Pure O Canuck says,

I know that I am not going to get an absolute, certain answer to these questions. (I don't quite understand why - it seems like others have it. But I guess that's just a momentary feeling and it will come and go.)

It's hard to accept that other people seem to have absolute certainty, and there's a longing to have some of that elixir, but in reality, people without OCD may simply be able to move on in spite of some uncertainty, rather than seeking to eradicate every last remnant. Others were indeed in denial about being gay because of strong cultural and religious pressure and condemnation, but eventually reached a point where they came to accept who they were, in spite of trepidation or fear, and often sound at peace, but this isn't the same thing as absolute certainty. OCD never grants peace in the long term. If I feed my OCD with figuring out, analyzing and avoidance, even if one obsession recedes, another one will appear.

My therapist likes to say, "If your feared consequence happens, you'll deal with it then. You don't need to know the answers to your OCD questions right now." That's the basic uncertainty--the women in some of these coming out stories didn't know that they would suddenly fall in love with a woman--but if they didn't have OCD, they dealt with it when it happened, not in beforehand rumination.

I did the exposure of marrying my boyfriend, my now husband, in spite of agonizing whether I was really lesbian, and might never truly be happy, and over the years have grown to love my husband more and more, but I had to deal with a burst of anxiety about whether I loved him "enough" and when our 10th anniversary came, and we planned to renew our vows, I had a panic attack about whether I really could say "until death do us part"(which totally misses the point that I already had taken that vow the first time around!!) OCD narrows our vision, and allows no possibility of grace or peace.

The Lonely Pilgrim: The Isolation of Relationship OCD

Today I found a quote from the lyrics of Bruce Springtsteen's "Brilliant Disguise"
which encapsulated the sadness of the "Lonely Pilgrim's" voice:

God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he is sure of.

I know this song, and have the album, but I haven't listened to it in awhile, and today it struck me as an achingly accurate description of OCD, particularly what some call Relationship OCD. The character in the song wants to make a real connection with the woman he loves, and yet cannot be certain of what is in her mind, or even in his own. He doesn't trust himself.

It is part of the human condition that we can't read minds, we can't really know what someone else is thinking, and this can be very lonely, but OCD grabs hold of it and intensifies the suffering with demands of knowing for sure what the other is thinking or feeling, or wanting to be sure of loving someone.

We are feeling creatures, but OCD has no mercy and erodes essential feelings of love and trust by putting the burden on the mind to figure it all out, get reassurance, guarantees, documentation and checking to make sure the feelings are still there. A quick way to lose connection with someone you love is to get lost in an OCD loop of verification within your own mind. I did this for many years in my marriage, wanting to know what physical connection "meant" and how it was supposed to feel, and compulsively going over any touch in my mind, trying to establish if it felt good, was I sure, how did I know, was I doing it right?

And when the circumstances and history of your life seem to confirm the OCD fears, that makes it even harder.

Well I've tried so hard baby
But I just can't see
What a woman like you
Is doing with me

I grew from girl into woman into the belief that no one would ever love me because I was essentially defective, and the OCD latched onto this with a vengeance, and ever increased the rumination and fear. A whole string of compulsive questions about what was wrong with me, and why couldn't I change it, and analyzing my every thought and sensation.

My husband and I actually were in a kind of "brilliant disguise," not really telling each other what we were thinking or feeling, but my OCD couldn't protect me from that, and in fact made us even farther apart. He could be in the room, right next to me, and I was far far away in my compulsing. We both found the courage to actually know each other, with the help of a therapist, and this helped immensely when I began Exposure Therapy for my OCD, since I could talk to him about how I was struggling, and at the same know that if he needed a break, he would tell me.

Are there any songs that are meaningful to you in dealing with your OCD?

Relationship OCD: Fear of Choosing the Wrong Person or Gender

My 21st anniversary of being with my husband is coming up. I remember our 3rd anniversary, as we sat on the floor of my dorm room, and I struggled to tell him my fears. I had just gone to a presentation by a "feminists against pornography" group, with a slide show of violent images found in magazines, and the images were stuck in my head. I felt a claustrophobic dread that I would always be trapped by these images, a barrier between me and living my life with any peace or joy.

I had been reading a book on women's friendships, and combined with the scary things I had just seen, my OCD went into overdrive trying to figure out if it was safe to be in a relationship with a man, whether I was making a mistake, showing extremely poor judgement. As my anniversary approached, the obsessing intensified, and permeated all my thoughts and feelings. Was I putting myself in danger? Was I stupid? Was I wrong? Would this man betray me or hurt me?

It's hard enough to have these questions as a 20 year old, in any context, but in the context of OCD, I felt crazy. My first date with this man was to hear a feminist folksinger. I had never met anyone who listened to me like this man did, and took my thoughts seriously. He was compassionate. But my OCD wanted absolute certainty that he wouldn't become a monster. My best guess would've been that no, this was unlikely, but the OCD whittled away at this knowledge, kept demanding I figure things out.

Maybe you should be with a woman? That would be safer. If you stay with this man, you are betraying your gender. Are you sure you feel something for him? Keep checking on this. Any sensations? You are so tense when he touches you, obviously this is a sign that you need to be with a woman. So many horrible things have been done to women by men. You'll become part of that. You will be in collusion and contaminated. What if you stay with him, but you are actually a lesbian and you will lose any chance of happiness?

So, there I sat on the floor, on my anniversary barely able to speak, crying, and my love thought I was breaking up with him. This was the essence of OCD--I didn't want to break up with him. I just wanted the anxiety and intrusive thoughts and endless exhausting dialogues in my head to go away, and to know for sure I wasn't making a mistake.

There's a lot this 20 year old didn't know. She didn't know she had OCD. She knew she was anxious, but assumed that was a sign of her own defectiveness. She didn't know that OCD attacks what we hold dearest, what cuts right to the core of our identity and self. She didn't know that if you constantly check to see if you are feeling anything, you will mostly feel anxiety and fear. She didn't know that some things are incomprehensible, like the violent acts done to some women by some men.

I'm glad that somehow I made the decision to stay with the man who is now my husband. That took a lot of courage, since it meant trusting my own judgment and living with the whole host of anxiety-provoking questions, with no support for dealing with my OCD.