Hi fellow Redditors.
Can I get some advice please?
I met my bf a year and 3 months ago online and we hit it off straight away. Unbeknownst to me I developed OCD which came out firstly as relationship OCD, from that point onwards I feel like my ability to ‘feel’ emotion dampened every time I had a spiral. I’ve recently been put on medication which has made me feel extremely apathetic and emotionless (week 3, sertraline).

My boyfriend has been really selfless throughout it all, and I only recently realised how selfish I have been a couple of days ago when wondering why we were arguing so much. Moreover, why I have this idea I need to feel something physically in my chest, or romantically, to know I love someone. It’s completely ridiculous I know.

I didn’t understand or comprehend the sacrifices he made for me – heck, he even visited me after I went to hospital because of my OCD and met my parents who really liked him. My brain attaches to ‘feeling’ a certain way in a relationship, which has subsided since we met.
My trauma from past relationships (mostly anxiety mistaken for ‘butterflies’) has really skewed my perception of love and that love is actually a choice rather than a feeling, which I know now. However, this has deterred me from doing nice things for him because I get scared they are performative and since I don’t have a somatic feeling my brain says it’s fake and the ROCD goes off.

I know that I do not want to lose him, at all. He is my best friend, lover, confidant. He’s all the things I wanted in a partner before my traumatic experiences with other men. I wish he was my first and last.

I do not know how I get rid of this apathy in my life at the moment towards everything, nor do I know how to just take the plunge and be selfless. It just shows how selfish I’ve been and introspective over the past year, consumed with my own issues ranging from health, work stress, family stress etc etc. OCD started when I got a severe UTI , bleeding out and had to go to A&E, it kept happening throughout 2023. I was being bullied at work, pushed out. My family were falling apart at the time of my brothers wedding, sat and watched my mom with depression for months, and the only person who stood by me was my boyfriend. In my head, showing up to see him and spend time with him and having a nice time was enough to sustain our relationship, but he’s been giving more and I’ve been stagnant. I’ll tell all my friends how amazing he is, because he genuinely is. But why am I unable to show him? Am I a narc?

I hate the fact that I am and have been so selfish, and have hurt him. All I have done is told him what he’s not doing, when he has done enough and it has been me who is lacking. It has made him feel so inadequate and shit, and I don’t recognise this version of me who makes people feel this way.

I want to be the best for myself and him. I’d go to the ends of the earth for anyone else and for him, but it comes across with him and to him as me being still quite cold. I have taken him for granted, I know that. But I do not know how to appreciate someone without expecting a feeling or anything back due to my skewed childhood and early 20s perception of love? This is how traumatic relationships have skewed my mind – I would be so warm to previous partners because they’d give me the validation I so desperately needed and that gave me a rush of excitement. I have been to therapy and processed and understood that this what not love, it was akin to grooming and an addiction. I am proud I realise this and it has helped us move forward.

However, whilst I understand I do not need that feeling now (and tbh it’s nice, I can just see my boyfriend and have a lovely time without the ‘feeling’, so I’ve realised it was dumb), how can I move forward and be more selfless? I can’t explain it, but every time I don’t see him for a while, I get quite nervous and need time to settle in and get readjusted. I’m like this when I’ve spent a lot of time away from my family too.

My bf and I haven’t spent much time together in 2 weeks – we were meant to go on holiday and I fell ill and preceding that I’ve literally had a nervous breakdown from a very bad 2023 and initial 2024 leading to going to hospital because I couldn’t cope. The OCD is now being formally diagnosed and I am getting the help I need. I feel embarrassed and ashamed, and I’m hurting the one person I love most. Nonetheless, I’d just like to be more selfless for him, please don’t drag me in the comments. So if anyone’s been in this situation and has changed for the better, how? How did they accept and give healthy love? Not just take it, after years of thinking love was something different…

I notice how many times I’ve said ‘I’ or ‘me’ in this post, maybe that’s a starting point.

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