Relationship OCD: what if my doubts are real?
Every relationship involves real doubts sometimes. ROCD doubts behave differently. Here is how to tell them apart, and why therapy will not make the decision for you.
It is the question under all the others, and it is the one that makes people hesitate to call it OCD. What if the doubts are telling me something? What if I am in the wrong relationship, and calling it OCD is just a way of not facing that? Wouldn't treating it as a disorder mean staying with someone I should leave?
I take this seriously, and I want to answer it properly, because the answer is not "your doubts are all OCD" and it is not "trust your gut" either.
Real doubts exist
Every relationship involves real doubts sometimes. People do end up with partners who are wrong for them, and noticing that is not a symptom. Sometimes what looks like ROCD is a real problem that has been buried under anxiety, and sometimes it is anxiety with no problem underneath. Assessment is partly about telling these apart, and I will not pretend a genuine mismatch is a disorder.
How ROCD doubts behave
What I can tell you is that ROCD doubts behave in a recognisable way, and the behaviour is the tell.
They demand certainty. A real doubt can sit alongside commitment; you can think "I'm not sure about this" and still go to dinner. An ROCD doubt insists on being resolved now, completely, before you can relax.
They return immediately after reassurance. A real doubt, once addressed, tends to stay addressed. An ROCD doubt comes back the next morning in a slightly different form, needing to be answered again.
They contradict your own experience. You are happy with the person, you enjoy them, you feel loved, and the doubt says "but is it real?" A doubt that persists in the face of the evidence is the machinery.
And they attach to whatever is available. If the question about love is answered, the doubt moves to attraction, or compatibility, or a comparison with someone else. A doubt that changes subject as soon as one subject is settled is not about the subject.
Why the gut is not the answer either
People are often told to trust their gut. In ROCD, the gut is the problem. The feeling of doubt is being generated by the checking, comparing and monitoring, and it is being read as information about the relationship when it is information about the anxiety. Trusting it would mean letting the compulsion decide.
But the opposite advice, ignore your doubts, is wrong too, because some doubts are real. Neither the doubt nor the gut can be trusted while the OCD is running, because the OCD is what is generating the noise. The decision, whichever way it goes, needs to be made from a settled place, and the treatment is what gets you there.
What therapy does and does not do
Therapy does not tell you whether to stay or leave. I am not going to assess your relationship and deliver a verdict, and I would be wary of anyone who offered to. What CBT with exposure and response prevention does is quiet the obsessional doubting: the checking of feelings, the comparing, the confessing, the reassurance-seeking. We practise letting the questions stand unanswered while you get on with the relationship as it actually is.
What people find is that once the checking stops, the question becomes much clearer. Sometimes the doubt fades, and they see a relationship that was good all along, obscured by interrogation. Sometimes a real problem, which was buried under the noise, finally becomes visible, and they can address it. Either way, the decision is theirs, made from a settled place rather than from the middle of a spiral.
The cost of waiting
People sometimes decide to resolve the doubt first and then get help if it turns out to be OCD. This does not work, because the doubt cannot be resolved by the methods being used to resolve it. The checking is the thing keeping it open. Getting the treatment is how you reach a place from which the question can be answered.
If you cannot tell whether your doubts are real, there is more on how I treat relationship OCD, and telling the two apart is part of the first conversation.