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Romance-related OCD interferes with your ability to trust your own judgment about a relationship.

Romance-related OCD focuses on "What if this is the wrong person?"

Romance-related OCD avoids looking at the here and now of a relationship.

Romance-related OCD over-interprets the meaning of small or insignificant flaws in a relationship.

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a celebration of love and romance, but if you have romance-related OCD, also known as ROCD, then the recent celebration of love may have instead been a trigger for obsessions and compulsions around trying to determine if the person you are with is the right person. Doubt about whether your partner is truly the love of your life can become overwhelming and trap you in a vicious cycle of constantly questioning the quality of your love or your partner’s. It can prompt you to break up prematurely, then make up, and then repeat the cycle repeatedly without ever reaching any certainty about whether you made the right decision. You are left with the burning question, “How do I know if this person is the right one for me?”

When ROCD invades a relationship, it can become difficult to discern when OCD is in operation versus normal caution about wanting a high-quality relationship. It is easy for both clients and their well-intentioned therapists to end up in a pointless argument with OCD that leads only to more doubt, confusion, and despair. What are the ways you can clearly identify when OCD is the culprit as opposed to the personality or character of your partner?

OCD focuses upon the imagined “What if?” future in which someone lets you down after it is too late. OCD asks questions like, “What if I chose the wrong person? What if they cannot be a good partner/parent/worker?” It is based on conjecture rather than the here and now.

Helpful thinking focuses on things that have happened or are happening in the present moment and are easy to detect. For example, if you have set yourself a standard for a partner that does not allow drinking alcohol, then you only get worried when you see your partner drinking after they have said they do not. OCD, on the other hand, gets triggered by your non-drinking partner mentioning how much they used to drink and how much they used to like drinking. It asks, “What if this means I cannot trust them, and they will go back to drinking alcohol?” The focus is on imagined harm.

OCD creates confusion and doubt by focusing upon trivial behaviors that what-ifs turn into harbingers of terrible character defects. For example, your partner forgets to text you goodnight with lots of romantic emojis, and you end up believing they are inconsiderate, selfish, and untrustworthy even after you discover they were tired and fell asleep early. OCD does not allow for normal human mistakes and blows little things out of proportion.

OCD always references perfection, the unattainable ideal. OCD gets you stuck on being unable to accept or get past a typical human mistake because it imagines, “What if this means something big and terrible?” OCD takes normal human issues, like sometimes thinking your partner is not sexy, smells bad, or said something poorly, and turns them into imagined representations of terrible flaws in your love or theirs. OCD tends to select problems that others easily forgive and accept.

Flaws that harm love and romance are obvious in the here and now, and others may be readily willing to share your observation that these behaviors are flaws. For example, if you have a disagreement with your partner, exchange harsh words in the heat of anger, and then calm down and listen to each other, you are probably in good standing. If you have a disagreement and your partner screams at you and will not let you say a word, then threatens to hit you, you should be asking yourself whether this person is ready for a relationship. OCD, however, blurs the distinction between these two, equating harsh words with someone truly expressing contempt or being unwilling to hear your point of view.

OCD makes you seek reassurance by grilling your partner about their intentions—what they really meant or what they might do in the future. It makes you review the triggering situation repeatedly to figure out what it might mean, or repeatedly grill ChatGPT about characteristics of your partner, their personality, or their behavior to see if it means something pathological. It can also make you grill everyone else you talk to about their relationships to try to obtain a favorable or unfavorable comparison. Then it can make you doubt the entire process of seeking reassurance, as if you were trying to convince yourself to stay or leave.

If any of these bullet points seem like they describe you, then you may feel assured that your OCD is interfering with your relationship. You have been inadvertently caught up in compulsive analysis and reassurance-seeking, rather than trying to uphold high standards. If you are caught in this vicious trap, then my best advice is to seek help from an experienced OCD-knowledgeable therapist who is familiar with Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (ICBT) or Exposure with Response Prevention Therapy (ERP).

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

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