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.

Ways To Improve Yourself And Become A Better Person

 

It can be quite a challenge to begin a self improvement. There are also a few different things you can focus on. There are lots of approaches personal development to help you can go about bettering yourself. Once you have found how to develop your own self personally, you will begin to look and feel better in a way that will be immediately apparent to others.

Everyone should help others find the way. How can they expect to do their best if this doesn't happen?

Use wisdom and be modest in order to live your approach to life. Learn from the situations that you face each day, and make sure that you recognize what you cannot change about circumstances in your life. Modesty will serve you well. Wisdom can help you make better future choices based on past experiences.

Stress hurts your body as much as a large slice of high calorie pie, so don't get stressed over small things.

Worrying is simply focusing on something that have not actually happened (and most of the time will not happen). As an alternative to worrying, think about what the worse case scenario could be and plan how you would cope with it.

Always be on the look out for new challenges. You could acquire new understanding of the world and develop new skills. You may even want to achieve something that has done before. Try to find your own niche, rather than following in everyone else's tracks.

You should always strive to be the best. Your drive should always lead the way on the path to success. You can't be the best at everything, but we can try to be great. Do what you can to improve yourself in your work, as it will give your self-esteem a boost.

Focus on changing just one issue at any given time. You may want to improve multiple aspects of yourself, even if there are others you also want to address.

You have to choose and consciously decide to work toward it.

Identify what is standing in between you from being successful. This is very hard for many people. If you can successfully remove a few obstacles, you might get a clearer picture of what your future holds.

Everybody has unique skills, which makes the diverse and wonderful planet we live on.

In order to get anything out of this article, you'll need to both absorb and make use of the information given here. Effort is the first step to success. The initial decision to partake in personal development is an achievement in itself.

By Myron Frantzich

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