Partner Focused OCD | Treatment

Partner Focused OCD

​Maybe your dating, friends with someone, or married. Either way, you have a relationship with them. Do you ever wonder if you’ll be able to handle a flaw or perceived flaw of the other person? Meaning, you may be obsessing about your partners’ faults. Not just having a thought every once in a while. But truly obsessing about specific flaws or faults. Like all day. This brings a lot of anxiety. You’re not sure if you need to get out of the relationship. You’re not sure if you stayed, that you’ll ever stop thinking or feeling anxious about this flaw. 

If this sounds like you, you may struggle with what’s called relationship OCD, more specifically, partner-focused OCD. 

Partner focused OCD can be very distressing to those who experience it. This only comes to an individual who has OCD. Hence the name. What we know is that OCD attack so people value and care about. This means if you experience this, you must really care about your spouse, the person you’re dating, or even your friend. You value them greatly. So OCD jumps on in their and says , “how can I make this harder for you?”  You love the person, you care about them greatly. So why are you all of a sudden having doubts? 

 This is because OCD also takes normal natural things that everyone thinks about. Whether it is the shape of your partners nose, a mole that seems to be in a strange place. It takes these normal natural observations but then as a lot of value to it. Makes you want to think about it, makes you wonder if you’ll never stop thinking about it. It puts you in his problem-solving mode to see if you’ll build a handle of the rest of your life. To see if there’s anything you can tell them to maybe change this flaw.  There needs to be a solution, that’s what OCD says. When in reality there is no solution.

 You could have  your partner remove that mole but it wouldn’t be good enough. It would find something else to make you obsess about. It is very ego dystonic.  Meaning the responses and behaviors are against your actual belief system.  Internally, you’re probably not that person that really cares about these things, OCD is wanting you to care and put value upon it.

 With partner focused OCD there tends to be a few areas that individuals may focus on the most.

Physical appearance. Obviously this can be anything the person sees on the other partner. It can be a mole, a computer stomach, to be the shape of their nose, to be the way they do their hair, it can be the shape of their toes, really anything the brain puts value upon.

Sociability -  Individuals may be looking at others personality. The questioning and obsessing about if their social enough. Sometimes their processing if there two social. They look at their interactions with others. Can I be a somebody who is not meet my qualifications of being social.

Morality -  Does this person share the same morals and I had. Like I said earlier, these are normal natural thoughts that anyone would have in a relationship. But without OCD is just a thought, it’s observing, maybe a little problem solving, and then they move forward. With OCD, it’s on your brain all day long. They’re looking at every interaction that person has, the words that are coming out of their mouth they are appropriate or not. It will make sure they meet the same moral standards.

Intelligence -  individuals may be looking at simply how intelligent their partners is.  They may be listening to every single word they say to see if they have good grammar. They may be asking about what can grades they got when they were younger. There seeing their interactions with others to identify how intelligent are they or even competent. They cannot ignore their partner’s intelligence and competence level. 

 What a lot of this comes down to is that  in individuals are looking for certainty. Didn’t want to be stuck in relationship they can handle one of these areas of concern or perceived flaws. They need to make sure. But often, even when they feel like they are sure we can handle it and it’s not all problem anymore, the brain tends to doubt or try to find something else in the relationship. As I said earlier, once you take something you care about and exploit it.

Treatment

So what is the treatment? The treatment for this is called exposure and response prevention. What this really means is that you are no longer going to be problem-solving if your relationship is right for you or not. This sounds crazy, but the does not need to be much problem solving. Instead it just needs to be simple thoughts. You may be essentially moving closer to the perceived flaws, noticing them on purpose but learning to respond differently to them. For instance, you may be looking at your partner’s nose for a picture of their nose really acting like you don’t care. You may receive the complete opposite statements of whats going on in your head.  Statements like, wow I love the shape of that person’s nose. This can be awesome to look this entire duration of my life. So excited to be all to be with this person who has this type and nose.  I may or may not be able to handle it the rest of my life. 

The exposure part. You are exposing yourself to the upsetting fears or threats on purpose.

 The response part.  You are responding differently to these fears. Using a lot of uncertainty statements like maybe maybe not.  Allowing yourself to no longer do the compulsions. The compulsions of the things you’re doing to gain certainty about the relationship were about the perceived fears or threats in your head.

 A lot of rumination comes along with this, rumination is a compulsion, is essentially you just trying to problem solve. We need to change the dialogue to be more uncertain instead of problem solve that’s correct for you to be in a relationship or not.

Whenever I talk about this, someone always say, but what if I’m staying so uncertain that I miss if I actually need to be out of the relationship or not.  My response, that’s the risk.  When somebody relieves a relationship, they know, they don’t need to problem solve.  But either way were not using that as reassurance to count on you knowing. You job is to say,  I may or may not miss it and be stuck in this relationship forever. How wonderful is that going to be!

The Program
Do you need a little extra help with your OCD? I’ve created an online course that takes you through understanding your OCD and the treatment. Taking you through the evidenced based treatment strategies that work for OCD. It’s everything I teach individuals in my office. You can start for free.  I’ll link it below.

Treatment for partner focused ocd

ROCD partner focused ocd