ROCD & The Myth of “The One”
I’d say the MOST TRIGGERING words for someone who has ROCD is “when you know, you know.” When ROCD is the one in the driver’s seat you truly know nothing. That gut you once trusted? Out the door. That “intuition” that once was something to be relied on, gone to you know where.
Soulmates, The One, and Knowing When you Know sound absolutely lovely! Don’t they? They sound romantic, simple, like love comes and then all of the sudden everything clicks, you never have to work or question it again and I don’t know, a unicorn poops rainbows and butterflies in the distance or something.
But what happens when you don’t know? What happens when you felt SO SURE YESTERDAY, but today you want to run? What happens when every single thing about your relationship feels like a question, when just yesterday it felt like a fact? Welcome to ROCD.
For someone experiencing relationship OCD, the idea of "The One" can become much more than a love story. It can become a standard they feel they have to meet before they're allowed to move forward and one that they have to check everything against.
When a romantic idea becomes a rule
People mean different things when they call someone "The One." Sometimes it's simply an affectionate way of describing a person they've chosen to build a life with.
The problem is the promise that can get attached to it: with the right person, you would always feel certain. You wouldn't notice their flaws. You wouldn't question your attraction. You wouldn't wonder about another possible life.
ROCD can turn that promise into a rule.
If they're the one, why did I feel bored at dinner?
If they're the one, why didn't I feel excited when they kissed me?
If they're the one, why am I even reading this article?
Now an ordinary moment has become a test. The test feels important because the stakes seem enormous: choosing the wrong person, wasting your life, hurting someone you care about, or missing the person you were supposedly meant to find.
The belief doesn't create OCD by itself. Rigid ideas about what love must feel like can give relationship obsessions more weight. A doubt becomes something that seems to require an immediate answer.
The search for proof
Relationship OCD involves obsessions and compulsions focused on relationships. The subject of those obsessions and compulsions can range anywhere from the way your partner chews to the way that they don’t measure up to your ex. It is truly mental torture and you don’t know what or who to trust when you’re going through it.
OCD gets this rep of being about checking, order, symmetry counting. However, OCD can also be an invisible illness. Mental compulsions are at the forefront of ROCD and those look like: rumination, giving yourself reassurance, undoing bad thoughts with good thoughts, comparison, “checking” how you feel about your partner, the whole gamut. Compulsions that come alongside ROCD can also be sneaky- Googling, talking to the relationship Dr. ChatGPT, asking for reassurance from your partner, friends, family members.
The goal of these compulsions are meant to neutralize the discomfort that comes alongside intrusive thoughts. They are a way of searching for proof that your partner is “The One”- cue the pooping rainbow unicorn again. “The One” acts as proof. “The One” acts as certainty. From what we know about life, certainty only exists in two things- death and taxes. You know where certainty doesn't exist? Relationships.
These behaviors can act as “certainty” for a short while, but that pesky ROCD loop comes back in for another bite every time, and here you are back to square 1.
There is, however, a difference between considering a relationship and repeatedly investigating it until no doubt remains. The topic alone doesn't tell us which is happening. The pattern matters.
Love isn't only a feeling to measure
Feelings and the whole entire array of them exist within a relationship. Anything from love, to attraction to closeness, to affection, to disappointment to resentment can all exist in your relationship. OCD views it as black-and-white or makes meaning of the array of emotions (that meaning implying the worst case scenario).
A relationship is based off of how people feel, yes! However, it is also made up of the partners’ treatment of one another. How we communicate, make room for mistakes, leave space for differences, respect boundaries and how we show up when something goes wrong as well as how we repair those rifts.
The myth of "The One" can shrink all of these complicated feelings, dynamics and facts of the relationship into a single question: Do I feel certain enough right now?
I choose to believe that love is a choice. I choose to believe that you can cultivate “The One” within a relationship- even if that relationship has doubts, troubles, and differences.
Now, this doesn’t mean that your feelings are irrelevant or invalid. It also doesn’t mean that you can force a relationship by simply working harder. It just gives you a choice in the matter rather than letting OCD have the driver’s seat.
Love as a practice is not an obligation to tolerate abuse, coercion, or violations of your boundaries. Having OCD does not make every relationship concern an obsession, which is something that I note in all of my articles.
This article cannot tell you whether a particular relationship is right for you.
"Love is a choice" can become another test
The fun thing about OCD is that it can turn quite literally anything into a compulsion, which is why working with a qualified OCD therapist is so crucial.
Even a helpful idea such as “love is a choice” can get pulled into the checking cycle.
Am I choosing them enough? Did I choose them sincerely? If I really believed love was a choice, wouldn't I feel better by now? I’m starting to feel better now, am I feeling too good? Does this mean I don’t have OCD anymore? Does this mean I never had OCD and my relationship was just doomed from the start and I’ve been gaslighting myself this whole time?- See how easy it is to get sucked right in ;)
Replacing "I must know they're the one" with "I must know I'm choosing them correctly" leaves the demand for certainty intact.
The point of “love is a choice” isn’t to provide a new compulsion, it’s to promote the art of acceptance and not allowing OCD to be the one to make the choices.
A story, not a guarantee
From what we know about ROCD, it loves 3 things-
1) Evidence
2) Comparison
3) Using comparison as evidence
Therefore, it’ll use comparison as evidence for what something must mean about your relationship. The thing about comparison is that comparison is a compulsion.
You can enjoy a love story without using it as a requirement for your own life. You can see a breakup without it meaning something about your relationship. Nothing can predict the future, even if we reallllyyyy want it to.
Doubt nor certainty are relationship verdicts. This isn't an argument for staying or leaving. It's an invitation to notice the rule underneath the question: that before you can participate in a relationship, you must somehow know how the whole story ends.
That's a lot to ask of a human relationship.
My relationship BECAME the one for me and we BECAME soulmates
I don’t share much about my personal relationship publicly in detail, because that’s something that my husband and I honor and keep to ourselves. What I will say is this- my relationship becomes more and more of “the one” for me daily. My husband becomes my soulmate daily. All of this is a choice that I made when I no longer allowed for OCD to be the one running the show.
Relationships (including mine!) take work. It takes communication, understanding, acceptance, and a whole lotta compromise. I chose to get married despite having the doubting disorder, and for me it’s the best thing I ever did because I get to choose to be with him daily.
***please note this is not therapy or a diagnosis and is for educational purposes only.
