For adults

Relationship OCD (ROCD)

Relationship OCD, often shortened to ROCD, is OCD in which the doubt is about a relationship, such as whether you love your partner enough, whether they love you, or whether they are the right person. The doubt feels like an important question about your life, and it behaves like any other obsession.

Two kinds of relationship doubt

Researchers who study ROCD describe two patterns, which often occur together. In the relationship-centred pattern the doubt is about the relationship itself, such as whether what you feel is really love, whether your partner truly loves you, or whether this is the relationship you are supposed to be in. Someone lies next to their partner on a Sunday morning, feels calm rather than elated, and within seconds is asking whether calm means the love has gone. In the partner-focused pattern the preoccupation is with a perceived flaw in the partner, such as the shape of their nose, the way they laugh or whether they are ambitious enough. The person may know the flaw is small, but it keeps drawing their attention, and each time it does they feel a jolt of doubt about the whole relationship. ROCD can start in the first months of a relationship or years in, often around a commitment such as moving in together or having a baby.

What the checking looks like

The compulsions in ROCD are mostly quiet, which is why it is often mistaken for an ordinary relationship problem. One is checking your own feelings, looking at your partner and scanning for love or attraction, and reading anything less than certainty as bad news. Another is comparing your partner with other people’s partners, with your own past relationships and with couples in films. Reassurance-seeking includes asking friends whether the relationship looks normal, posting long accounts on forums for strangers to judge, taking online quizzes with titles like “are you really in love?”, and confessing the doubts to your partner, which hurts them and brings you a brief sense of relief before more doubt. In your head, you may replay the early days of the relationship to check whether the feeling was ever there.

Why the answers never last

Nobody feels love or certainty about a partner at the same strength all the time, so checking your feelings turns up an ordinary mixed picture, which ROCD reads as a warning. When you look at your partner to find out whether you love them, you are watching for a feeling rather than having one, and the check tends to turn up the flatness it was meant to rule out. Reassurance from friends and quizzes brings relief for minutes, and the relief teaches you that the question was urgent, so the doubt comes back with a new angle, such as whether your friend was only being kind. Comparing leaves your partner looking worse almost every time, because they are being judged on an ordinary evening at home against other couples as they appear in public.

The relationship OCD loop

1. Trigger: Your partner says something slightly annoying
2. Obsession: What if I don’t really love them?
3. Feeling: Anxiety, flatness, a need to be certain
4. Compulsion: Checking how you feel, comparing, asking, online quizzes
5. Relief, for now: Reassured for a while, then the doubt returns
6. Then back to the first step, and the loop runs again.
7. Other situations that now set it off too: A friend’s engagement, A film about a couple, A quiet evening together, A photo of an ex.

Where treatment steps in. You stop the checking, comparing and asking, take part in the relationship with the question still open, and learn that you can carry the doubt without settling it.

New triggers. Over time, more situations become linked to the trigger and start the loop off too.

How I treat relationship OCD

The treatment is exposure and response prevention (ERP) within cognitive behavioural therapy. In plain terms, you face the doubt on purpose and stop the checking, comparing and reassurance-seeking. We start by mapping the doubts and every response to them, including the silent ones, and then you practise getting on with your relationship while the doubt is present, in steps you choose, starting with one that feels manageable.

Steps might include writing the doubt down in plain words and reading it daily without arguing with it, going on the planned night out while the doubt is there rather than waiting for it to clear, and deleting the quiz sites and forum accounts. The main thing you learn is that you can carry the doubt and the anxiety that comes with it without checking, and this gets easier with practice, so that you can take part in your relationship with the question still open. I give you an estimate of how long it is likely to take by the end of the first session.

What the research says, and what is not known

Much of the research on ROCD comes from Guy Doron and colleagues, who distinguished the relationship-centred and partner-focused patterns described above (Doron, Derby and Szepsenwol, 2014). In a clinical study comparing 22 people with ROCD, 22 people with other forms of OCD and 28 community volunteers, the ROCD group had OCD symptoms as severe overall as the other OCD group, and more depression than the volunteers (Doron and colleagues, 2016). There are no large randomised trials of treatment for ROCD specifically, and the use of ERP rests on the wider evidence for OCD together with smaller studies and clinical reports. How common ROCD is in the general population is not known.

Sources

• Doron, G., Derby, D. S., & Szepsenwol, O. (2014). Relationship obsessive compulsive disorder (ROCD): a conceptual framework. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 3(2), 169-180. sciencedirect.com (opens in a new tab)
• Doron, G., Derby, D., Szepsenwol, O., Nahaloni, E., & Moulding, R. (2016). Relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder: interference, symptoms, and maladaptive beliefs. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 7, 58. frontiersin.org (opens in a new tab)
• National Domestic Abuse Helpline. nationaldahelpline.org.uk (opens in a new tab)

Common questions

Written by Dr Daniel O’Rourke, PhD, ABPP, CPsychol, HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist Last reviewed: September 2026