How Does OCD Affect Relationships?
Published January 23rd, 2025
5.5 min read
OCD leads to isolation and makes it more difficult to build and maintain platonic and romantic relationships.
Written by Simon Spichak
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most common and misunderstood mental health conditions. In addition to causing you day-to-day distress, the symptoms of OCD also affect your ability to form and maintain healthy relationships.
What is OCD?
OCD is a mental health condition that affects one in every 40 people worldwide. There are two main components to OCD — obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted thoughts and desires that cause extreme distress, shame, or anxiety. Compulsions are repetitive thoughts, behaviours, or actions that relieve negative feelings.
OCD and Relationships
The obsessions and compulsions that dominate OCD can negatively impact your relationship with friends, family members, and co-workers. Maintaining healthy relationships becomes difficult without learning how to manage these harmful thought patterns and behaviours.
Isolation
Many people are embarrassed or ashamed of their symptoms and behaviours.
For example, someone with OCD might have trouble leaving the house on time, repeatedly checking that the oven is off, the doors are locked, and the pets are fed. Friends and family members might ask questions, and in some cases, they may misunderstand or stigmatize the condition.
After being late a few times, someone with OCD might withdraw from social interactions to avoid the embarrassment and self-isolate.
Difficulty meeting new people
People with OCD may have anxiety over meeting new people or going on dates with potential romantic partners.
Some people have responsibility OCD, which manifests as a fear of hurting or harming another person’s feelings. For example, they might worry that they might accidentally say something offensive or mean. They may also ruminate over what they want to say, making them appear shy or less talkative.
This makes it harder to meet and form platonic and romantic relationships with new people.
Stress from compulsions and stigma
The intrusive thoughts and behaviours can grow to dominate a relationship, whether it's with your family members or a romantic partner. Rather than focusing on the positive qualities of a relationship, OCD can cause you to redirect your energy to avoid the anxiety, fear, or shame caused by intrusive thoughts by performing compulsions.
For family members or romantic partners, waiting for someone to go through all the checking before leaving the house or providing constant reassurance can be frustrating and can sometimes lead to resentment and anger. They might not fully understand or appreciate the severity of OCD and start to blame you for not getting better or not being like everyone else.
In some cases, family members or romantic partners might support or encourage the compulsions, which doesn’t help treat the underlying symptoms of OCD.
Relationship OCD
At some point, almost everyone has doubts or concerns about their relationship. It is normal and even healthy to consider your romantic partner's flaws rather than placing them on a pedestal.
However, for people with relationship OCD, the concerns over these flaws become so time-consuming that they can jeopardize the relationship and cause substantial anxiety. This can manifest after a particularly rough relationship, and for some people, it could make it harder to form long-term partnerships beyond a few dates.
Treating OCD
The frontline treatment for OCD is exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. It works by progressively exposing you to distressing situations that trigger your instrusive thoughts or obsessions while preventing you from acting out the compulsions. The treatment is personalized based on your OCD symptoms.
It helps rewire the brain, helping it become desensitized to obsessive or intrusive thoughts – making it easier for you to feel relief and lower your anxiety without having to perform the compulsions.
You can read more about OCD and ERP here:
How Resolvve Can Help
Resolvve’s therapists are trained to treat OCD and can help reduce your symptoms. If you’re ready to take the next step toward treatment, you can book a free consultation with one of our therapists. For many college and university students, the entire cost of the therapy session may be covered by your student insurance.
Please note that this post is written for educational purposes; it is not therapy. If you need to talk to a professional, please book a consultation with a psychotherapist through Resolvve.
