I Loved Him. So Why Did I Want to Run?

I was happier with my partner than I’d ever been with anyone before. So why was I suddenly terrified I’d chosen the wrong person?

Objectively, nothing had changed; internally, everything had gone haywire.

I started to question how I felt every second we were together. In any moment without intense passion or feelings of being in love, I was thrown into chaos; when we were close, I lived in fear of the moment passing.

Instinctively, I didn’t tell anyone what I was going through; looking back, it’s obvious I was worried people would tell me to leave, and deep down I didn’t want to. In that adorable way humans have, I also thought my problem was unique and couldn’t imagine how anyone would understand.

Eventually, I was forced into therapy because my life was literally unravelling at the seams. Food made me nauseous. My sleep was broken and riddled with nightmares. I couldn’t focus on work.

Around that time, I realised I was suffering from something called Relationship OCD, and looking back, it’s obvious I’d struggled with it in a previous relationship too. Essentially, ROCD is characterised by incessant, unwanted fears and doubts surrounding your relationship.

But I don’t want to focus solely on ROCD today: I want to share everything I learned from breaking into a million pieces and gluing myself back together. If I hadn’t suffered so much, I wouldn’t have the wisdom I do now, and although some of this is hard to share, I believe it can benefit everyone.

My fears became his flaws

The first time I had ROCD, I became obsessed with the idea that my partner wasn’t good enough. My anxiety began with the idea—which, on reflection, I’d plucked from the ether—that he wasn’t popular with my friends; later, it morphed into a many-headed beast. I worried he wasn’t talkative/witty/decisive enough.

You name it: I thought it.

Looking back, it’s heartbreaking to see none of this was really about my partner at all: it was simply a reflection of my own fears, the ocean-deep belief I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t worried about how people saw my boyfriend; I was worried about how people saw me.

The more I learned about projection, the more I wondered whether my anxiety about him was actually telling me something about myself.

This opened a can of worms: for the first time, I was faced with the reality that my own low self-esteem could be at the root of my relationship anxiety. It was also the best thing that could’ve happened because it forced me to learn how to be kinder to myself, and that’s genuinely changing my life.

When healthy love feels unsafe

When my partners were troubled, I could shift my focus onto what was wrong with them; when they were distant or cruel, I could throw my energy into trying to convince them to love me. With a secure partner who offered consistent love and care, I suddenly felt claustrophobic.

As I worked with my therapist to unravel why healthy love itched like wool on bare skin, it became clear there were many reasons why.

I’d somehow grown up believing love was something you had to earn by doing well, so unconditional love was unfamiliar. When I’d dated people who were bad for me, the cycle of highs and lows had been addictive. And without a tumultuous relationship, my anxiety no longer had anything to attach to.

For me, anxiety seemed to attack my best relationship, not my worst.

Feelings aren’t instructions

Think about areas of your life other than romantic relationships. Would you give up your dream job just because sometimes you felt bored, tired, or frustrated doing it? Would you abandon your family just because you couldn’t viscerally feel your love for them 24/7?

When it comes to feelings, we put too much pressure on our romantic relationships to be a constant source of joy; if we’re not feeling it, we mistakenly think it’s over. On the flip side, I’ve known friends stay in a horrible relationship because they still feel those heady in-love feelings sometimes.

I now try to make relationship decisions using something broader than my feelings in the moment. I don’t ask “how do I feel?” because that changes. I ask “Is this person good for me?” “Are they generally loving and respectful?” “Do I like and trust them?”

You can’t love without uncertainty

A big part of ROCD is rumination: spending hours cycling through worries without ever finding your answer. Experiencing it was hell, but it also made me wonder why we worry quite so much.

Rumination makes your brain feel like it’s actually solving a problem, so when we worry, we experience temporary relief. That relief is addictive, so rumination becomes a habit you return to again and again. Understanding this has helped me realise why excessive worrying hurts me in the long run.

I was also forced to ask what I was really searching for when I spent hours analysing my relationship; it soon became obvious I was desperate for certainty. I wanted to be sure this was my best possible match; I wanted to know, without a shadow of a doubt, we’d be happy together forever.

What I realised is that we can never have complete certainty about anything in life, and my need to be sure about the future was holding me back in so many ways. It stopped me from sharing my writing because I couldn’t guarantee anyone would like it; it stopped me from being honest about my feelings because I couldn’t be certain how people would react.

Now, I try to lean into uncertainty because it’s nearly always where I find the most growth.

I still don’t know whether my relationship will last forever. I guess nobody does. But I no longer think certainty is the price of admission for love; I can choose someone kind, trustworthy, and good for me, and then accept that the rest is unknowable.

It turns out that learning to live without certainty hasn’t made my relationship feel less safe. It’s made me free to actually live it.