When we talk about obsessive compulsive disorder, ours while often focuses on images of people intent on controlling the correct closure of home or windows a thousand times times, individuals who spend hours and hours carefully washing hands, objects or clothing, men and women absorbed in strange counts or bizarre ritualistic movements of the superstitious type. However, the obsessive pathology with the person absorbed in doubts and mounts on their partner or on the relationship is rarely associated.
In fact, most of us consider these doubts as “normal” and indicators of a real discomfort of the person in that specific intimate relationship.
Let’s immediately clarify: all the contents of the obsessions are absolutely the same as common thoughts/doubts that individuals in normal experience in everyday life. Who has never happened to have thought “but will I have closed the gas?” After leaving the house or I asked “I’m still in love with my partner?” In a particular moment of couple life.
What differentiates the person with the doc from others is the catastrophic vision of these thoughts and the inability to tolerate doubt: they follow reactions of intense anxiety that must be sedated with rituals, checks or reassurance requests.
The identification is identified Obsessive Compulsive Relationship Disorder (Compulsive Disorder, Rocd) relationships) when obsessive doubts and concerns are centered on the field of intimate relationships (friends, relatives, partners, etc.).
In recent years a growing amount of research (eg, Doron et al., 2012a; Doron et al., 2012b) turned to the Rocd within sentimental relationships; In this case, doubts can contact both mutual feelings (eg, “I love him or not?”, “I’m not sure of what my partner is tried for me”) both to the relationship itself (e.g., “Will this relationship be right for me? “) and to the characteristics of the partner (“What if you need a more mature woman …?”). The compulsive behaviors that follow include repeated checks of their thoughts or feelings, continuous comparisons of the partner with other men /women, requests for reassurances to third parties compared to their fears.
In cognitive-behavioral theoretical-metadological models, a central role for the development and maintenance of obsessive-compulsive disorder is occupied by cognitive distortions.
They are dysfunctional beliefs (or bias) such as the overestimation of danger, perfectionism, intolerance of uncertainty, the importance of thoughts and their control and, finally, the excessive responsibility that increase the probability of the catastrophic interpretation of the doubts that – as we said before – are instead absolutely common in the human experience (Clark et al., 2014; Radomsky et al., 2014; 2008).
These cognitive distortions seem to have a role also in the phenomenology of Obsessive Compulsive Relationship Disorder: for example, the overestimation of the danger can induce the individual to draw conclusions regarding his feelings (e.g. “If I never wanted to call him today maybe I don’t love him”) or aggravate the consequences of certain characteristics of the partner (eg “The fact that he does not have a stable job will not allow him to have a family with me “).
From an empirical point of view, however, the moderate associations between the symptoms of the Rocd and the dysfunctional beliefs typical of the DOC, pushed the researchers to investigate the weight of specific cognitive distortions (called maladative beliefs associated with the report) (Doron et al., 2014).
In particular, today we know that the most involved beliefs in the Rocd are: a) beliefs relating to the negative consequences of having a wrong relationship (e.g., “For me to live an imperfect sentimental relationship is like betraying myself”); b) beliefs relating to the negative scenarios of remaining alone (eg, “Staying without a partner would cause a great pain both to me and all those around me“) Ec) beliefs compared to the negative consequences of separation from the partner (eg,”I am convinced that breaking the relationship with my partner would cause irreparable damage to both “).
However, most of the studies aimed at the dysfunctional beliefs associated with the Obsessive Compulsive Relationship Disorder It was carried out on non -clinical samples and only recently research involved groups of patients so that they could investigate more specifically the predictive weight of certain constructs compared to symptoms (e.g., dysfunctional beliefs, perfectionism).
In this vein there is a very recent study conducted in Italy (Bulli et al., In preparation) on a clinical sample of 124 subjects with diagnosis of Obsessive Compulsive Relationship Disorder which reported obsessive concerns (and related compulsions) aimed both to feelings within the relationship and to the characteristics of the partner (physical aspect, morality, sociability, intelligence, competence, emotional stability).
The results revealed that the obsessive subjects who care about their own or others’ feelings within the relationship are the most perfectionist but also those who – albeit more moderately (but significantly) – present the typical cognitive distortions of both the DOC in general and specific to the Rocd.
Patients with obsessive concerns for the characteristics of the partner had a lot of disfunctional beliefs typical of the Rocd (especially those relating to the negative consequences of being in the “wrong” relationship) and also tended, albeit moderately, to present perfectly and cognitive bias typical of the OCD (overestimation of danger, intolerance of uncertainty, importance of thoughts and their control, excessive responsibility).
But the most interesting results of this Italian research concern the study of the predictors of the Rocd symptoms: among the subjects with obsessions associated with the feelings experienced or the relationship itself, the constructs that significantly preach the symptoms were the perfection (especially in the component of the fear of the error) and the cognitive distortions on the catastrophic consequences of being in the wrong relationship.
This last variable emerged as the only prominent predictor for the Rocd symptoms associated with doubts about the characteristics of the partner. In conclusion, it seems that being tendentially perfectionist and having catastrophic concerns to be trapped “forever” in the frustration of an unsatisfactory relationship are the main elements that prepare an individual to be able to develop real obsessive-compulsive symptoms aimed at the relationship, while taking into consideration other very influential variables in general psychopathology such as anxiety and depression.
Essential bibliography
Bulli et al., In preparation. The Cognitive Predictors of Relationship Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
Doron et al. (2012a). TAININD LOVE: Exploring Relationship-Handa Obsessive-Compulsive Sympetoms in Two Non-Clinical Cohorts. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 16-24.
Doron et al., (2012b). Flaws and All: Exploring Partner Focused Obsessive-Compulsive Sympetoms. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 234-243.
