There are so many images of perfect loving relationships in our culture that there is almost a pressure to live to some sort of romantic ideal.  For me, this happens within a relationship too, I gather a collection of perfect memories and feelings to arrive at some kind of perfect image or golden standard of the way things ought to be.  The trouble is, this makes me into a kind of scientist performing tests on each moment of the relationship, as if I had a thermometer that could tell how much love I felt at each moment.  When the thermometer doesn't give the right result, I tend to fall into a spiral of doubts and worries about whether I should be with Eleanor, my girlfriend.  Such testing is a normal part of any relationship—which are perpetuated by as many questions as they are certainties—but if I am particularly stressed or depressed, the doubts can become irrational or delusional, focusing on any small thing, like whether one particular evening is perfect, whether there is the right amount of conversation happening in walk together, or how attractive my girlfriend looks in a particular photograph.  At one point I was so worried about whether I was having the right feelings for Eleanor that there was no way for me to open my eyes and live in the moment where those feelings would come to me naturally.  I was locked inside my own reflections on our relationship.

I discovered this part of my personality when I came to university for the first time, where I developed an obsessive habit of testing my feelings for my girlfriend, which could only have produced bad results because she went to a different university, and I was overwhelmed with all the fears and emotions of leaving home for the first time.  Still, faced with being truly alone, from her and my family, the best thing I felt I could do to maintain a connection with my girlfriend and our lives was to measure how I felt for her whenever I could, at every phone conversation, every time another woman talked to me, every time I saw my girlfriend's photo.  I seemed to do it without noticing, every moment I would test myself to see whether I was still in love with her by continually asking my self 'Do I love her?'  This soon became 'You don't love her, do you?' like some guilty doubting voice which, on the worst days, would accuse me like some sort of dirty criminal.  On the worst days when I felt sacred and depressed, this statement would constantly whirl around my head, so much so that I couldn't concentrate.  There was not an ounce of truth in it—not that I knew that then—repeating that statement was a subconscious test to see whether I felt like it was true, to see whether it worried me.  It did, and generated a continual draining anxiety which zapped my energy and made me seriously depressed for the whole of my first term. I was so scared I would stop loving her that I didn't want to spend a moment without thinking about her and making sure that I loved her, it was as if my subconscious chose a continual anxious uncertainty as a substitute for all the powerful feelings of love I had before we came to university.  Not that I knew it then, but this anxiety and the desperate need to keep close to her in such an obsessive way, was a sign of just how much I still loved my girlfriend, but I was too absorbed in an self-generated anxiety to see it that way.

Each moment of possible connection to my girlfriend became more and more anxious as my obsessive thoughts got worse and worse.  Phone calls became particularly difficult, and even now, the phone can still make me anxious because it seems to promise a sense of connection, but remind me of my distance from Ellie at the same time.  We were both going through so much life change in our first term, so naturally, we found it hard to relate to each other on the phone sometimes.  We were torn between completely new intense experiences, and attempting to recreate the wonderful feelings we had had only a few weeks before university through a plastic box and miles of telephone cables.  Yet, I couldn't see this normal alienation on the phone in any rational way, each conversation was a test about my feelings, and evidence of what was happening to our relationship.  Of course, my girlfriend was incredibly upset when I confessed such uncertainties to her, but I wanted that confession to be a way of bringing us closer—the testing was fulfilling its own function, it was a stronger connection to her than talking normally could be. 

Eventually I went to the doctor, who said I had 'separation anxiety', and suggested beta-blockers might dampen my anxiety.   I wanted to know the cause though, I wanted the thoughts to go away, so I went to counselling to talk about what I was going through, which was great because it helped me to start understanding all the confusing and irrational reactions I had at the time.  Then I set all my hopes on my first meeting with Eleanor since we left for university, the one moment when I thought all my troubles and tests would disappear.  I was wrong, it was the biggest opportunity for my brain and my obsessive thoughts to test how much we loved each other.  We had left six weeks without seeing each other—a big mistake—so it would have been completely normal for us to feel unusual, but because of my anxieties, I was so busy testing whether I loved her or not I couldn't see the woman I really did love standing right in front of me.  Our uncanny feelings of seeing each other again were normal, but I thought that they were evidence that my love had died.  Amongst all this confusion, testing, and pain I began to have visions of killing my girlfriend.  I was so scared that I might, so horrified that I could do so, and so tired of the continual obsessive anxiety I had, I told her we should break up for her own safety.  Then the weirdest reaction came: I wanted to cry with my girlfriend and help her through our break-up—I wanted it to bring us closer together, just as I used depression and sadness as a way to keep connected with Eleanor while at university.  Ironically, this was the weekend of Halloween. 

I felt complete numb and depressed after then, and would break into random bursts of tears, and still I kept asking the question, 'do you love her?' constantly. Towards the end of term, my sister visited me and told me about a condition she has suffered from: OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).  This is a condition in which individuals can suffer from life-cripplingly obsessions designed to combat all kinds of anxieties; for example some wash and clean themselves as protection from the anxiety of being unclean.  In this condition, there is a vicious cycle of anxiety which fuels itself, and urges individuals to 'check' their fear continually.  What my sister told me seemed to resonate so strongly with my obsessions about loving my girlfriend and my violent thoughts.   I went to a different doctor with this information; she prescribed some anti-depressants, referred me to a psychologist and allowed me to go home early.

I told my girlfriend everything, she was so understanding. We saw each other again that Christmas, and as soon as I hugged her I was overcome with love.  Through lots of talking we started seeing each other again.  We agreed that we wouldn't leave longer than three weeks between our visits, and that we would be open about our feelings all the time.  The first time we saw each other in the next term, I expecting to have the uncanny feelings that people normally get when they see each other after a long time, we worked through these, talked them out, and then had a great weekend.  We accepted that some phone calls wouldn't be a good as others; we took things slowly so that we could learn what feelings to expect in the future.  Eleanor is now my fiancée, and we've made it through our degrees. We kept our long-distance relationship alive by accepting that there will be times when we aren't thinking of each other, or can't feel a lot of love, but believing that we'll feel it again when we see each other.  A relationship doesn't work if you base it on how strong your feelings are, which are always changeable and immeasurable. I don't have obsessive thoughts anymore, I learnt to manage them with the help of a counsellor, a psychologist and medication (see the box for some ideas on how you can do this yourself). I look on our relationship now as a choice, and I keep choosing Eleanor because she makes me so happy, not because I feel 76.6% or more love for her.  I keep making that choice even when I feel awful, or we can't connect on the phone, because I've learnt to accept that these feelings are natural. Managing your thoughts rationally over time is much stronger than making rash responses to unfounded anxieties felt in times of distress.