Relationship OCD Symptoms: Do I Have ROCD?

By Prof. Guy Doron and Dr. Danny Derby, Relationship OCD Research Unit. Updated October 2026.

If these patterns sound familiar, read about ROCD assessment and treatment. For optional structured reflection, choose a questionnaire with a description and scoring notes. A questionnaire cannot decide whether a relationship is right for you.

Relationship OCD (ROCD) symptoms are intrusive doubts and compulsive behaviors that center on a romantic relationship. They fall into two groups: doubts about the relationship itself, such as whether you really love your partner or whether the relationship is “right”, and preoccupation with perceived flaws in your partner. What marks them is not the doubt itself, which is common, but how much time it takes, how much distress it causes, and the checking, comparing and reassurance-seeking it sets off. Only a qualified mental health professional can diagnose ROCD; you can also take our relationship OCD test as a first step.

Relationship-centered symptoms

Relationship-centered symptoms are doubts about three things: your feelings toward your partner, your partner’s feelings toward you, and the “rightness” of the relationship (Doron et al., 2012a). People describe them in words like these:

“I am not sure I really love him.”
“I am not sure she loves me enough.”
“Is this the right relationship, or am I just used to it?”
“I looked at someone else. Does that mean something is missing?”

The doubt can also arrive as an image or an urge, for example a sudden picture of life with someone else or an urge to end the relationship. In ROCD, such an urge can work as another attempt to make the doubt and the distress stop. Read more about relationship-centered symptoms.

Partner-focused symptoms

Partner-focused symptoms are a preoccupation with perceived flaws in the partner. Research has described six common domains: appearance, sociability, morality, emotional stability, intelligence and competence (Doron et al., 2012b). Doubts about a partner’s trustworthiness can follow the same pattern (Brandes et al., 2020).

“He is not smart enough.”
“Her nose is not right.”
“He is not successful enough.”
“She is not social enough, or not funny enough.”
“I am not sure he is moral enough, or emotionally stable enough.”

The trait does not have to be imagined. What marks ROCD is the repeated preoccupation with it, the threatening meaning it is given, and the urge to keep checking what it says about the partner, the relationship or yourself. The two groups often appear together. In a longitudinal study, partner-focused symptoms predicted a later rise in relationship-centered symptoms (Szepsenwol et al., 2016). Read more about partner-focused symptoms.

Common compulsions and avoidance

The doubt is usually followed by something done to settle it. Many of these acts are mental and invisible to others:

Checking feelings: monitoring love, attraction or excitement, during a hug, a date or sex.
Comparing: the partner with other people, or the relationship with other couples, past relationships or films.
Reassurance-seeking: asking friends, family or the partner, or searching online for “how do you know”.
Replaying and analyzing: going over conversations, memories and the early days of the relationship.
Deliberating: lists of pros and cons, and long inner debates about staying or leaving.
Testing the partner: for example, quizzing them to check their intelligence.
Avoidance: of intimacy, of commitments such as moving in, of situations that trigger the doubt, or of saying “I love you”.

These responses can bring brief relief, but they also make the doubt seem more important, so it returns. The ROCD model explains this cycle in detail.

How ROCD differs from ordinary relationship doubts

Doubts and mixed feelings are part of close relationships, especially at times of change. The difference is usually not in what the doubt says but in what happens next. As with other forms of OCD, the symptoms are considered clinically significant when they take up a lot of time, often more than an hour a day, cause marked distress, or interfere with work, the relationship or other important areas of life (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). No checklist can settle whether a particular relationship is right. Real problems in a relationship deserve real attention, and concerns about safety, abuse or control should never be explained away as ROCD.

What research shows

In a clinical study, people treated mainly for ROCD had primary symptoms as severe as those of people treated for other forms of OCD, and more depression symptoms than community participants (Doron et al., 2016).
Both groups of symptoms are linked to depression and lower relationship satisfaction (Doron et al., 2012a; Doron et al., 2012b), and to lower sexual satisfaction (Doron, Mizrahi et al., 2014).
ROCD symptoms in one partner may affect the other partner (Littman et al., 2023).
The ROCI and PROCSI questionnaires have been studied in several countries. In German samples, ROCD symptoms were linked to insecure attachment and lower relationship satisfaction (Brauer & Borchardt, 2025).

Frequently asked questions

What are the most common symptoms of relationship OCD?

The most common symptoms are persistent doubts about whether you love your partner, whether they love you, or whether the relationship is right, and preoccupation with perceived flaws in the partner. These come with checking feelings, comparing, seeking reassurance and avoiding situations that trigger the doubt.

Can I have both relationship-centered and partner-focused ROCD?

Yes. The two often appear together, and one can feed the other. For example, a preoccupation with a partner’s flaw can turn into a doubt about the whole relationship.

If I keep doubting my relationship, do I have ROCD?

Not necessarily. Doubts alone do not make a diagnosis. What matters is how much time they take, how much distress they cause, and whether they lead to repeated checking and reassurance-seeking. A professional trained in CBT for OCD can assess this, and our online relationship OCD test can be a first step.

The ROCI and PROCSI questionnaires

The questionnaires below are the research versions. For an online version with personal feedback, take the relationship OCD test. More about the measures and their translations is on the ROCD measures page.

The ROCI (Doron et al., 2012)

(Can help in the assessment of relationship-centered OC symptoms)

The following statements describe the way people may experience intimate relationships. We are interested in the way you experience intimate relationships. Please rate the extent to which such thoughts and behaviors describe your experiences in intimate relationships.

The numbers refer to the following verbal labels:

Not at all

A little

Moderately

A lot

Very much

1.	The thought that I don’t really love my partner haunts me	0	1	2	3	4
2.	I find it easy to dismiss my doubts about my partner	0	1	2	3	4
3.	I constantly doubt my relationship	0	1	2	3	4
4.	I find it difficult to dismiss doubts regarding my partner’s love for me	0	1	2	3	4
5.	I check and recheck whether my relationship feels “right”	0	1	2	3	4
6.	I am constantly looking for evidence that my partner really loves me	0	1	2	3	4
7.	I feel that I must remind myself over and over again why I love my partner	0	1	2	3	4
8.	I am sure my partner loves me	0	1	2	3	4
9.	I am extremely disturbed by thoughts that something is “not right” in my relationship	0	1	2	3	4
10.	I continuously doubt my love for my partner	0	1	2	3	4
11.	I keep asking my partner whether she/he really loves me	0	1	2	3	4
12.	I frequently seek reassurance that my relationship is “right”	0	1	2	3	4
13.	I am constantly bothered by the thought that my partner doesn’t really want to be with me	0	1	2	3	4
14.	I feel a need to repeatedly check how much I love my partner	0	1	2	3	4

Coding

Love for the partner: 1,7,10,14

Relationship “rightness”:3,5,9,12

Being loved by the partner:4,6,11,13

The PROCSI (Doron et al., 2012)

(Can help in the assessment of partner-focused OC symptoms)

The numbers refer to the following verbal labels:

Not at all

A little

Moderately

A lot

Very much

1.	I am happy with my partner’s morality level	0	1	2	3	4
2.	I repeatedly evaluate my partner’s social functioning	0	1	2	3	4
3.	I am constantly questioning whether my partner is deep and intelligent enough	0	1	2	3	4
4.	I am satisfied by with my partner’s appearance	0	1	2	3	4
5.	I am troubled by thoughts about my partner’s social skills	0	1	2	3	4
6.	I am constantly bothered by doubts about my partner’s morality level	0	1	2	3	4
7.	I find it hard to dismiss the thought that my partner is mentally unbalanced	0	1	2	3	4
8.	I often seek reassurance (from friends, family, etc.) about whether my partner is smart enough	0	1	2	3	4
9.	When I am with my partner I find it hard to ignore her physical flaws	0	1	2	3	4
10.	I keep comparing my partner’s ability to “achieve something” in life to that of other men/women	0	1	2	3	4
11.	I can’t stop comparing my partner’s intelligence level to that of other men/women	0	1	2	3	4
12.	I find it difficult to control my tendency to compare my partner’s emotional responses to those of other men/women	0	1	2	3	4
13.	The thought that my partner is not intelligent enough bothers me greatly	0	1	2	3	4
14.	I am constantly bothered by thoughts regarding the flaws in my partner’s physical appearance	0	1	2	3	4
15.	The thought that my partner is not a “good and moral” person bothers me on a daily basis	0	1	2	3	4
16.	I feel good about my partner’s level of intelligence	0	1	2	3	4
17.	I keep looking for evidence that my partner is moral enough	0	1	2	3	4
18.	Thoughts about my partner’s poor functioning in social situations bother me on a daily basis	0	1	2	3	4
19.	Every time I’m reminded of my partner I think about the flaw in his/her appearance	0	1	2	3	4
20.	I’m constantly examining my partner’s morality level	0	1	2	3	4
21.	I keep trying to compensate for my partner’s social deficiencies	0	1	2	3	4
22.	I am bothered by doubts about my partner’s emotional stability	0	1	2	3	4
23.	I am happy with my partner’s social skills	0	1	2	3	4
24.	I keep examining whether my partner acts in a strange manner	0	1	2	3	4
25.	I am extremely preoccupied with assessing my partner’s ability to “make something of himself/herself”	0	1	2	3	4
26.	I feel an uncontrollable urge to compare my partner’s physical flaws with those of other men/women	0	1	2	3	4
27.	When I think of my partner I wonder whether he/she is the sort of person who can succeed in the modern world	0	1	2	3	4
28.	I keep looking for evidence of my partner’s occupational success

Coding

Morality 6,15,17,20

Sociability21,18,5,2

Emotional stability 24,22,12,7

Competence 28,27,25,10

Appearance 26,19,14,9

Intelligence 3,8,11,13

Participate in Research

Do I have ROCD? Relationship OCD symptoms beyond romantic relationships

Most people who search “do I have ROCD” or look for an ROCD test are thinking about a romantic partner. Yet relationship OCD symptoms are not limited to romantic relationships. Research from the Relationship OCD Research Unit describes similar obsessive-compulsive patterns in other relationships a person experiences as central to their life:

Parent-child relationship obsessions: recurring doubts about one’s feelings toward a child, or preoccupation with a child’s perceived flaws, for example in appearance, social skills or intelligence. Read about parent-child ROCD symptoms.
Individual-God relationship obsessions: recurring doubts about one’s relationship with God, such as whether one truly loves God or is loved in return. This can overlap with religious OCD (scrupulosity), but the focus is the relationship itself. Read about obsessions about the relationship with God.

The content of the doubts differs from one relationship to another, but the ROCD process tends to look similar: an intrusive doubt, a surge of distress, and attempts to check, compare, seek reassurance or reach certainty. A relationship OCD test or ROCD quiz, such as the ROCD questionnaires, can help describe these patterns, but it cannot decide whether a relationship is right or what a person “really” feels. When these patterns take up a lot of time or cause significant distress, an assessment by a clinician experienced in OCD can help.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.).
Brandes, O., Stern, A., & Doron, G. (2020). “I just can’t trust my partner”: Evaluating associations between untrustworthiness obsessions, relationship obsessions and couples violence. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 24, 100500. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2019.100500
Brauer, K., & Borchardt, L. (2025). Validation of the German Relationship-Obsessive Compulsive Inventory: Testing the factorial structure, measurement invariance, and external validity. Journal of Clinical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.70024
Doron, G., Derby, D. S., Szepsenwol, O., & Talmor, D. (2012a). Tainted love: Exploring relationship-centered obsessive compulsive symptoms in two non-clinical cohorts. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 1(1), 16-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2011.11.002
Doron, G., Derby, D. S., Szepsenwol, O., & Talmor, D. (2012b). Flaws and all: Exploring partner-focused obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 1(4), 234-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2012.05.004
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. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2016.00058
Doron, G., Mizrahi, M., Szepsenwol, O., & Derby, D. (2014). Right or flawed: Relationship obsessions and sexual satisfaction. Journal of Sexual Medicine, 11(9), 2218-2224. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsm.12616
Littman, R., Leibovits, G., Netzach Halfon, C., Schonbach, M., & Doron, G. (2023). Interpersonal transmission of ROCD symptoms and susceptibility to infidelity in romantic relationships. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 100802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2023.100802
Szepsenwol, O., Shahar, B., & Doron, G. (2016). Letting it linger: Exploring the longitudinal effects of relationship-related obsessive-compulsive phenomena. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 11, 101-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2016.10.001