Husband’s fear of betrayal/cheating triggers my OCD

Just as the title says. I’ve struggled with pure OCD on and off for a few years, but had never experienced ROCD until this relationship. My husband has a deep rooted fear of betrayal due to his upbringing & a big fight we had revolving trust early on in the relationship. He wont address it with words, but I can tell its something that continues to scare him. He also has ROCD.

My problem now is, anytime I catch on that the betrayal wound has flared up for him, my ROCD latches on like crazy. I’m immediately struck with immense panic about whether or not I would do something like that, who would it happen with, how devastated my husband would be. This was especially bad when we went through a period of not being intimate, which we’re truthfully barely starting to recover from. I was giving myself whole anxiety attacks from the thoughts I was having. I’ve done enough work to know this is just the way OCD/ROCD is, but its still something I have an incredibly hard time with, especially because it hits a deep wound I’ve had since childhood (I don’t deserve good things/Its my fault, I’ll mess it up, etc).

I’m trying to figure out how to address this without accidentally triggering one of us. I know better than to overshare, but it’s something I don’t want to keep getting knocked down by. Especially if it comes up for him- I don’t want my panic to further trigger his internal alarms for now reason.

Has anyone struggled with something like this? Any advice would help. Thank you in advance. 🙏🏼

Posted Aug 27, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

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