OCD left me convinced condoms didn't work — sex was terrifying
While classmates were exploring intimacy with typical teenage abandon, Tyler Falcoa was terrified of sex — despite having a long-term girlfriend he was seriously into.
'I was so fixated on 'what if I get her pregnant',' Tyler, now 31, tells Metro.
The music producer and mentor, from Rhode Island, was diagnosed with OCD aged 10 due to intrusive thoughts about cleanliness and organisation. But an all-consuming anxiety around sex dominated his adolescence.
'You could have safe sex and then your OCD is like, 'but what if there was a hole in the condom that you didn't realise?' or 'what if she forgot to take her birth control?'' adds Tyler.
Tyler was with his first long-term girlfriend between the ages of 16 and 18, from their junior year of high school until their freshman year of college.
Throughout their relationship, she expressed that she 'wanted to be sexually intimate,' but at the time, Tyler didn't feel 'mentally or emotionally safe enough.'
'I assumed I was just an anxious person. Nothing she could have said would've changed how I felt, because I was so overwhelmed by the fear of what might follow in my head and in my life,' Tyler adds, noting that he later went on to lose his virginity when he was 20.
Things only worsened in college when, aged 19, his symptoms spiralled into harm and religious OCD, intertwined with sex.
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'I would be in church having sexual, graphic thoughts,' shares Tyler, who grew up Catholic.
Internally, Tyler developed a specific set of 20 prayers that he would compulsively run through whenever his brain thought of a swear word.
'It was like harm infused with religion, and if I didn't do it correctly, somebody that I loved was going to die, or I was going to go to hell,' he explains.
He eventually decided to seek help from a doctor and only then realised the extent OCD had been impacting his love life, including causing him to experience 'rumination' in past relationships, dwelling on whether or not he was really 'in love' with his partners.
A form of repetitive thinking, rumination causes many individuals with OCD to dwell on negative thoughts relating to the past, present or future.
'You start this magical thinking of, 'if I don't do X, then Y will happen,' or 'if I don't run around the block five times, I'm going to fall out of love with her',' Tyler explains.
'You do these things that preserve you into feeling safe in some way within your relationship, but it only really makes it worse.'
OCD is a mental health condition that occurs when 'a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours'. According to OCD-UK, around 12 in every 1,000 people (1.2% of the population) have OCD.
While relationship OCD isn't included in the DSM-5, the framework used to diagnose mental health conditions, it's a term used by some people with OCD who experience specific triggers around sex, dating and relationships.
Psychotherapist Joshua Fletcher, who specialises in anxiety disorders and OCD, says 'doubting' is a common challenge.
'You'll usually get an intrusive thought or you'll get something where the brain's threat response convinces you that you need 100% certainty about this doubt,' Joshua, the author of Unravel Your Intrusive Thoughts, explains.
'With relationship OCD, we want 100% certainty that this is the right choice – the right partner and the right dynamic.'
These feelings might crop up when a partner is being mildly 'irritating,' or manifest as misinterpreting attraction towards other people, or even their partner's love for them.
Like Tyler, Dierdre Rae experienced her first OCD symptoms as a child (as young as three), but wasn't diagnosed until 19.
In her earliest memories, she recalls washing her hands to the point of bleeding whenever she played with her dog. By the time she was a teenager, she was experiencing suicidal ideation.
'It was so bad that I ended up having to drop out of college and go to the hospital for a month,' 27-year-old Dierdre, who lives in London, shares.
Dierdre was raised Catholic, and as young as 14, one of her teachers claimed she'd 'become possessed' if she didn't do her homework.
Her OCD brain took that thought and latched onto it; from there, it got darker and darker as she convinced herself she was 'secretly a horrible human being.'
'If I wasn't a good person, I wouldn't get into heaven, and it scared me. With the health OCD, it impacted any ailment I had. I once had a swollen lymph node and convinced myself it was cancer,' she adds.
Like Tyler, OCD slowly crept into Dierdre's love life. As a teenager and in her early 20s, she was terrified of dating and deeply struggled with 'emotional contamination'.
She worried that whenever she detected a 'bad vibe' in somebody, it could 'transfer over' to her and then she'd be 'contaminated.'
According to the NHS definition, OCD is a mental health condition that occurs when 'a person has obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours' – and symptoms can present as early as six years old.
There are three main elements to it, which include obsessions (or unwanted images), emotions (where this obsession can cause distress), and compulsions, which are 'repetitive behaviours or mental acts' that people feel 'driven to perform' as a result of the upset these compulsions can cause.
According to OCD-UK, around 12 in every 1,000 people (1.2% of the population) live with OCD.
'I would have either bad luck or something bad would happen to me if I decided to date them, so I avoided men like the plague,' she explains, noting that she's since spent years in exposure therapy.
Now, whenever she talks to her friends about her love life, she's stopped asking for reassurance; this can actually be more of a hindrance than a help to people with OCD, as it can validate harmful patterns of thinking.
'It's trying to ruin this for you, because that's what OCD does. It tries to latch onto the things that you want, that you care about the most, and break them apart and ruin them,' she says.
OCD centred on cleaning, contamination, or health can also impact relationships.
'OCD loves to hijack your attention, and that attention is going to be spent inwards because we're worried, we're scared, and we're trying to make ourselves feel better,' Joshua says.
'That can have direct impacts on a relationship in the sense of we're not there, we're not mindful, and we're not being present with our partners, pushing people away.'
One of the most poignant impacts OCD can have on relationships is reassurance seeking, which can 'end up annoying partners.'
'It starts to dictate shared time together,' Joshua adds, 'because it becomes about the OCD as it can be very consuming and frightening.'
Despite the work she's put in, OCD is still sometimes a debilitating force in Dierdre's love life.
At the moment, certain dating apps – like Hinge – feel tainted. The last man she met on the platform became completely 'emotionally contaminated' for her, and so after that, she struggled to log back on for fear it would happen again.
Today, Tyler discusses OCD openly, even running a podcast – Please Excuse My OCD – and sharing his experience of the condition with more than 20,000 others on TikTok.
'At this point, I'd disclose it on a first date, though how much detail I go into depends on the person and the context,' Tyler shares, adding that he sets clearer expectations in relationships.
'Having conversations about what reassurance seeking looks like, and working together to create boundaries around it, can be incredibly grounding for me.'
It's not just relationship OCD that can impact sex and dating: as Joshua explains, other subtypes can trigger people when they're in relationships, including OCD that attaches itself to things like cleaning, contamination, or even health.
'OCD loves to hijack your attention, and that attention is going to be spent inwards because we're worried, we're scared, and we're trying to make ourselves feel better,' Joshua shares.
'That can have direct impacts on a relationship in the sense of we're not there, we're not mindful, and we're not being present with our partners, pushing people away.'
As Joshua details, one of the most poignant impacts OCD can have on relationships is reassurance seeking, which can 'end up annoying partners.'
'It starts to dictate shared time together, because it becomes about the OCD as it can be very consuming and frightening,' he explains.
Dating can still bring up anxieties, but Tyler no longer believes he needs to hide parts of himself to be worthy of love, instead choosing to show up 'with his imperfections and nuances.' More Trending
Dierdre has also realised that communicating her OCD to potential partners – and being candid – helps.
'If somebody likes you, that's not going to deter them. If anything, it's going to make them view you as so much stronger,' she reflects. 'Where I am now is my biggest accomplishment, so why would that be an embarrassment?'
OCD doesn't have to be a burden to daters – or those they are dating. As Tyler says: 'Showing up as I am allows space for genuine connection and growth for the both of us. Our partners don't need to fix us, but they can be part of the recovery process.'
If you need to access support for or information about OCD, you can do so through the following resources:
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