I suffer from OCD. Most people think that it is just obsessively clean … But this is the shocking truth about how it almost destroyed my sex life: Sara-Louise Ackrill

A perfect summer evening, one that I had been looking forward to for weeks. There had been a romantic meal in an Italian restaurant where my date had been exactly the right side of Attent, filled my glass and helped me with my coat. I ask me intelligent questions about myself and listen to my answers.

He had held my gaze for an exciting extra beat when we got the bill and then took my hand while we walked to the taxiang.

We both knew how this evening would end. How could it be otherwise?

But later, back to mine, while he gently started to tie my dress, it started ‘it’, just as I feared it would do.

“You think he’s disgusting, right?” The dark thought came that at the front of my brain was muscular and immediately all the pleasure and excitement was throwing.

Another was close by. “Are you sure you even like him, or are you lying to him?” it threw it. “Why don’t you tell him how disgusting you find it? Imagine how destroyed he would be if he knew the truth … “

These terrible, intrusive thoughts, each more threatening than the previous one, filled my mind until they were everything I could hear and feel.

After that I could only go through the movements, let this man handle what I gave deeply – and who I thought it was absolutely beautiful – to do the love for me, while I did not take physical pleasure from experience.

I knew that the next morning, while he kissed me goodbye, I would feel something related to a hangover or ‘post-sex flu’ as I came to call it-the mental tension of this episode that stayed with me for days, manifesting as a brain fog and deeply uncomfortable in my own skin. Yet I made sure that he knew nothing about the sinister monologue who had lured me in an ambush the previous evening. How could I explain it? I hardly understood it myself.

It was only years later, 33 years old, that I finally received an explanation for the disturbing episodes that I had destroyed since my youth, when I was diagnosed with OCS (obsessive compulsive disorder).

This mental health status affects around 750,000 people in the UK, but I later discovered that I suffer from an extremely rare subtype, known as pure obsessional OCS sums known as pure o-die repetitive, irrational thoughts.

For me this happens most in the field of my sex life and romantic relationships.

Another late diagnosis of autism, this time at the age of 38, helped me to understand the difficulties I have in my love life.

Although the two different circumstances are, studies have suggested that people with autism are twice as likely to be diagnosed later in life – and people with OCDs four times as much chance later have the diagnosis of autism.

Because I am autistic, I absorb a lot more stimuli from my environment than a neurotypic person, so try to imagine how intense sex, attraction and love feel for someone like me.

Struggling to process and tolerate my emotions means that they build in me, and my OCD -Dwangschersen becomes a form of release, the annoying, mean untruths (“You are disgusting! You want me to gag!” You probably assume at the moment that I am untenable, destined to be single forever; Who would like to be with someone who tells himself that you are disgusting every time you kiss her?

Believe me, a celibate life is one that I have seriously considered.

But I am proud to say that, 14 years after my OCD diagnosis, I currently have a great relationship with a completely supporting man who loves me as I am.

It is something that I once feared to be impossible.

As a little girl, growing up in Devon with my parents and sister, my OCS showed itself in the more typical ways in which people associate with the condition, such as repetitive hand washes, count back, repeat certain words in my breath and do not step into the pavement.

The trigger for this behavior was not something that I did myself, I was rather deeply affected by the actions of others.

If someone did something, I believed that I was ‘wrong’-as swearing, antisocial act or I would feel unkind about me-I would feel ‘dirty’, as if I was somehow responsible.

My coercion was my way of ‘reconciliation’ and cleaning myself from that internalized sense of guilt.

This was the nineties and the consciousness of OCD and its symptoms was very low. If my parents ever notice my behavior – for example, I went 100 times in my breath through a phase of saying the word ‘pony’, of which they thought I said ” not ” not polite ‘ – they just thought I was a frightened, sensitive child with a bit of a quirky personality, and would grow out.

As far as I am concerned, confused and overwhelmed, I never felt able to explain what I experienced.

It was when I entered my teenage years, went through puberty and began to be interested in boys, that my OCD took a dark turn.

I remember my first right crush. It is not unusual that girls who first fall into love for the first time, but I felt completely overwhelmed by the intensity of my feelings for this boy, probably a result of my autism and my struggle to process ‘big’ emotions.

We were too young to do something then holding hand out of hand, but when I was with him, my head would fill with thoughts like: “You think he is ugly, imagine how hurt he would be if you just told him that you think he is a TW*t.”

I would constantly check in my head and check again that I really liked it, as if I couldn’t trust my own feelings. I would be awake at night in tears of confusion about why I had such cruel thoughts towards someone I liked so much.

I can’t remember how the relationship ended, but ended it, and in the coming years when I went out with other boys, eventually lost my 20 -year virginity, I noticed, to my horror, a clear pattern was set.

An informal meeting with someone I didn’t care about, and my head was quiet. But when I was intimate with someone I had feelings for, the thoughts roared positively.

It was astonishing, disturbing and went against that congenital instinct to look for partners who feel safe and cared for, because it was with those men that I felt the most mental suffering.

I don’t trust anyone, afraid that something was terribly wrong with me. I even asked at one point if I was schizophrenic and these were voices that I heard, unlike my own thoughts.

And it was not just my sexual partners who would unconsciously fall victim to this dark part of my psyche.

I could be in a public place, such as a supermarket, and being hit by the thought ‘what if you are a pedophile? What if you are attracted there? ‘

Such moments were horrible and breathtaking with their darkness – all noticeable to concentrate my sexual identity.

Of course, if it had been understandable, because of mental peace, if I completely avoided intimacy, but I was attracted to sex. A prominent characteristic of autism is sensory search; For some, that can hold a fascination for textiles, sounds or visual stimuli.

For me it included to want sex.

Combined with the fact that casual, non -emotional sex stopped my head – while with someone I cared for the noise was almost unbearable – it meant that I was often promiscuous.

Add my struggles to that, as a sub -diagnosed autistic person, with social situations and ‘getting to know you’ part of a relationship, and I would quickly forward myself to the sexual stage with uncomfortable haste.

I now feel sad when I think about the paths, this brought me down.

There were insulting relationships, cruel men who compelling and financially checked me. Yet these were those I actively looking for, because those who were bad for me did not cause my dark thoughts.

If they did damage to me, I thought, at least I was not afraid.

I did not tell my friends and family about these relationships, because how the hell could I have explained that I was attracted to these ‘bad’ men because at least it made my mental unrest silence? I didn’t think anyone would understand; I didn’t understand myself.

I also went out with men who were workaholics or lived a long distance from mine, because how no longer available they were, the less I would be confirmed to them or form a tire, and therefore the lower the risk that my head filled with darkness when we slept. For years, in another unhealthy coping mechanism, I also used sedativa and wine before sex to calm my mind and make my thoughts boring, with limited success.

I had some relationships with men I made for, and at a few times I was honest with them about what was going on in my head when we were in bed.

Some understanding – but usually they just couldn’t handle, and I understood that. It is difficult for a man to be with a woman whose spirit tells her that she hates him.

I was 33 when it all became too much in 2011. The feelings of isolation and shame, the tiring nature of my inner monologue and the years of unhealthy or failed relationships had taken their toll and my mental health had reached a dangerous low point. For fear that I would harm myself, I took myself to A&E.

That journey led to my possible diagnosis of Pure OCS and later autism. I finally understood myself – I had a mental illness. I was not a terrible person who really believed that my sexual partners were disgusting, or that I lied to them about my feelings – or I was a risk for a child. It was a huge relief.

Knowledge is power and after my OCD diagnosis I started using different therapies, including brain spotting, which uses different eye positions to process emotions and trauma and relationship therapy.

Although there is no ‘remedy’ for OCD, these treatments have helped to calm my intrusive thoughts enormously, and today they are much less frequent than in the past.

Now 47, I currently have a relationship and was open from the start on my diagnoses.

My partner is incredibly supportive and understanding; A special man is needed not to feel threatened by a condition like Pure OCS.

I was asked: why not lead a celibatary life? Why do it continue to exist in wanting sex?

I admit that there have been occasions that I considered strongly, because I believe it would be a simpler path than the hard and tiring one I have applied for more than 30 years.

Now that I finally have a relationship that makes me so happy, I refuse to let OCD prevent me from experiencing it. Why would I sacrifice the intimacy that other women naturally consider?

I have to hope that my future has a satisfactory and mentally peaceful sex life with the man I love.

I believe I deserve that.

As told to Eimear O’hagan