Tara Maclay 4 and 5 What is Tara's primary role? Throughout season 4, Tara acts as a partner and guide in Willow's witchcraft, teaching Willow spells and performing magic together.
Do they form a relationship?
Do Tara and Willow form a relationship?
When Tara and Willow meet, their proficiency at magic is about the same, but Tara's knowledge of the craft far exceeds Willow's. Tara reveals that she has been practicing magic for most of her life, as her deceased mother had also been a powerful witch. Throughout season 4, Tara acts as a partner and guide in Willow's witchcraft, teaching Willow spells and performing magic together. Willow, however, is inherently talented, despite being new to the craft, and begins to progress much faster than Tara in the fifth season, including experimentations in dark magic. Tara struggles with understanding her place among the Scoobies with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the leader, with which has a very friendly relationship; Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), Willow's friend since childhood; and Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), their mentor. Tara's primary role throughout the series is that of Willow's partner. She feels somewhat useless until the fifth season episode "Family" when the entire Scooby Gang (Spike included) makes it clear that she is unquestionably a part of them. The episode introduces some of Tara's blood family: a cold, authoritarian father who has lied to her all her life (telling her that her magical powers are a result of her being part-demon on her mother's side); an overbearing brother; and a judgmental, repressed and repressive cousin; all of whom Tara dismisses at the end of the episode. Tara later reveals in "The Body" that her mother had died when she was 17. In the following episode, when Dawn is acting out, Tara confides to Buffy that she had to deal with her brother after her mother's death. No more of her backstory is revealed in the series.  As Willow's character grows more self-assured and powerful through the seasons, Tara takes over some of the role of being placed in peril and needing to be rescued. The fifth season's primary villain, or Big Bad, is Glory, a goddess too powerful for Buffy to fight alone. Glory tortures Tara in order to gain information on the Key, but Tara asserts willpower and resists Glory, resulting in Glory stealing her sanity, and prompting Willow to go searching for retribution. Glory states she feels "buzzed" after feeding on Tara's mind, indicating Tara's powerful intellect (and possibly suggesting her power as a witch).  Buffy scholar Ian Shuttleworth writes that Benson was able to "admirably" portray the same range of emotions inherent in Tara although the character loses her identity. Willow's powers are significant enough that she is able to battle Glory more effectively than Buffy, if not completely successfully. In the final episode of season 5, Willow uses her magic to restore Tara's sanity, significantly weakening Glory in the process.  Tara also becomes a guide of sorts, and a maternal figure. She appears to Buffy in a dream in the fourth season finale "Restless" to tell her about the arrival of Buffy's sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) and act as a translator for the voiceless First Slayer. Following the death of Joyce Summers and Buffy's sacrifice to save the world at the end of the fifth season, Tara and Willow move into the Summers house, taking Joyce's bedroom and becoming Dawn's surrogate parents. CANNOTANSWER
Tara's primary role throughout the series is that of Willow's partner.
Tara Maclay is a fictional character created for the action-horror/fantasy television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). She was developed by Joss Whedon and portrayed by Amber Benson. Tara is a shy young woman with magical talents who falls in love with Willow Rosenberg, one of the core characters. Together, they help Buffy Summers, who has been given superhuman powers to defeat evil forces in the fictional town of Sunnydale.

Willow was a popular character when Tara was introduced, and the onset of their relationship was met with some resistance from fans. Tara grows from a reserved girl who is unsure of herself to being the moral center of Buffy's circle of friends, named the Scooby Gang. Her relationship with Willow is consistently positive, and the first recurring depiction of a lesbian couple on prime time network series television in the United States. Tara is killed by a stray gunshot toward the end of the sixth season, causing Willow to go on a rampage. Series writers and producers received angry protests from some fans when Tara was killed. Whedon upheld that it was the necessary course to take to propel Willow's story arc further; both the show's producers and Amber Benson deny that there was any malicious intent behind the decision. Tara was included in AfterEllen.com's Top 50 Lesbian and Bisexual Characters, ranking at No. 15.

Creation and casting

Tara is introduced in the fourth season episode "Hush" as a college student who attends a Wicca meeting where Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) goes to find some like-minded people. Tara is hesitant to speak out during the meeting and has a pronounced stammer that returns throughout the series when she is upset. She reacts positively during the meeting to Willow's suggestion that the Wiccan group discuss spellcasting, but the rest of the group scoff at the suggestion and silence Tara and Willow. Tara was created to appear in only a few episodes as a friend with whom Willow could learn magic and develop her skills. Amber Benson had known Hannigan previously, but did not tell her she was up for the part. Benson almost missed a callback audition because she left town, but the casting department postponed the session so she could return and read. When she did, Hannigan found her on set and upon learning she was up for the role, told Whedon to hire Benson at the same moment Benson got the call from her agent that she had won the part. Benson and Hannigan had such chemistry that the relationship was written to be more intimate. In "Hush", Tara and Willow each individually attempt to use magic to move a heavy object, without success. They then join hands and easily fling the object across the room. Whedon and the producers found the scene to be very sensual. Network executives also noticed the chemistry between the actresses. After some discussion, Whedon informed Benson and Hannigan that the characters would become lovers.

Willow was featured from the beginning of the series and already had a strong fanbase. Earlier in the fourth season, she had a boyfriend named Oz (Seth Green), who abruptly left town. Oz returns in the episode "New Moon Rising", determined to win Willow back. That episode marked the first time Tara is introduced to the Scooby Gang as a whole, and Willow is faced with choosing between Tara and Oz. She favors Tara in the end, causing some of the show's fans to react angrily on the fansite message boards, with some leaving homophobic remarks and characterizing Benson as overweight and unattractive. Benson, who was referred to as "astoundingly non-Hollywood" by a Scottish journalist, frequented the boards and read the comments, finding them hurtful and taking some of them personally. She responded, protesting that she was, at  and , quite slender, although she appears larger than her more petite costars. She went on to write:

Network executives encouraged the lesbian element in the relationship, but put strict guidelines on what could be shown. For several episodes in the fourth season, Tara and Willow's friendship grows as they practice magic. To work within the censorship imposed on their relationship, writers used allusions to spells and witchcraft to symbolize their affection and growing sexuality. Willow does not tell her friends about Tara for several episodes, instead just expressing the wish to spend time with Tara, where she can have something just for herself. Tara is unwaveringly supportive and committed to Willow.

Seasons

4 and 5
When Tara and Willow meet, their proficiency at magic is about the same, but Tara's knowledge of the craft far exceeds Willow's.  Tara reveals that she has been practicing magic for most of her life, as her deceased mother had also been a powerful witch. Throughout season 4, Tara acts as a partner and guide in Willow's witchcraft, teaching Willow spells and performing magic together.  Willow, however, is inherently talented, despite being new to the craft, and begins to progress much faster than Tara in the fifth season, including experimentations in dark magic. Tara struggles with understanding her place among the Scoobies with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the leader, with whom she has a very friendly relationship; Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), Willow's friend since childhood; and Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), their mentor. Tara's primary role throughout the series is that of Willow's partner. She feels somewhat useless until the fifth season episode "Family" when the entire Scooby Gang (Spike included) makes it clear that she is unquestionably a part of them. The episode introduces some of Tara's blood family: a cold, authoritarian father who has lied to her all her life (telling her that her magical powers are a result of her being part-demon on her mother's side); an overbearing brother; and a judgmental, repressed and repressive cousin; all of whom Tara dismisses at the end of the episode. Tara later reveals in "The Body" that her mother had died when she was 17. In the following episode, when Dawn is acting out, Tara confides to Buffy that she had to deal with her brother after her mother's death. No more of her backstory is revealed in the series.

As Willow's character grows more self-assured and powerful through the seasons, Tara takes over some of the role of being placed in peril and needing to be rescued. The fifth season's primary villain, or Big Bad, is Glory, a goddess too powerful for Buffy to fight alone. Glory tortures Tara in order to gain information on the Key, but Tara asserts willpower and resists Glory, resulting in Glory stealing her sanity, and prompting Willow to go searching for retribution.  Glory states she feels "buzzed" after feeding on Tara's mind, indicating Tara's powerful intellect (and possibly suggesting her power as a witch).

Buffy scholar Ian Shuttleworth writes that Benson was able to "admirably" portray the same range of emotions inherent in Tara although the character loses her identity. Willow's powers are significant enough that she is able to battle Glory more effectively than Buffy, if not completely successfully. In the final episode of season 5, Willow uses her magic to restore Tara's sanity, significantly weakening Glory in the process.

Tara also becomes a guide of sorts, and a maternal figure. She appears to Buffy in a dream in the fourth season finale "Restless" to tell her about the arrival of Buffy's sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) and act as a translator for the voiceless First Slayer. Following the death of Joyce Summers and Buffy's sacrifice to save the world at the end of the fifth season, Tara and Willow move into the Summers house, taking Joyce's bedroom and becoming Dawn's surrogate parents.

6 and comics
Tara becomes more outspoken during the sixth season about the ethics of Willow's use of magic, cautioning Willow that she depends too much on it. The dynamics of their relationship suddenly turn during "Once More, with Feeling". Willow had cast a spell on Tara to alter her memory in the preceding episode and Tara finds out about it during "Once More, with Feeling", the musical episode of the series. Tara was given a prominent role in the musical due to the skill of Benson's voice: she sings a love ballad to Willow, a duet with Giles, and backup in two other songs. The musical nature of the episode compelled the characters to express what they had been feeling secretly, or had refused to admit to themselves. Tara's song is a fervent and explicit expression of love for Willow which she had not made clear to the audience until this point. Tara later sings with Giles that she will leave Willow if she does not change. Self-conscious about her singing abilities, Hannigan requested not to be given a song and sings only a few lines in the episode. Critics saw this as Tara's personality becoming more forceful as Willow begins to show signs of weakness as she is overtaken by her addiction. Tara challenges Willow to go for a week without using any magic. Willow almost immediately breaks her promise, however, and Tara leaves her at the end of "Tabula Rasa". Tara remains a part of the group, spending time with Dawn, and non-judgmentally acting as Buffy's confessor when Buffy divulges she has a painful and compulsive sexual relationship with Spike, a vampire whom she loathes.

Despite their separation, Tara remains devoted to Willow's recovery and supports her in her decision to abstain from using magic. She is, according to author Lorna Jowett, one of the few characters who is never seduced by evil. Shuttleworth notes that most Buffy characters go through a rite of transformation except for Tara. Among female characters she is the most virtuous. Like the other Buffy characters in the series whose names have symbolic interpretations, Tara's name resembles the Latin terra, meaning "earth." She is solidly grounded, with Willow attached to her, and Benson's body more naturally representative of women. Tara is wholly feminine both in dress and demeanor, as opposed to Buffy and (less) Willow mostly dressed with trousers and jackets, but never seeks male approval. She is clad in earthy, natural colors, long flowing skirts and clinging blouses, with an intent to comfort instead of arouse as other women on the show are dressed. Her admonishments to other characters are always made with love, with their best interests at heart. Even Tara's last words, commenting that Willow's shirt is stained (with Tara's own blood), indicate her preoccupation with the welfare of others.

Tara has also appeared in The Long Way Home, Always Darkest, Retreat, and the one-off Willow.

Death and response

After tentatively courting each other in "Entropy", Tara returns to Willow, and they reconcile through the next episode, "Seeing Red". Throughout the season, Buffy is dogged by three techno-nerds calling themselves The Trio, who envision themselves to be supervillains, with Buffy their nemesis. She continues to foil their plans, and during "Seeing Red", Warren Mears, one of the Trio, arrives at Buffy's house with a gun. He shoots several rounds, hitting Buffy, and the last stray shot hits Tara through the heart, killing her as Willow looks on. Willow is taken over by a dark alter ego, going on a rampage, torturing Warren and skinning him alive. She then attempts to murder the other two members of the Trio, but is unsuccessful. To end her pain, she attempts to end the world. Xander stops her by forcing her to deal with her grief in a healthy, non-violent way.

During the fifth season, Whedon informed Benson that Tara would be killed off. He saw it as necessary to further Willow's character; she had to deal with her dark powers, but nothing short of Tara's death would allow them to come out so forcefully. Tara had become popular among fans, and Whedon and series writer David Fury decided that her death would elicit a strong response, something that Whedon felt sure was the correct course to take. He was unprepared, however, for how forcefully viewers reacted to Tara's death. Fans were so upset that some stopped watching. Because the death came at the end of an episode where Willow and Tara were portrayed in bed between sexual encounters, critics accused Whedon of implying that lesbian sex should be punishable by death, a familiar trope in film. Producers were inundated with mail from people—women especially—who expressed their anger, sadness, and frustration with the writing team. Series writer and producer Marti Noxon was unable to read some of the mail because it was so distressing, but she counted the response as a natural indication that television simply had few strong female role models, and no lesbian representation.

Benson defended Whedon in 2007, saying he "is 100 percent behind the LGBT community. I know this for a fact." Author Rhonda Wilcox writes that Tara's death is made more poignant by her earthy naturalness representing the "fragility of the physical". Roz Kaveney comments that Tara's murder is "one of the most upsetting moments of the show's seven seasons", and Nikki Stafford states that the episode in which Tara dies is possibly the most controversial of the series, causing divisions about whether it was necessary, or assertions that Tara was created only to be killed. In response to fans and critics who accused the writers of being motivated by homophobia, Stafford comments, "they seem to forget that it was those same writers who created such an amazing, gentle, and realistic portrait in the first place; that Tara is certainly not the first character to be killed off on the show; and Tara was a lot more than just 'the lesbian', and her character deserves better than that." Kaveney concurs with the opinion that the series avoided playing a cliché, "proving that it is possible for a queer character to die in popular culture without that death being the surrogate vengeance of the straight world".

While other deaths of main characters in the Buffy universe have been reversed in some form (as has been the case with Buffy herself, Cordelia, Giles, Angel, Spike, Anya, Connor, Gunn, Fred, Illyria and Wesley), Tara remains dead as of the season 10 comic series. She remains one of only three main characters not to have been resurrected in any way, the others being Doyle and Lorne (whose actors have died).

Cultural impact

Although lesbianism had been addressed on U.S. television before Tara was introduced to Buffy, her relationship with Willow was heralded as a milestone. Previously depicted lesbian relationships had not shown characters as sexual beings, or even touching each other. Despite this, Tara and Willow's relationship was not heralded with any specific fanfare on the show; they are treated as other couples. Their relationship was frequently the subject of storylines, but no specific focus was on their identity as lesbians or the coming out process. Limited to what could be shown by the network, Tara and Willow are shown as consistently affectionate but not overly sexual. Manda Scott in The Herald wrote in 2002 that the lack of realistic displays of touching or kissing between Willow and Tara made their relationship implausible, but because no other portrayals of lesbian relationships were on television, its importance is undeniable. Tara and Willow did not kiss until the fifth season episode "The Body", which focused on the death of Joyce Summers. Not until Buffy moved from the WB to UPN in 2001 were Tara and Willow shown in sexual situations. Benson later recalled the issues of working with censors:

Like Whedon, Benson was surprised at the strength of the reaction to Tara's death. It indicated to her what kind of impact the characters had:

The Big Bad of the seventh season is the First Evil, who taunts Buffy and her friends by appearing as loved ones who previously died. Whedon asked Benson to appear as Tara to Willow in "Conversations with Dead People", but Benson turned down the role, concerned about what fans of the show would think about an evil Tara. Instead, the producers used Cassie, a character who dies early in the seventh season and speaks for Tara, telling Willow to kill herself. Whedon also considered bringing Tara back in a storyline where Buffy would be given one wish to be granted, but the possibility did not come to fruition.

Writer Peg Aloi calls the backlash at Whedon "staggering", and summarizes Tara's effect with Willow, stating that they were a single unit the moment they met: "Willow's need for approval and Tara's need for unconditional love allowed their supernova trajectory its singular, incendiary thrust toward its triumphant but tragic end; like all witches who burn, martyred by flames, they move on to a place where their gods are the right ones."

References

Bibliography

 Holder, Nancy; Mariotte, Jeff; Hart, Maryelizabeth (2000). Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide, Volume 2, Pocket Books. 
 Jowett, Lorna (2005). Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan, Wesleyan University Press. 
 Kaveney, Roz (ed.) (2004). Reading the Vampire Slayer: The New, Updated, Unofficial Guide to Buffy and Angel, Tauris Parke Paperbacks. 
 Mitchell, Claudia; Reid-Walsh, Jacqueline (2008). Girl Culture: Studying Girl Culture — A Readers' Guide, ABC-CLIO. 
 Ruditis, Paul (2004). Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide, Volume 3, Simon & Schuster. 
 Stafford, Nikki (2007). Bite Me! The Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ECW Press. 
 Tropiano, Stephen (2002). Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, Applause Theater and Cinema Books. 
 Wilcox, Rhonda (2005). Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I. B. Tauris. 
 Yeffeth, Glenn (ed.) (2003). Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show, Benbella Books.

External links
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0004937/

Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters
Buffyverse characters who use magic
Female characters in television
Fictional characters from California
Fictional college students
Fictional LGBT characters in television
Fictional lesbians
Fictional witches
LGBT characters in comics
Television characters introduced in 1999
Fictional characters with precognition
Fictional demon hunters
Fictional vampire hunters
Fictional telekinetics
Fictional stutterers
Fictional murdered people
American female characters in television
Casual dating or a casual relationship is a physical and emotional relationship between two people who may have casual sex or a near-sexual relationship without necessarily demanding or expecting the additional commitments of a more formal romantic relationship. Motives for casual relationships vary. There are significant gender and cultural differences in acceptance of and breadth of casual relationships, as well as in regrets about action/inaction in those relationships.

Casual dating may or may not entail partner-exclusivity. In each case, the relationship's dominance in the lives of those involved is being voluntarily limited, and there is usually a sense that the relationship is intended to endure only so long as both parties wish it to. Casual relationships sometimes include mutual support, affection and enjoyment, which underpin other forms of loving relationship.

A casual relationship is sometimes referred to as a "no strings attached" relationship.

College students

A "no strings attached" relationship is most commonly found in young adults such as college students. The shift from childhood to adulthood brings on much exploration in different fields. One of these fields include relationships and sexual activity. Grello et al.s study suggests that, in most cases, the same students who lost their virginity in high school did so in a romantic relationship. After experiencing sexual intercourse, many college students go on to have casual sex with either friends or peers they have been recently or newly acquainted with.

A casual relationship, unlike a romantic relationship, is difficult to ascribe norms, scripts, and expectations to. Rebecca Plante, an associate professor at Ithaca College who has specialized in research on casual relationships, says that this type of relationship can be beneficial, saying that casual relationships can establish a "healthy outlet for sexual needs and desires."

Types of college-aged lovers
J.A. Lee defined two main types of lovers for college aged young adults: "Eros" lovers who are passionate lovers, and "Ludas" or "Ludic" lovers, which are game-playing lovers. "Eros" lovers are lovers that immediately form a close connection. They fall in love with the physical appearance of another before considering other characteristics of the person. This type of lover also commits to casual sex relationships. Because physical appearance is the main reason for their attraction, it is difficult for a genuine romantic relationship to form. "Ludic" lovers look for the feeling of a conquest, and typically enter a relationship or hook-up with very little or no intentions of commitment. In most cases, they will have more than one sexually active partner at a given time. They also find it difficult to consider a serious relationship.

Negotiation between participants

Many casual relationships establish guidelines or a set of rules. The two participants in the relationship will reach an agreement about what each expects from the relationship. Another major concern is that one of the partners will develop romantic feelings for the other.  Communication between the two partners is essential to making this type of relationship work and because the partners in the casual relationship are often friends beforehand, talking to one another is a much simpler task.

Relationship maintenance and student concerns

Casual relationships, being a mix between a friendship and a non-romantic sexual relationship, result in the partners facing many challenges in maintaining a working relationship.  Based on the exchange theory, Hughes witnessed an individual dependency on either partner as the exchange of resources, knowledge, rewards, and costs of items, becomes more and more prominent. The partners may become dependent on advice the other partner gives, or the company they receive when being around one another. This may be a one-way street and one partner may not feel this way. Any partner that is not fully dependent upon the other typically controls the casual relationship. The dependent partner is more submissive to their dominant partner as they do not want the relationship to end. This allows the less dependent partner to be able to fix and maintain the relationship the way he/she wants it to be. They normally control when they meet up, when they have sex, and when they do things together.

Disclosure of casual relationship to peers

Hughes's study also revealed the four main categories of why partners participating in a casual relationship did not feel the need to tell their same sex friends about the relationship. The first category was that the partners did not feel that their same sex friends needed to know this information. The second category consisted of people wanting to keep the casual relationship a secret and didn't want their same sex friends to know. The feeling of embarrassment was the third category. Many students said that they would feel ashamed or didn't want to be judged by their same sex friends. The final category is students who didn't want to tell their same sex friends because they would show disapproval of the relationship.

Motivations

Hughes's study suggests that there were five main motivations to why college students wanted to be in a casual relationship.  The five main motivators are:
Relationship avoidance: Students that liked multiple partners at once and wanted to avoid being tied down to one person.
Sexual activity: Students find each other attractive and want to hook-up.
Relationship simplicity: Students get the benefits of a relationship without all the drama.
Emotional connection: Students miss the intimacy they used to have with ex relationships and want to experience it again with no strings attached.
Always wanted a casual relationship: Two students that are single and want to take advantage of it together.

Gender participation

A traditional stereotype of heterosexual casual relationships in college is that the men initiate the sexual activity. Another stereotype is that men are more sexually active and women link sex with romance. This is not true all the time, especially in college students. 

A study conducted by Paul and her team suggests that when it comes to gender participation, there are just as many women initiating these relationships. Pressure from friends and other social means may persuade college students to participate in a casual relationship or "hook-up" regardless of their gender.

Many casual dating sites have an unbalanced gender ratio, as they have much more men than women. Some of these sites are animating their male users to keep them interested or to lure them into paid subscriptions. Usually, these animated casual dating sites are stating this directly in their Terms of Service (as they could be sued otherwise for fraud). As most users do not read Terms of Service when they register on a new website, the animation stays hidden for most users.

Environmental factors

Alcohol consumption and parties often taken place on college and university campuses. Promiscuity is also prevalent. Being placed in an environment of sexually active students can put pressure on other students to consume alcohol, become sexually active, and engage in casual dating. Colleges and universities known for a larger alcohol consumption by their students seem to also have a larger number of students participating in casual relationships. Researchers have struggled with the idea that the "perceived disinhibitory function" leads to the reason for increased sexual activity.

Casual sex

Casual sex are certain types of sexual activity outside the context of a romantic relationship. Although individuals in a casual relationship may engage in casual sex, the former encompasses a range of activities not confined to the context of the latter.

In sexual relationships among teenagers in the U.S., it is common that penetrative sex is not the predominant sexual activity. Rather oral sex and mutual masturbation are more common, as this reduces the risks associated with sexual promiscuity, such as pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Some teenagers do not view oral sex as "real sex" and use it to retain what they consider "technical" virginity.Halpern-Fisher B University of California at San Francisco 

A common aspect of casual sex is that sexual activity occurs within a relationship between two partners that have no commitment to one another. Casual sex presents itself as less risky than random sexual activity because of the person's prior knowledge of the partner they are engaging in sexual activity with. When participating in casual sex, a person may be more likely to know their partner (on a more personal level) than someone they just had a one-night stand with.

See also
 Affair
 Emotional affair
 On-again, off-again relationship
 Open relationship
 Platonic love
 Romantic friendship
 Sociosexual orientation

ReferencesNotes'

External links
 NPR's Talk of the Nation: Friends with Benefits
 No-Strings-Attached Sex 

Casual sex
Intimate relationships
Interpersonal relationships In psychology, relationship obsessive–compulsive disorder (ROCD) is a form of obsessive–compulsive disorder focusing on close or intimate relationships. Such obsessions can become extremely distressing and debilitating, having negative impacts on relationships functioning.

Obsessive–compulsive disorder comprises thoughts, images or urges that are unwanted, distressing, interfere with a person's life and that are commonly experienced as contradicting a persons' beliefs and values. Such intrusive thoughts are frequently followed by compulsive behaviors aimed at "neutralizing" the feared consequence of the intrusions and temporarily relieve the anxiety caused by the obsessions. Attempts to suppress or "neutralize" obsessions increase rather than decrease the frequency and distress caused by the obsessions.

Common obsessive themes include fear of contamination, fears about being responsible for harming the self or others, doubts, and orderliness. However, people with OCD can also have religious and sexual obsessions. Some people with OCD may experience obsessions relating to the way they feel in an ongoing relationship or the way they felt in past relationships (ROCD). Repetitive thought about a person's feelings towards a relationship partner may occur in different relational contexts such as intimate or parent-child relationships; however, in ROCD such preoccupations are unwanted, intrusive, chronic and disabling.

Signs and symptoms

Relationship-centered symptoms

People may continuously doubt whether they love their partner, whether their relationship is the right relationship or whether their partner really loves them. When they know they love someone or that someone loves them, they constantly check and reassure themselves that it is the right feeling. When they attempt to end the relationship, they are overwhelmed with anxiety. By staying in the relationship, however, they are haunted by continuous doubts regarding the relationship.

Partner-focused symptoms
Another form of ROCD includes preoccupation, checking, and reassurance-seeking behaviors relating to the partner's perceived flaws. Instead of finding good in their partner, they are constantly focused on their shortcomings. They often exaggerate these flaws and use them to prove the relationship is fundamentally bad. The fact that they are unable to concentrate on anything but their partner's flaws causes the sufferer great anxiety, and often leads to a strained relationship. Recent investigations suggest partner-focused ROCD symptoms may also occur in the parent-child context. In such cases, parents may be overwhelmed by preoccupations that their child is not socially competent, good looking, moral or emotionally balanced enough. Such obsession are associated with increased parental stress and low mood.

Causes
Like other forms of OCD, psychological and biological factors are believed to play a role in the development and maintenance of ROCD. In addition to the maladaptive ways of thinking and behaving identified as important in OCD, models of ROCD suggest that over-reliance on intimate relationships or the perceived value of the partner for a person's feelings of self-worth and fear of abandonment (also see attachment theory) may increase vulnerability and maintain ROCD symptoms.

CBT Models of ROCD
ROCD is a form of OCD. Cognitive behavioral therapies (CBT) are considered the Gold Standard psychological treatments for OCD. According to CBT models, we all have unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images and urges. Individuals with OCD interpret these intrusive experiences as meaning something bad about their character (crazy or bad) or about the future (a catastrophe is going to occur). For instance, they may give the mere occurrence of an unwanted thought of a loved one having an accident the meaning that they wanted something bad to happen to them. Such interpretations increase attention to unwanted intrusive experiences, making them more distressing and increasing their frequency. Individuals with OCD try to control, neutralize or prevent intrusive experiences (or their content) from occurring using washing, checking, avoidance, suppression of thoughts or other mental and behavioral rituals (compulsions). These control attempts, however, paradoxically increase (rather than decrease) the occurrence of these unwanted intrusions and the distress associated with them. According to CBT models, individuals with OCD give such extremely negative interpretations to intrusive experiences because they hold maladaptive beliefs. For instance, the belief that if anything bad happens it is their own responsibility (inflated responsibility), can lead individuals with OCD to wash their hands repeatedly after having the thought "this may be contaminated." They will do this, in order to avoid feeling responsible for hurting someone else or themselves.

In ROCD, intrusions relating to the "rightness" of relationship or the suitability of the relationship partner (e.g., not smart , moral or good looking enough) are often the most distressing. In order to reduce the distress associated with such intrusions, individuals with ROCD often use various mental or behavioral strategies. For instance, they often try and get reassurance from others that the partner or the relationship is good enough, they may test the partner or check (from up close) their perceived flaw, they may look for information on the internet on "how do I know I'm in the right relationship" or assess their physical reaction and feelings towards their partner. These and similar behaviors, increase the attention given to the intrusion, give it more importance and make it more frequent. Individuals with ROCD also give catastrophic meaning to intrusions based on extreme maladaptive beliefs such as being in a relationship they are not absolutely sure about always leads to extreme disaster. Such beliefs lead individuals with ROCD to interpret common relationship doubts in a catastrophic way provoking compulsive mental acts and behaviors such as repeated checking of perceived flaws or repeated assessment of the strength and quality of one's feelings towards the partner.

Treatment of ROCD symptoms often involve psycho-education about the disorder and the CBT model, exposure and response prevention to feared thoughts or images and challenging of maladaptive relationship beliefs (e.g., believing that being in love means being happy all the time) and more common OCD beliefs such as perfectionism and intolerance of uncertainty. Recently, mobile applications have been developed to assist therapists challenge maladaptive beliefs associated with OCD and ROCD symptoms.

References

External links

 Relationship OCD Research Unit

Obsessive–compulsive disorder
Habit and impulse disorders
Stress-related disorders
Symptoms