Now let me start out by saying I'm young - I'm 18, and I've been in my share of silly young relationships across my life so I know what they're like; for the past twenty-six months of my life, I've been in the first serious relationship I've ever had and although for many the first love is not the last, I don't think it HAS to be that way. I'm a different guy, and I have real strong morals and beliefs and I'm a bit concerned that a lot of people today, especially of my age, don't understand those things.

This relationship has given me..just..I can't even word it. She makes me so happy, makes me laugh so much, amazes me so deeply - I come to tears sometimes when I take her home, just because of how awful it feels to be away from her for even a little while. Her personality is..wonderful; she literally embodies what I want, and personifies what I want: her values, her looks, her personality..she's just everything, man, and for the first half of this relationship, I was never happier but then we had a horrid argument a couple of months ago, around November of last year, and although arguments are arguments I ended up suffering from sexual performance anxiety following this argument; couldn't perform, get it up, etc. anxiety - this kind of led to a vicious cycle that tormented me over the span of that month, made me avoid my girlfriend because of feelings of disappointing her or not pleasing her (despite the fact she told me 'it's just sex and doesn't matter'), however I eventually recovered from that cycle..but during this cycle, I basically gained a mechanism of just obsessively questioning everything about myself - at one point, my attraction for her (she's beautiful as can be.), my sexuality (yeah, seriously.), and eventually, my love for her. The latter sent me into an extreme panic mode that endured for quite some time; I was having panic attacks over the concept in my head, the concept I didn't love her anymore.

I eventually worked past all of this, and saw a therapist for a while; got to a point where there was no anxiety aside from ruminations about my performance (that just kind of lingered but I learned how to prevent it from actually affecting me, the same thing with my doubts over my feelings - they all lingered, but I learned how to just keep them in the back of my head and they never really mattered.) and I was sure of my feelings; in fact, there were sometimes when I was never more sure of it, when I felt like I loved her even more than before because it seems like now she's opening up to me more socially as our relationship goes longer and longer (she was always kind of shy) and the more she does, the more wonderful and hilarious she turns out to be. Let me say that I've always had anger problems, and problems with overthinking and catastrophizing things (I didn't even learn how to ride a bicycle as a child because of my fears of hurting myself, crashing, falling, etc. - this also tormented me in highschool.) and our relationship is..great. It really is. We can tell each other anything, we can do anything together and still be happy(like just watching television.), we talk about our plans for the future often, we both love everything about each other, we both have a great sex life (since I recovered from my anxiety.), we have all the trust in the world for each other, etc. it's just awesome, especially compared to so many relationships of people my age today.

Recently..my anxiety has been resurfacing for reasons I'm not even sure of. Just kind of randomly, and it always seems so convincing when it comes; it's like this feeling of emptiness in my stomach, or rather, numbness, towards everything and I start to think that I'm not even capable of love because I get to a point where I'll even question myself on my love for, say, my own mother! I know all of that isn't true, but it just badgers me in my brain and I don't like it. It prevents me from fully embracing my relationship, I feel, and makes me hold this horrible feeling like I don't love her, like something's wrong with it, or like I have to leave - I hate those feelings. I really do. They're just terrible. I wanted to see if anyone has ever had a similar experience, or if anyone can give me some advice - I don't want my relationship to be buried under my doubts and confusions, I want my relationship to last as long as it possibly can - my life, if possible. I want to be committed, I want to be with her, I want all of this. That right there is one of the reasons I'm even posting this thread. If it's not broken, don't fix it, but how do I 'unlearn' this anxious mechanism? It's like because I thought like that once, my brain just can't let it go. When this first happened - I made tons of threads on websites, etc. to talk about it and finally just stopped when I started to feel normal and never thought I'd find myself here again but here I am. To some extent, sitting here talking about it, I just start to feel 'wow this is ridiculous' and feel kinda normal for a little bit but then once I stop, my ruminations eventually resurface.