OCD / Guilt / Porn and Confession Not sure if this really falls under the umbrella of OCD or not. I have a bad habit of confessing things to my wife when I feel as if I’ve done something wrong. I used to confess to her if I thought I’d looked at another woman or if I had inadvertently flirted with someone else. In hindsight, in many of those cases, I don’t think I had done anything wrong, but at the time it seemed like I did. Or, I would confess if I had sexual thoughts about another woman. Stuff like that. I’m often obsessed with the feeling like I’ve been unfaithful. I love my wife. Would never cheat. She has been urging me to stop confessing and mostly I’ve been doing better, but I recently did something I feel quite guilty about. While out of town, I slipped up and watched porn a few times while we were apart. I feel particularly bad because the last time this happened was during a time when my wife was mourning the loss of our family pet, which she had had for many years. We weren’t in the same city when I slipped up and looked at the stuff, but I feel as if I stabbed her in the back during an emotionally rough time for her, even though I feel that I was otherwise completely emotionally supportive of her and was checking in on her constantly and giving her my support. I know I screwed up. I don’t generally watch porn anymore. I used to (a lot) but stopped when we started dating like 3 years ago. In that time, I’ve looked at it maybe three times. When I last confessed this, she said that she doesn’t care if I watch it and that I should stop confessing. I hear her and I believe her. I’ve also made up my mind to stop watching porn because it makes me feel bad. Maybe it’s fine for some people but it makes me feel bad. Part of me says that I should just move on, not confess that I slipped up a couple of times recently and just move on, but another part me says to confess it. That I’ve done something really wrong, especially when she was herself going through a rough time. Any advice would be much appreciated. OCD has clouded my judgement about when to confess.

Sorry if this is a bit of an odd post, but I’m wondering if there are any girls out there that have specifically struggled with shame around watching porn? A lot of my real-event ocd stems from watching that kind of content in the past, and for some reason it feels particularly taboo as a woman. As a young teen, I saw some genuinely disturbing things, and I think a lot of that was to do with having unrestricted access to the internet. However, despite lots of people telling me “that’s normal teen curiosity” it just never feels like it applies to me, and that I’m genuinely just a sexual deviant. I think because that kind of content is so graphic and overstimulating it’s really stuck in my brain, and I just wish I could turn back the clock and switch off the computer. I’ve recently been struggling with doing typical ‘girly’ stuff because I feel tainted and gross, and I just want to get back to feeling myself again.

Hi, I’m new here!! I’m praying I don’t get judged for this. But, back in late May of 2022 ( literally right before I graduated high school), I added this one random girl from my school on Snapchat. She posted something about a graduation party , so I swiped up on her story basically saying how I can’t believe we’re almost graduated. She replied and we had a really short and simple conversation. The next day ( i believe) , we started talking a lot , and I just so happened to see her at the highschool when we were grabbing our graduation outfits and doing the rehearsal. When I saw her irl, I kinda got turned off ( I heard she was kinda crazy) , and on top of that , she was a little ugly irl. I remember seeing her Snapchat bio , and she was close friends with my female cousin ( a year younger than me) , who I happened to experiment sexually with when I was 10-11 years old. I remember going to work later that day and having sort of a lightbulb flick thought ( it wasn’t a good thought though) , what if my cousin told her about what happened when we were younger? So I started to kind of panic and immediately distanced myself from that girl. I also experimented sexually with one of my female friends when I was 10-11 , and from that day onwards, I’ve been pretty much living in paranoia and a little bit of guilt about someone finding out and my life being ruined . On top of that, It’s gotten worse to now sometimes I wonder if a girl I added off of quick add ( Snapchat) is underage even if they told me they were 18+ or had 18 and above in their bio, and I get so much guilt and anxiety about that. I even had a quick thought last February on what if I did something inappropriate with my younger cousin when I was 15-16 but I just can’t exactly remember when it happened , and it still eats me alive when I think about it, because I don’t know if it happened or not. I’m sorry for the long vent, I just wish I felt normal again. No matter how much I try to do things that old me used to do, life always feels “ off”. I always kept the top part about when I was younger a secret up until early (ish ) 2024, then I vented to one of my best friends and he told me that that’s a normal thing to do at a young age. Since then, I have told multiple friends and they all say they did similar stuff, but my brain just can’t accept that. Please help me, I quite literally overthink everything nowadays. 2021 was the last full year that I felt normal ( coincidentally, the best year of my life so far) . It’s not just about sexual related things either, sometimes I’ll wonder if I messed up something at work or hit a car while driving/hit someone and drove off. I just wanna live my life how I was supposed to live it after highschool ( carefree and happy) before whatever it is ( I think it’s ocd) hit me unexpectedly. Thanks to anyone who read this , I just needed to pour it out regardless of how negative I felt typing this, I hope someone can relate , because I feel so alone in my head at times.

I feel like I need to confess everything to my wife. This week it’s gotten me in a lot of trouble, there’s more I feel I need to confess but I know it’ll hurt her. How do I just not!