have been in a committed long distance relationship for 6 years. At the 1.5 year mark when I was 16 and my boyfriend was 17. A girls friend came forward and told me that her friend slept with my boyfriend. At the time he lived with other billet brothers as well in a very small town The girl had no text messages the only thing she knew was what his bedroom looked like and parts of the house.. As well her friend sent me a screen shot of a text the girl sent her saying that she banged my boyfriend don’t tell anyone 3 days after the date she gave me. and 5 days before she told me my boyfriend posted a picture of us and someone put her username on the post and was liked by her friends. I knew they were friends and snap chatted each other. She didn’t apologize and she told me she was cheated on in the past… she made herself look really good. She gave me a specific time frame she said she went to his place at 6:00 pm and left at 8:30. At the time I was petrified of him cheating on me so I constantly obsessed and watched his location. So I remember that night and I had texts that we had at around 7:00. I found pictures that proved he was not home until 8:00 and his billet parents talked to me going through calendars saying that she believed they watched a movie that night which is what my boyfriend told me they did that night. I also talked to someone who had a kid at the same event as my boyfriend and told me the time frame his team was there till. I remembered all the info because I was already petrified. I have talked to my mom ( who was cheated on by my dad and destroyed my family) and she doesn’t believe it. I told 2 of my best friends and they say it didn’t happen. Now even with all this information the OCD won’t let me move on… bottom line is I believe my boyfriend and as well all the information that I have found backs up his story but there’s always the “what if” for about 3 years I was handling it well until covid and I had to isolate for 2 weeks. My OCD tells me that 1. my boyfriends a cheater… 2. that I am a weak person… 3: that my relationship isn’t whole… 4. that I am stupid… 5. that because this girl said this it has to be true… 6. that ur always supposed to believe the girl… it shows me images of them having sex in my head… 7. It tells me what I remember is false… ( which makes me go in loops of reassuring myself and asking others) 8. that his billet parents are lying for him (even though I had a close relationship with them both),… 9. that some how it must have happened 10. i get this pit drop in my stomach, 11. heart palpitations when it got really bad 12. And some times it’s just a feeling that I know it’s there 13. other times it makes me hate my boyfriend 14. when it comes I start to avoid my boyfriend and he notices…, 15. triggers include hockey rinks, when I meet someone that was from close to where he played hockey my OCD says what if they know something you don’t. Seeing teammates that were on that team with him. Hearing the name of the town. I have immense regret on how I handled the situation I go over what I would do differently etc, for ex. I never confronted her when it happened about about what I found because I felt like I didn’t need to and I always regretted not confronting her so my OCD got so bad that I did confront her 4 years later I thought maybe this girl would confess to lying years later now that she is older… just last month I dm’d her and I told her my proof and she pretty much told me what’s her motive ( even though she told me she was in love with him)… that she doesn’t care about my so called proof and that he cheated on me and I decided to stay… She was so bloody mean. Now this is like an extra ammo for OCD because now there is someone a real person saying that my OCD is right. I have talked to my boyfriend and he has talked to other teammates that he plays with now about it because he doesn’t know what to do. I am beyond stuck. I don’t want to leave this relationship because it is so good and I love him so much but I don’t know how much longer I can do this. You guys might be asking why I have stayed if I could leave tomorrow and this could all be gone… it’s because if I leave my OCD wins and it will just move onto something else. I’m just so tired of fighting the battle in my mind I don’t want to do it anymore. I have looked into ERP therapy but I don’t know how it will help me when my OCD is based off of a real life event that I wasn’t there for. Being cheated on is my worst fear in life because of my parents, I believe they are the worst type of people, and that’s why if he did this to me I’m with a horrible person and that’s why it has so much power…

So i play in a band, and we were having practice, and my girlfriend was there listening to us, then this girl around our age walks in, and my head tells me to cheat on my girlfriend with her. I know i would never do such a thing. And it bothered me for days. And i ended up telling my girlfriend, and tried to explain my ocd. It hurt her and she believes that the instrusive thoughts, are my thoughts so in that, i must feel something behind them. And she feels hurt because i explained to her the obsessive part of ocd and how this thought wouldnt leave my head. And she got upset knowing that i was constantly thinking about cheating on her. I cant help but feel its all my fault. And now that she doesnt understand i feel really guilty for my thoughts and they are coming more often and worse. When i was fine for months, but my ocd always acts up right as i get in relationships, then i usually tell my spouse and tell them i cant feel guilt for my thoughts or they will get worse. And they usually just accepted it and it was easy. But with her it seems she just cant seem to understand, ive tried to explain it to her countless times, she isnt willing to do research with me to help better understand it or anything. Maybe for my first ocd issue telling her that wasnt the best idea.

So, I know my capacity to get fixated on things. And it's normally something that's relatively remote but, my latest issue is really getting to me and I was wondering if people have any advice. I'm avoiding getting too into specifics, as I don't want this to get reassurance-y but, in essence.. I came to the realisation recently that people who I'd been "friends" (feels like the wrong term now) when I was younger were not very nice people, and normalized a lot of very unpleasant behaviour towards other members of the group. They really normalized it, sold themselves as figures of authority, as older and more responsible and grown-up than others, and looking back, they acted horribly. And coming to this realisation, that I'd been manipulated into just accepting their behaviour has just... broken me. My OCD has latched onto it and I can't stop feeling irreversibly tainted by it. I've talked to others about it, and they've reassured me, told me it's not a big deal and that I hold myself to too high a standard, but none of that sticks. I feel better for a bit, then think 'Maybe when you told them you were skewing it to make yourself look better' or 'Did you leave out a crucial detail'. I keep ruminating over and over, trying to remember exactly how everything played out, trying to figure out if I fed into the behaviour, if I did something bad myself (because y'know, I feel like I was accepting of it at the time, so what does it say about my own values?). I know I need to stop doing all this if I want to improve, but then some part of me keeps saying 'So, you're just going to let yourself off the hook then?' Normally, I can rationalize my own fears to some degree, assure myself something won't happen, but the realness of the situation, and the fact I only came to understand the reality of it because the thought had been bothering me means it feels so much more all-encompassing. I know confessing in itself is a compulsion, but I keep feeling that if I'm not I'm somehow concealing what I 'really am' from others around me, and any positive interactions are me deceiving them in some way. I feel like I can't enjoy anything in life right now, and a good part of me feels I should not enjoy it ever again. If anybody has any advice on it, I'm all ears. Or even hearing if you relate to these feelings, I might appreciate the solidarity at least.

I'm 18, and been in a relationship with my man for nearly 2 years. I started living with him around 2 months ago, and all I do is think about if he's cheating. We were long distance for a year and a half of our relationship, maybe seeing eachother once every month or two. I decided to move in with him, and ever since all I can think about is if he's cheating or watching porn. When he's in another room I think he's doing something wrong, I have to check on him every ten minutes to ease my anxiety. I didn't have this problem before moving in. Granted he has talked to some girls on his phone, even having his ex on his phone (didn't do anything bad) and he is porn addicted though he is getting better for me. It's gotten so bad I want to leave him. A couple days ago I broke up with him and it absolutely broke my heart, I couldn't bare it so I gave him a month to show me he can do better, and for me to work on myself. If I'm still unhappy with us I'm going to leave. I love this boy more than anything. I'm scared to be without him, this is my first real relationship. At this point I refuse to even sleep until he is sleeping. I don't want to start over, I don't want to leave him, but I really can't take this pain it's causing me. It's all I think about. I've convinced myself so many times that he's cheating, but I know he wouldn't. I question whether it's anxiety or intuition. Maybe I just know deep down he really is cheating and I just don't want to believe it. I don't know. I don't think he would do that, but at the same time he's really into women. I hate that he looks at other girls in a sexual way, it bothers me so much, and we talk about it often, but with it being an addiction it's difficult. He has gotten a lot better since we have talked about it. He understands I have an issue and is usually happy to talk about it over and over and promise me over and over that he's not cheating. He allows me to have his phone whenever I want and everything, I have no reason to think he's cheating, but I can't get over it. It's not fair to him either. How do I deal with this? How do I stop hurting so much?