How to not be affected by the inevitable ‘well u clearly don’t love him then’ when you tell people about rOCD or the ‘well just stop’ about physical compulsions?

How?

I am at a very difficult spot in my relationship. My boyfriend and I have been together for 6 years, and I have a history of cheating that for years we’ve been trying to work through. To me, it makes a lot of sense that my OCD has attached itself to this and for the last few years I’ve experienced intrusive sexual thoughts of others and relationship ocd. I have been open to him about the content of my thoughts and now, with a proper diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, I am able to reframe them and work through them with ERP so that my brain will *hopefully* get bored and stop sending them. But, things have not been easy. As a result of this and everything in our past, he has become anxious about all the scenarios where I could be having sexualized thoughts about other people. To him, if I am thinking something utterly different than what I am telling him or acting like to him, he can’t fully trust it. And of course, I can imagine how difficult it is to know your life partner is sexualizing others in her brain and to be able find a way to dismiss them as unthreatening, especially when past mistakes say otherwise. Is there anyone that has gone through this with a partner? And other than repeatedly explaining the egodystonic nature of my thoughts and providing reassurance, what are some things you did that helped them? Any advice helps! Thank you

I wanted to talk about my experiences with rOCD since I currently do still suffer from it but I know if I talked about them. My thoughts are just gonna get stronger, but I’ll do it for the sake of talking about my experiences to others who feel like they’re alone. I have a very loving relationship actually my first healthy relationship we are currently still dating one year and six months. I would say these intrusive thoughts started to happen once I hit the one year mark with him. Nothing in the relationship has made me think these thoughts, but it just came. Like when my mind tried to make me think I liked another guy other than my boyfriend and that I was losing feelings for him. I started to panic because I knew that my heart belonged to my boyfriend and having thoughts that were against that belief it made me really anxious cause I never had those thoughts before. I was in and out of the care center at my school constantly having anxiety attacks, and it was affecting me day by day. I talk to my boyfriend about it because my mind can never keep secrets from him because then I would feel like that I’m lying to him… my mind just kinda works that way and I believe it’s due to the situation I have with rOCD. Luckily, he was really supportive.. in thoughts I’ve had was what if I don’t like him anymore or if he doesn’t do this does that mean he likes me or if he’s even the one just a lot of doubts about me and him in the relationship. And for anyone who’s experiencing stuff familiar to this you are not alone invalid only what you believe is what is true. And I know it’s gonna be hard to know what’s true or not because these thoughts that you have versus what’s in your heart you get confused but if you know that you love that person then that’s what true. Also, the only reason why it affected me a lot was because I kept trying to solve it and the only solution is to let those thoughts in and accept that you have those thoughts. I don’t mean as an accept that these thoughts are true, but accepts that those are the thoughts that you’re thinking because if you keep on trying to find a solution to remove them, it only just get worse.