Hey guys at universal theme park with my family and my trigger is attractive women and feeling like seeing them/noticing them is cheating on my fiancé whom I love and really want to be loyal to. I tried doing erp with it but now it’s getting to the point where I am depressed and honestly feeling like there is no hope/ $uicidal thoughts. Could really use some help, encouragement, or advice. I’m so exhausted, so upset with myself, and so sick of being scared and worrying about being unfaithful. I just feel like I’m at my wits end here. If there’s a way to encourage without reassurance that would be great!

I have this deep fear I’ll accidentally cheat on my long term partner. This fear was initially triggered a couple years ago after being at a bar with my friends where I enjoyed the attention of being flirted with by a stranger. Because of my enjoyment of receiving verbal attention, I began spiraling about what if I accidentally cheat. Since then I have made multiple confessions to my partner to seek reassurance, replayed events over and over in my head, spent hours googling/looking at reddit threads, and now I dread “bar like” situations where I know my partner won’t be around. Today I was triggered and have wasted about 4-5 hours of my day ruminating. Does anyone else with relationship ocd struggle with this fear and have any tips?

I am so incredibly terrified of betraying my partner. I love him so much more than I can even describe. He is such an amazing and supportive and kind person, he truly deserves the world. I have been dealing with an ROCD obsession with another person for the past 6 months. This obsession has completely wrecked my mental and emotional health and has caused me to feel physically ill. I have taken every possible measure to ensure that I do NOT cheat on my partner. I’m constantly checking and ruminating on interactions, I make sure to ignore this person whenever they send messages in a group Discord server unless absolutely necessary, I am obsessive about keeping track of the ratio of the number of messages I send in response to them compared to the messages I send in response to other people / the amount of messages other people send in response to them. I am literally considering making a spreadsheet tracking each person in the server’s reply frequency to other people, in order to analyze if I reply to them at an excessive frequency. The few times that I have seen this person in real life (group events), I have made sure to not initiate any conversation with them, to ignore them and not speak unless spoken to, to ensure that I am NEVER alone with them (even when one time they asked me to help them do something really quickly at a party, I made up an excuse because I was worried that going to help them would be cheating). I make sure to sit with other people and not them, I make sure that I never ever ever engage in a conversation in the server where they are sharing “deep” things, and I make sure I NEVER message them privately outside the server. The ONE time they messaged me privately (in response to something that happened in the server), I just sent a gif back and nothing more as the thought of having a conversation in private DMs made me feel like I was cheating. I make sure to talk about my partner frequently in that server (he is actually also in the server). However, I still feel like I am cheating mentally. I have confessed to my partner so many times. I asked him if an interaction was cheating and he laughed and said no. I have confessed to fantasizing about this person and to looking through their social media. He said both were fine. I am constantly wrecked by guilt no matter what I do. If I am just taking part in a group conversation, I analyze every single message and wonder if I have “intentions to cheat” before/after sending it, even when any normal person would just see that message and laugh and wonder how that could possibly be cheating. I have just grown to feel like such a despicable horrible and deceptive cheater. I have confessed so many times, I have told my therapist, and both my partner and my therapist have told me that I have the right to just move on and stop feeling the moral obligation to confess. But I just don’t believe it. It’s so hard for me to believe. I feel horrible. I have a trip coming up with my partner and my family. This is a once in a lifetime trip, taking my partner to my parents’ homeland and visiting my grandma for quite possibly the last time. I am so so so scared that OCD will ruin this trip for me.

* Mentions of Sexual OCD, Hypersexuality, among other things. Recently, I had started to feel so much better, after trying to do some ERP therapy at home, i could feel myself becoming much more capable of holding back intrusive thoughts. Well since yesterday.. or, i dont know when, its been absolutely destroyed. About a month ago, I went out with some friends to the mall. everything was great, until while at the arcade, me and one of my friends tried pranking the other two by running off without them noticing. Well it backfired, one of the others went with him, and i was left with someone who i’ll just call J for the sake of simplicity. To cut it short, we had already pranked J earlier, so I stayed back to tell him about what we were trying to do, and things got weird. He started telling me to ‘go to the bathroom’ with him. I’ll admit that i didnt know what to say, i just felt off, but i wasnt going to do any of that. But i didnt say no. Long story short, i had to use the bathroom, so i left the arcade and went to another and luckily my friend distracted J so he wouldnt follow me in. I’d like to also add now that I have someone that i love dearly, me and him arent really together yet, but its a mutual thing. After that i cried when i returned home. and eventually i moved on, blocked the guy and everything. Now, i don’t know why, or how, but i cant stop having images in my head of what would’ve happened if i did do it. If i did go to the bathroom. And at the same time it shows me images of things happening in my own house, i see it in the shower, while on my couch, even while eating. And it doesnt stop at the sexual stuff, No. It shows me romantic versions of all this; hugging, kissing, holding hands, and in the background it mostly shows sexual scenes. All while giving me groinal responses and weird sensations that are akin to attraction of some kind. Im losing my mind trying to get it to stop. Its eating me alive, and its gotten to the point where i feel like im cheating on my partner. And my mind keeps tellint me that i actually dont love my partner, that I should’ve just gone along with what J was saying, and its making me feel like i dont really love my partner. That i should just unblock and text J. Its making me feel like ive fallen out of love and i dont know why, what if i did fall out of love? what if i end up doing something wrong, or making the wrong choice? Im scared of not loving my partner. I love my partner too much to lose him to this bullcrap. Has anyone else dealt with this? I feel lost and I dont know what to do. I cant even think about my own partner, not even about me hugging him, it gets replaced with J, everytime i try to think about anything it gets replaced in some way with something related to J. Even if i see a show, and i see someone that reminds me of J i instantly start getting intrusive thoughts and images. I feel so horrible, i feel like I’ve failed my relationship somehow. I dont know what to do.