Compulsions are at a minimum but my brain is driving me insane. I overthink everything, I don't think I'll ever be in a normal relationship with a brain like this I hate it I hate it I love my girlfriend but I don't even know my sexuality and I don't know why it's even a big deal I feel like it's going to take over one day all over again. The weeks drag by as I crave not being sober so I don't have to think so much about anything I can just have a good time and be happy with my girlfriend.

I tried checking if I like gay stuff and it’s genuinely disgusting to me. I can tell whether or not a man is attractive and when they are it does scare me and makes me question myself yet, it’s always the same response, I don’t get how you can do that with another man. Doing anything sexual just feels so gross and wrong. I don’t think that I am magically turning gay. I don’t think my orientation is changing or hasn’t been explored. I simply find that stuff gross. I have never had anything wrong with gay people and I am a true believer that people have choices they can make with free will so it’s not that I’m homophobic, just keep that stuff away from me lol. Saying so, I don’t get why I am getting these thoughts. These images in my head, constant need of checking if I fall in the spectrum, constant checking whether I like someone of any gender, constant checking whether or not I am getting groinal responses. No matter what answer I get, my mind still wants an answer, an answer to the next question that it’ll create after answering the one before it. I have always liked girls and always been so proud of it, I am in a relationship right now with a beautiful girl I’ve had a crush on since 2nd grade. (I am 19) Whatever mental illness I have has ruined our relationship. Everything feels forced on my side, I don’t remember the joy I had before this but I have glimpse throughout the days of the things we’ve done together that makes me happy and look forward to life. I am constantly checking to see if my attraction is still there for her and the scary part is, when I am stuck in my head, I am not but, to alter that, when I get that freedom and feel like my normal self, I get a hyper amount of love for her and it feels so nice. These thoughts all began after me and my girlfriend had an argument, 5 months ago we got in an argument over her not giving me enough space. She always wanted to be a part of a plan with my male friends. I never minded her when it was just us two so it’s not that I hated being with her, it was just that I had no time to be independent. ( I also had no job and nothing going for myself. ) One odd day after spending so much time stuck in the house due to weather, I had random thought on whether or not I truly loved her. We were only 4 months into the relationship so I didn’t have an answer and since it felt like I needed an answer, it became obsessive, I couldn’t stop checking. After hours with that thought, I started to wonder whether or not I was interested in other things like K I D S. This thought was an automatic no and I began to fight it. I wasn’t going to accept that, each day felt like a living hell. The questions would change each day, do I miss my ex, was my ex better, do I like my M O M, do I want to K I L L so and so, do I want to kill myself. One day I woke up and had it all in control, felt like magic, after I watched a video on ROCD and realized, oh, I am not the only one but, this is where my compulsions got even worse. I couldn’t stop checking the internet, seeing if I relate to others, watching more videos. I regret this everyday because this compulsion created so many new thoughts and questions for me to answer. About 2-3 weeks went by and a thought passed by that has been stuck with me since along with other thoughts. I thought back to what I did as kid and in the past. I remembered a traumatic event where my brother touched me (5yr old M) inappropriately. This made me question whether or not I liked it and I couldn’t find an answer, couple years (10yr old M) after that I unfortunately did the same to my cousin (8yr old M). I feel so much shame and guilt for it. My mind turned black and white, “Maybe this isn’t a do you like your girl or not but instead, maybe you just like boys I mean, you obviously never asked yourself if you like what you did so”. This question was terrifying for me because it meant that I could no longer love my girl, my whole life till now has been a lie. So I began to question everything in my past up to date to find an answer. No matter what answer I fed my mind, it would not be satisfied and simply create more questions. It felt like my mind was forcing me to be gay, whether or not I liked it. 4 months has passed and the questions have just gotten worse, something I was initially so afraid of. I am in constant fight or flight mode, I am always anxious and I can’t feel nothing. I get times of relief when I am reminded of my past, when my gf turns me on, or when I find an answer to question my mind conjured up. I started to go to church but it’s always been a struggle for me to believe. I can’t go to the gym anymore because everywhere I look I am questioning myself. My porn addiction has went away but mostly because I can’t find anything attractive anymore. I can only find comfort and discomfort. Something that was once so easy for me would 1 day be nonexistent and hard to live without. I don’t know what the truth is anymore. My life feels like a made-up lie. Though I have always loved women, fantasized about them, get extremely nervous around them, pray for them, romanticize them, etc. I now have no idea what it feels like to be in love, interested, or even happy for a woman. My attraction hasn’t vanished completely, I still can look a girl and be stunned, l simply just can’t destroy the feeling it gives me. I get so anxious and begin to question everything about the women, the feeling, myself. I am having a crisis.

I’ve had relationship OCD for about five months now and it’s been excruciating, I know it’s relationship OCD but my brain can’t grasp it, I was doing very well for about a week a few days or a week. It’s about the only amount of time where I feel that sense of clarity or almost back to normal definitely not normal but life seems pleasant again. I made a bad mistake. I was with my friend on a sleepover and we decided that we wanted to eat some good food and be stoned because we enjoy eating food and being stoned since it tastes much better, no I believe this just made it worse. I know that weed can be worse for some people. It can make them overthink and I think it’s triggered me to relapse, because my worries and intrusive thoughts are about something so much more worrying in a way and it feels so much more real, I guess I’m hyper focusing on every single thing about my partner’s personality every floor and everything he doesn’t do, and my brain is telling me that means I should break up with him, ”if he dosent do this this means the relationship isn’t right” “ or anything happens my brain will tell me that I’m losing interest or losing feelings and I get many intrusive statements. Like “you like being single more” literally any time I’m enjoying myself alone And I’m getting many that don’t make sense “he doesn’t accept you for who you are so that means that you need to break up” over an interest that we both have…… And it’s so frustrating because any time I talk to him about anything serious or obviously I’m not happy about something because that’s normal in relationships not everyone is gonna do everything right so you have to communicate it but then I could get intense urge to break up and it makes me upset, or when I’m trying to tell him how I feel my brain will just say that I need to break up it’s honestly so confusing and I’m falling back into the compulsions and reassurance seeking all over again and my brain is making me believe it’s not relationship OCD because what if it’s not relationship OCD and it’s actually not the right relationship for me? But I don’t want it to be that I love him so much and I honestly can’t imagine not being with him. It’s so confusing and my head hurts and I just need someone to talk to.

This is going to be long and all over the place. To give some context I’ve dealt with SOOCD for a long time now and it had very bad effects on my past relationship. I had a hard time being intimate with my past partner because I was always subconsciously checking if I was getting aroused enough, if I was attracted to him, if I truly liked him, or if I was lying to myself (yk the whole deal). I literally felt nothing but anxiety when we did things which made everything worse. I was also extremely depressed which made my libido and attraction towards men completely vanish (still have low libido and my attraction is kinda the same). Me and the guy broke up and a couple years ago we reconnected. When I saw him again I was extremely attracted to him, romantically and sexually. This made me so happy because I finally felt some confirmation that I knew who I was and my thoughts weren’t real after years of being tortured by them. We didn’t end up lasting because my feelings started to shift but I truly blame that on the fact that it was just a dumb old high school relationship, he was a terrible boyfriend in the past, and we had nothing in common. However while we were together, I had dealt with really bad relationship anxiety. I found other people attractive which gave me reassurance, but also made spiral because I thought it meant I didn’t like him anymore, I was lying to myself about my feelings, and I questioned everything about the relationship. Fast forward to now, I am now in a new relationship and I’ve known this guy for a long time. I developed a crush on him which again made me really happy bc I haven’t had a crush in a VERY long time. I made a couple of posts on here about how I started to overthink everything (pls read those to get more context I don’t want to make this even longer). I started to get really anxious and had more intrusive thoughts about lying to myself about my feelings/and sexuality, not really liking him, not being attracted to him, yk all that. I was able to manage it by watching a video about rumination where the guy basically just said “stop thinking about it.” He said to just let it float there, don’t engage with it, don’t try to solve or understand, don’t try to replace it, don’t say a mantra, don’t be mindful, just let it be there and move on. I also went on reddit and this guy said to stop hyper focusing on the attraction/ the “right” feelings bc the more you try to look for them the less you will feel it. Anyways, I took the advice and the next time we hung out I felt comfortable and just so much better. It was the sweetest date and I truly had a fun time. However, when we kissed I immediately started over analyzing and questioning everything. I had bad experiences with my ex because I kept trying to analyze my feelings like do I really like this kiss? Am I actually attracted to him? Why am I not feeling super excited right now? Why did all these good feelings just go away? It was so annoying and heartbreaking for me because I just want to be normal, I want to truly enjoy this relationship. I want to stop automatically checking and over thinking everything. We’ve discussed sexual things and it automatically made me hyper analyze everything making me feel more anxious and unsure about the relationship and my sexuality. There have been times where we talked about them and I’ve thought about it with no worry, and I even got turned on by it (tmi i’m sorry). But I’m worried that I’ll have the same bad experiences I did with my ex and it’ll ruin how I view the everything. I was so excited for this but now I feel so scared and anxious again. I really want to enjoy this, he’s truly an amazing person and I want to be with him without being bombarded by this shit 😭. Sorry if none of this made sense. Please give me advice if you have any!!!!