Hey everyone. Don’t really know what’s going on here. Basically my wife and I have been together for a few years now. We’ve know each other a really long time, almost 13 years. At any rate, it all started up when she texted me one night. That’s when the conversation and idea that we would like finally get together and hang out (at the time hadn’t seen each other in almost a decade). I was in single mode really hard at that time and was talking to a few different girls. Now here’s where the guilt, anxiety, and OCD come into play. I never felt like I’d done anything wrong. I have distinct memories of continuing to text girls; and my memory has always been that it was some time between when me and my wife first texted and when she came over. When she came over I remember that I was no longer texting or talking to anyone anymore, but I can’t remember if I stopped texting other girls before she came over, or if I stopped when she did indeed come over for the first time. My OCD has always come up and I’ve felt wracked with guilt and anxiety that I was texting other girls while I texted her. I know that she and I weren’t even dating yet, but that thought still gives me extreme pits in my stomach and anxiety. I can’t remember an actual time where I was texting my wife and other girls at the same time, but it’s the unknown that gives me such bad anxiety. Any advice?

I slept with someone before I met the love of my life .. I slept with this guy and then the next day I met the guy I’m seeing now at a restaurant.. we hit it off from there and been together ever since .. I’ve had major ocd about confessing that I had a one night stand before him .. but I fed so hard into the ocd that I kept saying well what if I did more bad things not only before .. BUT AFTER I MET HIM.. So I’m comming here for some reassurance … my question to yall is .. if I did something wrong RIGHT AFTER I met my boyfriend , wouldn’t I have been stressing about that rather than what happend BEFORE ? Or maybe I just forgot ?? HELP

I am a woman, my partner is a man. Two nights ago I was at a house party / movie night with my friends while my partner was at work. Many of the people there are also mutual friends of my partner’s. They all know my partner and I talk about him frequently. One of the people there was a (male) mutual friend who came over to my apartment beforehand to pick me up, waited for a few minutes while I finished up some chores around the apartment, and then we went shopping to pick up food and supplies for the party. During the party, this friend got EXTREMELY drunk. He was saying some pretty outlandish/unfiltered stuff the whole night about the movie were watching, laughing uncontrollably on the floor, that kind of stuff. I don’t drink, so I was 100% fully sober the entire time. The party pretty much consisted of everyone sitting on the couch for the whole night, watching movies and eating pizza and drinking. I do remember there being a point where I was kind of sunk back on the couch, the friend was sat next to me, and we made eye contact and he said something (I can’t remember what) and I remember feeling like we was a little too close for comfort. This must have lasted for less than a minute (everyone was kind of squeezed together on the couch since there were lots of us and a pretty small couch). I remember there being another point where his leg/foot grazed my leg, so I recoiled instantly, and then it happened again and I kept moving my leg away so we weren’t touching. I’m fairly certain that this was a complete mistake, as like I said, there were lots of people squeezed together on one couch, and he was very uncoordinated. Finally it was getting too late, so I called my partner and asked him if he could come pick me up since he was on the way back from work. While on the phone, several people at the party were yelling “HI” to my partner over the phone (pretty much everyone there was also friends with him). Then this friend, who like I said was VERY VERY drunk by this point), yelled (to my partner over the phone) something like, “YOU CAN HAVE MY SLOPPY SECONDS.” I was very very very caught off guard and confused. I instantly hung up the phone because I didn’t want my partner to get the wrong idea that there was something going on. After I hung up, the friend said “Oh come on I’m sure he would have found that very funny!” I was very bothered for the rest of the night and then went home shortly after, when my partner picked me up. The entire ride home, I kept replaying those words in my head over and over again, and I kept replaying the whole night over and over in my head, wondering if something had happened between us and I’d somehow forgotten within minutes or hours?? For the entirety of the next day, and the day after that, I keep ruminating on that night and trying to replay all the events that happened, what order they happened in, what exactly I remember, etc. I have absolutely no idea why my friend said that over the phone, especially since neither of us has ever expressed any sort of romantic or sexual interest in one another. When we met, I had already been with my partner for well over a year, and I talk about my partner frequently. My partner is also friends with this friend, and the three of us have had some good times together. This friend is also absolutely NOT the type of person to be sleazy, a womanizer, a homewrecker, etc. Perhaps I’m leaning into stereotypes too much here, but I should note that pretty much everyone at the party (including this friend) has mild to moderate autistic tendencies, and the friend group was brought together because we all met in a heavily anime/DnD/politics based club at a university. I say all this to illustrate that the atmosphere at the “party” was definitely NOT the type of atmosphere where anybody was hooking up, hitting on each other, flirting, etc in any way (of course I’m not saying that people in these demographics can’t hook up, but just that it was a cozy movie night with respectful friends, not some sort of crazy party). It’s the third day after the party now, and I’m still ruminating on this. I still have no idea why he’d say that, and I’ve replayed it so many times in my head that I’m wondering if maybe I just imagined it, or misheard it, or maybe he didn’t know what that phrase meant, or maybe I misinterpreted it or something. I mean, we were showing a mature cartoon movie that night that both me and this friend absolutely love, and both of us were making jokes all night about being attracted to several of the characters in the movie. Some of the jokes this friend was making about the characters were very sexual, so maybe his comment had something to do with that? Maybe he was extrapolating some sort of “sloppy seconds” meaning from the characters to me?? I’m not sure. Either way, I’ve been sitting, replaying and ruminating for days and of course I’ve fabricated lots of false memories. I’ve run through all the possibilities. Did I kiss the friend? Did we cuddle on the couch? Did he have his arm around me? What if, in those few minutes that we were alone in my apartment before we left, what if I took him into the bedroom and did something with him while my partner was gone? I do remember having intrusive thoughts about THAT before he even came over. I’ve been dealing with on-and-off ROCD for the entire 3 years that my partner and I have been together, and it always ends up coming back to an obsession related to cheating and false memories. It’s so hard to know what’s real and what isn’t, especially since it’s so easy for me to picture these things happening in my head. I’ve been absolutely lost in unrealistic obsession-induced delusions before, to the point where there was a time where I was legitimately convinced that I had cheated on my partner with a friend 18 months prior, and even went as far as messaging this friend to ask if anything had happened between us. Of course the answer was no, and things were so awkward after that. I just don’t really know what to do. I keep imagining scenarios where me and this friend were getting handsy or touchy, and I’m starting to come up with so many false memories. It’s stressing me out and I keep compulsively replaying them. What bothers me is that when he made the sloppy seconds comment, I remember feeling some sort of guilt that almost felt like it was already there? Like preexisting guilt? Which leads me to wonder why I already had felt guilty if I hadn’t done anything? I even feel like I almost remember there being a point during that night where I thought something along the lines of “Okay, I’ll allow this.” And I am so confused and trying to figure out what I was allowing. It feels very difficult to enjoy time with my partner when I have this fear in the back of my mind that I’ve cheated. Every time I try to conjure up a memory of me cheating with this person though, I always come up with a different one and none of them make any sense. What was said between us, what was done, etc? I keep making up the details as I go. The other thing is: every single person at that party knows my partner and respects/likes him. Surely if we were doing something inappropriate, someone would have said something? Surely I would have felt worried that someone would tell my partner? Surely I’d feel anxious by now about my partner finding out? I don’t know: deep down, I think I know it’s a false memory. But the situation feels so weird and unsettling that I’m considering either talking to my partner about it or confronting this friend. My next therapy session isn’t for another 2.5 weeks.

Hi all, I’ve just started a new relationship with the most amazing woman. She recently asked me when the last time I had sex was, and my mind immediately went back to a time in April this year. I felt peace after telling her that, but the next morning I woke up feeling dread because I remembered that there was actually a time a month after that (in early May) when I was sexual with someone else but there was no intercourse. I had no intention to deceive my girlfriend when I told her that the last time I had sex was in April. I now feel like I need to let my girlfriend know about the early May incident because even though the last time I had intercourse was in April, I was sexual with someone in early May. Both incidents happened before I met my girlfriend. Then there was a time in mid-June when I messaged the woman I was sexual with in early May, but I immediately deleted that message without waiting for a reply and blocked her and nothing physical happened. That was after my girlfriend and I had been talking for about a month but hadn’t committed to each other to be exclusive, but we had said that we weren’t talking to anyone else at the time. I had forgotten about that incident until my girlfriend recently asked me when the last time I had sex was. Since my girlfriend and I have committed to each other to be exclusive, I haven’t had any contact with any other woman that could be seen as betrayal. I can’t stop thinking that I lied to my girlfriend about the last time I had sex and that I need to tell her about the contact attempt with the other woman in mid-June, even though both were before her and I committed to each other to be exclusive. Is this my OCD being overly morally scrupulous and over-thinking, or do I need to confess to my girlfriend? Her and I have built a great foundation of trust and intimacy and I don’t want to ruin that. And what would be a good ERP way to deal with this?