Has anyone with relationship OCD had a fear of their partner Masturbating while in a relationship with you? I seem to have had this all my life & mentioned it to partners before. A few have lied about it & admitted it later after agreeing for us to both NOT do it. Found out my fiancé of 2 yrs has lied about it & I am crushed. He told me that it’s normal & that he doesn’t like to do it or want to but all guys do. That he just wants to be a human being. I have a desire to control this because of my fear. I have not done it since we have been official & feel betrayed. He refuses to talk about masturbation with me. Anyone have a similar issue? How did you cope to get thru it?

Despite the fact that I have never once acted flirtatiously with someone else over the course of my 3-year relationship, never talked to anyone inappropriately, never touched or interacted with anyone inappropriately, I have been battling constant ROCD obsessions centered around cheating ever since my partner and I got together. I am constantly worried about whether certain things are cheating: daydreaming about another person (already told my partner about this and he said it was okay and that he does it too), talking in a group chat with someone, sitting next to someone, speaking to them in person. I question my intentions. I worry that I cheated by wearing my hair a certain way in an attempt to look more attractive or by jokingly poking someone with a fake sword (despite doing it to other people too), looking through someone’s social media, etc. I have confessed so many ridiculous things to my partner and he’s always told me that none of them are cheating. I feel so guilty for being attracted to someone else, despite the fact that my partner said it was fine and normal. I have made a very very conscious effort to limit my interactions with this person. I never ever ever ever message them privately, I make an obsessive effort to NOT reply to their messages in a group server (constantly keeping track of the ratio of my replies to their messages compared to other people’s), to ignore them when I see them in person and hardly ever speak to them or initiate conversation with them. Yet I still feel like a disgusting dirty cheater who is hiding a big secret.

Do you perhaps experience things like being so frustrated and numb because of how much your ocd drains you ? Then you are naturally caught up in a compulsion where you’re “physically testing” yourself to lets say something you watched years ago that is usually against your orientation?? If you know what I mean ? Even though you know you are (your own sexuality) and are in a very loving relationship and you really love your partner but does anyone experience this ?? And then they’re faced with more thoughts about how they’ve betrayed their partner and how their partner will leave and if you also struggle with scrupulosity ocd you feel like you’ve committed a huge sin and betrayed your faith ? Again I get all of this goes against values and that the human body may still react to things we naturally may be against but anyone still falls for the testing and then has this awful reaction afterwards? And does that really mean I betrayed my partner ?? Thank you so much for your time and I would really love your insights as this is something that popped up with me out of the blue …

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