Ok I’m ruminating again. But I feel like this is valid. My ex and I had talked about a girl that I was pretty sure he liked. And he never said no I never liked her but he said it doesn’t matter because those feelings went away when he started dating me. We broke up when he moved home temporarily and then he started talking to her. Idk I feel like he was lying to me and gaslighting me but at the same time, we were broken up. We didn’t break up so he could date other people. But it still feels like I’m lying to myself and I’m being taken advantage of and I have no idea if this is something I need to heal from, like my low self esteem is making me feel this way or if he actually did screw me over and I need to be mad or upset with him. Either way I really just want to forgive him and move on but i feel so desperate for this to not be a big deal. And that’s making me feel like I’m just turning a blind eye.

Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭

Recently my bf wanted to confess to a comment he made to his friends that always bothered him that he said this and it was literally within the first week we had met. (It’s sweet that he wanted to apologize for it, he even teared up bc he knew it would hurt my feelings) He told his friends that I was “super pretty but that he also thinks these girls on tiktok are hot” (girls with piercings and dark makeup, basically alt/ goth looking). Then he said “I just think that look is attractive.” He said the only reason he brought it up was bc he was on tiktok when he was talking to his friends (on discord) and a girl popped up on his FYP and made him think what he finds more attractive. Then his friends wanted to see pictures of me and everyone agreed I was pretty. Then like 3 days later he was talking to his friends again (they only ever talk through discord bc they don’t live in the same city) and was basically just raving about me and how pretty I am. Then his friends said “what about the tiktok girls and what you said” and then my bf said “I was trippin”. This is making my ocd so bad bc I kept ruminating if I should add it to the list of reasons why we need to break up or if this was my “sign” to end it. But then I also get reminded of the positive, like when he told me the first time he saw me he thought I was the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, and has even reassured me by showing me messages of him talking to his best friend about me (also the same week of us first talking) and told him that I was “actually perfect” and “INSANELY pretty”. I try not to be upset at him since this was when we barely knew each other and his type back then was more emo/alt girls at the time and I look different. But I have spiraled so much about it bc I don’t want him to settle for me. He’s tried reassuring me so many times that he was always very attracted to me and never thought anyone was prettier than me, he said just in that brief moment that look still caught his eye but that it went away super fast. He also tried explaining to me that “hot” doesn’t mean “better” or even “prettier” just that the look itself is what he used to describe as hot. He said “hot” is also a casual thing to say, especially to guy friends. Whereas to me, hot means the BEST looking. Sometimes I want him to admit that he was just not that attracted to me in the beginning/more attracted to tiktok girls in the beginning bc it makes more sense to me LOL but that’s just me being annoying and I get very bothered when someone tries to sugar coat things rather than telling me the harsh truth. I think this may be another common thing in ocd, like just WANTING him to tell me the worst case scenario bc it’s more logical to me that way. He ends up crying with me bc of how sad he feels that I have such low self esteem from it and also is so frustrated that I won’t believe him, even though he was honest enough to want to share this with me. Sometimes I think he is playing two truths and a lie to make his explanations more believable. Am I making him out to be a villain who always wants to manipulate me or is this just an instinct I have when I feel that someone is not telling me the truth. We’ve had other problems with him not wanting to be brutally honest bc of how I react so it always scares me that he is always telling me a fabricated story. I also am starting to feel embarrassed for myself and for him being with me. I wish someone could just tell me if the things he’s done or said are deal beakers

When I was single, I watched a lot of porn, specifically lesbian porn even though I’m straight. When I got into my current relationship I dwindled down and eventually stopped watching porn of any kind, around six or so months ago. I had a flare up recently that has caused me to question every part of myself including my sexuality and my identity, my relationship, and other things that are important and valued to me, and porn keeps popping up in all of these things. I feel like my porn usage was me cheating on my boyfriend, especially in the early parts of our relationship. I broke down to him last month about it and he said it was okay, that he forgives me, but I’m still hung up on it because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve wronged him and that I’m a terrible person and that I need to leave him because of this. This is so excruciatingly painful. I don’t want to keep confessing over and over and over again, but I don’t want to be a dirty lying cheater, which I feel like I am.