Confession

Even if the event is really bad? Someone on another OCD forum said you have to be open & honest with your partner & tell them because it's such a big part of your life & now I don't know what to believe 😭 I know he would hate me if I told him.

@Plop I understand how this can be such a dilemma. For me it first started because I confessed some things to my partner that I had legitimately been hiding and should have told him sooner, things that shouldn’t have ever happened. But it spiraled into uncontrollable urges to confess anything I could think of that may have been wrong or may upset him, change the way he feels about me, etc. I think if it were like “I did one really bad thing, I have to come clean,” then yes of course we have to be open and honest. But it sounds like you’re able to identify this as an ocd urge and a compulsion, which we know we should stop ourselves from doing. It’s hard to walk the line between wanting to be open and honest about everything while also resisting compulsions. If it were easy, we wouldn’t have ocd about it haha. Personally, I told my partner that I was having these urges to confess but that I needed to stop because it was compulsive, and he was completely supportive. He didn’t feel like I was trying to hide stuff from him. If you haven’t already discussed this ocd experience with your partner, it may help!

@allieandscrup I've not confessed anything yet. It's like I know it's OCD that's making me want to confess but at the same time, regardless of the OCD, it feels like something he should know about my past so that he can make the full decision whether or not to be with me. And I'm pretty sure he would leave me if he knew. But is there the argument that we should leave things in the past if that's not who we are now?

@Plop Obviously ocd will feed into the uncertainty of both would he leave, and also is telling him the right thing to do. You need to follow your values. I guess a question to ask yourself is would you want to know if the situation were reversed, or would it not matter to you? Since I don’t know what the situation is I can’t say how I’d feel about it, but you can. If you do end up deciding it’s important enough to share, you can definitely be open about how you feel now about it. That you really value the relationship, this thing is in the past, and you’re very anxious about it. Also, most importantly, if you do share, just be aware that it may trigger the urge to confess additional things. If it does, you can definitely say okay this is ocd, I’m not confessing anything anymore haha