cheating ocd (need advice)

im writing this at 1am because i feel the most intense fear ive ever felt in my life and i need some kind of support and/or advice, so fair warning because this may be very triggering for people with this particular trigger ive been dealing with the fear of cheating on my partner for a long time now, but recently ive become more fixated on the fears of emotional cheating because it’s something that i think is more likely to have happened in the past than physically or romantically cheating just because i know there’s no way that i’ve ever done either of those ive been obsessing over a time last year where i used to contact this male friend of mine about my relationship problems but mainly my relationship obsessions (my main trigger has been ROCD) because i wanted reassurance and advice about them and he would give me good advice on how to go about dealing with those obsessions. this friend and i used to flirt and dated for like a week in high school, before we realized we were kinda just using each other to get over our exes and we weren’t really into each other so i never counted it. because i opened up to him about my relationship problems, i would obsess over how that was inappropriate and it was emotional cheating because every article i’ve read compulsively says that if you open up about your relationship to someone outside of your relationship, then that’s emotional cheating, even though i know that the real reason i opened up to this friend was because i couldn’t just confess all of my ROCD thoughts to my boyfriend. i thought i had that under control until i did an exposure and read a story about emotional cheating and then i had a random memory pop back up in my head that wasn’t there before about how i may have accidentally, or intentionally flirted with him, which led me to review my old texts with him, and i found some things that could definitely be considered flirting…and now i don’t know what to do…i don’t know what i was thinking when i sent those messages and i definitely never had feelings for this friend while i was going to him for advice, so there’s that small chance that it may not have been flirting but it really feels like i did because looking back at it i don’t know how i would have interpreted it otherwise… i feel like the worst person on the planet and i feel the strongest urge to confess to my boyfriend because this feels so real and i’m almost certain that this is evidence that i have emotionally cheated on my boyfriend. part of me feels that he would be understanding but another part of me feels like this would break his heart and that our relationship wouldn’t be the same anymore,especially since we’re both victims of our parents being cheated on when we were kids and how that affected us and our families and i just cant help but feel like id be inflicting the same pain on him than my the kind that my mom did on me. i wish i had never read those messages otherwise i wouldn’t have even remembered that i said those things. what should i do? do i tell my boyfriend? i feel like if i were to not tell him i would just feel absolutely undeserving of his love every time im with him and the guilt would consume me to the point where i couldnt enjoy it. it doesn’t help that we might be about to enter a long distance relationship within the next two weeks after almost two years of being together, so this news on top of the fact that he’s about to leave and we’re supposed to be enjoying our time together makes me feel even worse. i also blocked that friend on everything, but should i delete our messages too? i would really appreciate the help because im losing my mind right now. just last night my boyfriend and i were talking about how lucky we are to have each other and how we can’t wait to see out future together after all that we’ve been through. he’s known about my cheating obsessions and just about every other obsession about him ive ever had but he’s decided to trust me and support me no matter what, he’s been nothing but kind and understanding…but this time it feels like i would be confessing the truth rather than just another obsession. i’m terrified.

Relationship OCD

halaena

Date posted: 3y

Hey! I have the exact same issues and it’s actually made me feel really validated that I’m not alone. My gf and I have been together going on 8 years and something similar to your situation has happened in previous years with me and a couple of male friends, (one of those situations was actually sexual assault and coercion and yet I still feel like it was totally my fault) and I’ve been dealing with exactly what you’re experiencing for a year and a half now. It’s so incredibly painful and I feel like I don’t deserve my girlfriends love and I’m absolute scum of the earth, sometimes I can’t even look at my girlfriend because I’m so overwhelmed with guilt and the desire to confess, and I’m so sorry that you’re going through this too, but you’re not alone! You did not cheat, your desire to confess is 100% a compulsion and even if your boyfriend is understanding about it and doesn’t care, it will only make you feel better for a little while before you need reassurance again. Delete the texts, not because you did anything wrong but because you will definitely go back and read them again and again and try to find more reasons to convince yourself you cheated. I know it’s hard, I’m having a huge flare up at the moment too and every day is a struggle, but it will pass and you will be able to go back to normal. Sometimes spending time with my girlfriend is hard because I feel so guilty and then I just want to avoid her, but forcing my way through the guilt when I’m with her and pushing through the urge to confess and spending more time with her even if we spend it with me halfway inbetween panic attacks shows my body and mind that guilt won’t kill me, and that spending time with her is nothing to be afraid of. Tell your boyfriend that you’re having a really hard time with your OCD at the moment and so you might be acting a bit off for a while but you want to spend as much time together as possible before he goes, and try to break the obsessive cycle of thinking as often as possible just by acknowledging that the thoughts are there but not agreeing or disagreeing with them. You and your boyfriend will make it through this, I’m sure you know that OCD attacks the things you care about most in the world and the fact that your relationship is under attack right now just means that you clearly love your boyfriend very much. You are not a bad person, you’re not a cheater, you deserve your boyfriends love and you deserve good things. Xx

gettingmoni

Date posted: 3y

thank you so much, this response was everything i needed to hear and more, and also i’m so sorry you’re going through this as well and that you had go through being coerced, i’ve been there as well and it’s so hard to not blame yourself for giving in to something you didn’t want, but im proud of you for being so strong and pushing through! ocd and real event stuff is no joke. it really helped to hear your outside perspective too, since obviously im looking at my situation through the lens of someone who is riddled with guilt and anxiety at the moment so my mind isn’t clear. i wish you the best!

halaena

Date posted: 3y

@gettingmoni Thank you so much! All the best to you too, it’s really good to know I’m not alone :)

BMC

Date posted: 3y

I wouldn’t tell him - what you did doesn’t count as cheating - emotional or physical. Your ocd is flaring up because you’re about to go through a big relationship adjustment x

gettingmoni

Date posted: 3y

hey thank you so much for replying to this, i really appreciate it ♥️. do you think i should delete those texts too? i feel like im going to want to look at them again in the future and im afraid i might unlock more memories that i didn’t even know existed. at the same time, i don’t know if that would be an avoidance compulsion or just me doing the right thing for my own sanity.

BMC

Date posted: 3y

I really needed your comment too - I’m struggling so badly this weekend and feel so undeserving of my partner - the guilt and sadness is overwhelming. As horrible as this is it’s so comforting to know others understand. I hope you both have good days xxx

gettingmoni

Date posted: 3y

you too! i know the guilt and sadness is a familiar feeling for almost anyone who struggles with rocd, it’s hard not to feel this way knowing that our partners dont have these of thoughts, and if they do, they just brush them off and continue to love using while acting as if those thoughts never existed but we’re pretty much left to deal with them constantly and it feels isolating because they can be so strange and abstract, and most people in our lives don’t know what it’s like to go through this so we’re left feeling like the odd ones out in a way, or at least that’s how i tend to feel when im consumed by my negative thoughts :’) i think it’s extremely important for recovery to have some sense of community with ocd because its so easy to feel like nobody understands you

BMC

Date posted: 3y

I think if you deleted them you would panic that you’ve done something and can’t remember because the evidence is gone - but avoid checking them because that is a compulsion x

gettingmoni

Date posted: 3y

that makes sense, hopefully remembering the way i felt when i read those messages is enough to keep me from putting myself through this again :’)

Tiredoflife

Date posted: 3y

I’m going through the same thing . I had made a post about it today . Do you mind if I copy and paste what I wrote so you can see ? I don’t wanna trigger anything tho .

Anonymous

Date posted: 18w

Relationship OCD- fear of cheating

I have this deep fear I’ll accidentally cheat on my long term partner. This fear was initially triggered a couple years ago after being at a bar with my friends where I enjoyed the attention of being flirted with by a stranger. Because of my enjoyment of receiving verbal attention, I began spiraling about what if I accidentally cheat. Since then I have made multiple confessions to my partner to seek reassurance, replayed events over and over in my head, spent hours googling/looking at reddit threads, and now I dread “bar like” situations where I know my partner won’t be around. Today I was triggered and have wasted about 4-5 hours of my day ruminating. Does anyone else with relationship ocd struggle with this fear and have any tips?

Dalia H.

Date posted: 16w

Afraid of betraying partner.

I am so incredibly terrified of betraying my partner. I love him so much more than I can even describe. He is such an amazing and supportive and kind person, he truly deserves the world. I have been dealing with an ROCD obsession with another person for the past 6 months. This obsession has completely wrecked my mental and emotional health and has caused me to feel physically ill. I have taken every possible measure to ensure that I do NOT cheat on my partner. I’m constantly checking and ruminating on interactions, I make sure to ignore this person whenever they send messages in a group Discord server unless absolutely necessary, I am obsessive about keeping track of the ratio of the number of messages I send in response to them compared to the messages I send in response to other people / the amount of messages other people send in response to them. I am literally considering making a spreadsheet tracking each person in the server’s reply frequency to other people, in order to analyze if I reply to them at an excessive frequency. The few times that I have seen this person in real life (group events), I have made sure to not initiate any conversation with them, to ignore them and not speak unless spoken to, to ensure that I am NEVER alone with them (even when one time they asked me to help them do something really quickly at a party, I made up an excuse because I was worried that going to help them would be cheating). I make sure to sit with other people and not them, I make sure that I never ever ever engage in a conversation in the server where they are sharing “deep” things, and I make sure I NEVER message them privately outside the server. The ONE time they messaged me privately (in response to something that happened in the server), I just sent a gif back and nothing more as the thought of having a conversation in private DMs made me feel like I was cheating. I make sure to talk about my partner frequently in that server (he is actually also in the server). However, I still feel like I am cheating mentally. I have confessed to my partner so many times. I asked him if an interaction was cheating and he laughed and said no. I have confessed to fantasizing about this person and to looking through their social media. He said both were fine. I am constantly wrecked by guilt no matter what I do. If I am just taking part in a group conversation, I analyze every single message and wonder if I have “intentions to cheat” before/after sending it, even when any normal person would just see that message and laugh and wonder how that could possibly be cheating. I have just grown to feel like such a despicable horrible and deceptive cheater. I have confessed so many times, I have told my therapist, and both my partner and my therapist have told me that I have the right to just move on and stop feeling the moral obligation to confess. But I just don’t believe it. It’s so hard for me to believe. I feel horrible. I have a trip coming up with my partner and my family. This is a once in a lifetime trip, taking my partner to my parents’ homeland and visiting my grandma for quite possibly the last time. I am so so so scared that OCD will ruin this trip for me.

Dalia H.

Date posted: 16w

ROCD and cheating.

I’m so so so anxious right now, I got triggered really badly. My partner made a joke saying he’s glad all his coworkers are old and married because he “won’t develop feelings for any of them.” This sent me into a major spiral and I almost threw up and starting sobbing from the anxiety. It triggered me badly and everything was fine before that. I’m so anxious that I cheated on my partner. I’ve had an ROCD obsession with another person for a few months now, and I’ve told my partner EVERYTHING. I told him how I have a crush on this person, how guilty I feel about messaging a group server that this person is a part of (despite being very careful to never ever message them privately or even reply to their messages in the group server and instead message other people), how I have fantasized and daydreamed about this person. My partner was fine with it, and he said fantasizing is normal and that he has had crushes too. He said he has had a work crush and fantasized about her and that it was all fine and that fantasizing is fun as long as it stays a fantasy. I kept telling him that I am terrified that I’m having some sort of one-sided emotional affair by fantasizing about this person, and my partner kept telling me, “Okay so what? Now what? Let’s say your worst fears are true, now what? I’m not leaving you and you’re not leaving me so why worry about it?” I also feel like fantasizing about this person turned into a compulsion because I would spend months agonizing over the ROCD guilt, ruminating, throwing up, thinking, and then I’d try to fantasize in order to soothe the anxiety and “prove to myself” that it was nothing. I have talked to my therapist about this extensively and he told me that I should not confess as it’s a compulsion. He said if it were something wrong, my body would just “know” and I’d intuitively confess instead of ruminating over and over on whether it’s worth confessing or not. My partner told me he doesn’t want any more confessions and that he doesn’t need to know what goes on in my head. I’ve told him a lot already, about the crush, my fears, the daydreaming, and he said it was all fine. I know for a fact that I have never ever ever crossed a line with this person, I have been extremely careful to rarely ever interact with him. I’ve been careful to ensure that we’re not even FRIENDS at all, just barely acquaintances. Literally every single interaction has been just small talk the handful of times that I’ve seen him show up to a group event. He is also moving away and I’m never gonna see him again. I have been extremely obsessive and careful about not ever EVER speaking to him unless spoken to, never giving him attention, obsessively monitoring the frequency with which i pay attention, etc. But I’m so terrified that I’ve already done something wrong by having these thoughts and feelings. I feel like the feelings lasted this long BECAUSE of the OCD and guilt and anxiety. Because I became anxious and started ruminating on the feelings and the morality for months and months. I don’t know what to do. I need help. I feel like I’ve irreparably ruined my relationship. Did i catch feelings? Is there a difference between feelings and a crush? Is this a form of cheating? We are going on a trip in literally 12 hours and I’m so incredibly stressed I can’t take this. Do i confess?

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