OCD is making me feel the need to confess to my girlfriend things I’ve said in the past (from long ago to within recent years) that were racist. We are an interracial couple, she’s a black woman and I am white. I’m deeply ashamed of the ignorant and racist things I’ve done/said/thought in the past and present and OCD is making me feel the need to confess. Telling me if I don’t tell her then I am deceiving her and being a fraud as she doesn’t know about these things and that she deserves to know what kind of person she’s dating. I know this is inappropriate not only as confession is an OCD compulsion for me, but more importantly burdening minorities with confessions like this is wrong and I wouldn’t want to do that to my girlfriend just to lessen my guilt. I’m not certain what to do because I don’t feel like I’m a good enough person to date her. Looking for guidance in this situation, I’d hate to mess up the most cherished and healthy relationship I’ve ever been in. I know that while I do have OCD, some of the guilt I’m feeling is normal and appropriate for my past behavior and mistakes.

I have been battling ocd for over a year now and it likes to switch themes. Currently, it’s attacking my relationship with my girlfriend who I’ve been with since I was in high school over 10 years ago. It first began as an intense feeling that I have to leave or break up with her over dumb little things. Then it changed into a lot of guilt for having any thought about another girl. And the worse is feeling this intense guilt for past things I’ve done in the past while in this relationship. We were so young and I was teenager, but I often found myself watching porn, fantasizing about real other people in my life, and getting off to other girls that I may have known. When I was younger I didn’t think it was bad and that it was just a normal teen boy thing, but 10 years later I have so much guilt about it. And yes I’m with the same girl now. We’ve had our ups and downs, but I know I love this girl and I’m ready to propose to her soon. Anyway, these past mistakes I did when I was younger make me feel like a cheater and I can’t stop ruminating about it. I feel like I have to admit every detail and person I’ve ever had a bad thought about. I feel like if I propose to her and don’t tell her everything, that I’m a lair and didn’t give her the full picture. And the other day one of the girls I thought was hot when I was younger, came up in convo and I just went downhill. Now she knows I deal with OCD and she is very supportive, I’ve told her before that I did some bad things, but never all the details. And that’s all my brain keeps telling me to do. I have so much tightness in my chest and just want to be able to breathe again. But everyone says to not admit or it’ll reinforce the cycle, I’m just not sure how everyone else does that. And at the same time, maybe I am a cheater and just simply a bad person. Idk! I never cheated physically or anything like that, but my past mistakes feel like I did. But again I may just be a bad person! Please if anyone has advice or is dealing with similar things, I’d appreciate the help!

I’m a good man and I know that. My OCD revolves around relationships. While dating someone a truly enjoy, I find myself needing to compulse everything on my mind or else I feel like I’m being a liar or keeping secrets. I also am pretty confident I suffer from false memory ocd. I don’t like to put a label on things but I’m 99.9% sure I do. My compulsions a lot of times come from things I’m not even sure are real. The more thought I put into them, the more I start to believe they are real. One of the worst compulsions I had in my relationship was I had a thought “what if I find my ex more attractive” and “what if I thought the sex with them was better”. I ended up compulsing these things to my gf. After lots of time to think and get a ahold of myself I was able to remind myself that these things weren’t true and I was just in a downward spiral. There was a 2-3 month period where every time I was relieved of something then I would instantly think of something else. These compulsions have caused insecurity in my gf and I feel like a terrible person. Never meant to hurt her at all and was just trying to find a sense of relief. While I know it is not true, I can’t fix things with words and I feel terrible. I would love to hear from people with tricks and strategies that can help. I love my gf and want to fix things and understand this is not a relationship fixer app but I would like to know what are some ways you are able to deal with these kind of things.

I have been really really struggling for the past 3 months and haven’t been able to stop intrusive thoughts/ rumination and confessing. It’s making me question my entire life, my relationship and even who I am as a person. It’s mainly effecting my relationship, I am so afraid that I did something or think things that are definitely hurtful to my partner. I know my brain is contorting my own memory and making things seem so much worse. I also know I haven’t done anything bad, all my things I’ve confessed about have been considered “normal” and I’ve been told that “you’re normal, you didn’t do anything wrong”. But I have felt this intense sense of guilt and shame and it doesn’t go away, I can’t even be a normal person anymore. And I keep searching for “just one more thing I need to tell” and I don’t want to keep searching my brain of every time I’ve said or done anything that I can distort and make seem 1000% worse. I’m isolating myself and just feel like I’m a bad person. I keep confessing my thoughts, feeling, urges, etc. to my partner and while I know I would never do any of these I feel like my ocd is trying to convince me that maybe I would because “why else would you think it or feel guilty” and that makes it so much worse. I really need guidance on how to handle this. What do I do to stop feeling like this and heal?