obsessed with my boyfriend’s romantic past

to preface, my boyfriend and i have been together for a year and a few months, but we have a much longer history as “friends” before that. anyways, he and i are both demisexual, meaning that we didn’t have any sexual interests with anyone else but each other, and only after we had made a feel connection together. he and i have been through lots of struggles, and at one point he accidentally led me on and he has apologized numerous times for. i know that he never ever meant to hurt me, but i can’t get over it. like it’s very weird. he told me he liked another girl three years ago and it broke my heart; she and i have dance class together and when i see her, i constantly compare myself to her. at our dance shows, i wonder if he’s just watching her. up until yesterday, i thought that i was the first kiss my bf ever had. i was wrong (he kissed a girl on the cheek playing spin the bottle in 7th grade) and for some reason that broke my heart. i know that it’s way before we dated (we’re seniors in high school now) and it doesn’t make sense for me to get upset, especially considering that i’ve kissed two other ex boyfriends before him. since he’s told me, it’s been hard for me to look into his eyes because all i can think about is her. i couldn’t let him touch me because i felt betrayed. when i look at his lips, all that i think about is them kissing her cheek. he’s told me he’s never felt anything to her and it was so stupid, but i can’t get it out of my head. he and i will be having a good time and then i look at him and think of it and i can’t look at him and i’m struggling to be able to connect with him. it’s like i have this mental barrier and i just cannot get over it. i ask him questions to make myself feel better because i feel like i have to know everything, so i think it’s ocd but i just want to get over it. i also want to add that being demisexual and even before i knew that i was, i have always felt that my body is a very sacred place. i don’t let people touch it a lot because it means a lot to me when that does happen. i literally thought that i was asexual until i began dating boyfriend. i have a such a hard time with the idea of him liking other people in the past and the kiss and i always ask him questions over it until i feel better and then i ask again later and it’s exhausting. thoughts?

Relationship OCD

Aaronarea52

Date posted: 2y

I appreciate your courage and honesty in being open about this. That sounds really hard to deal with. You want to have a good time with your boyfriend and your brain just interrupts it all and gets locked onto thoughts you don’t want to have. That sounds pretty rough. It sounds like the ocd trap. Have an obsession (the thought about your boyfriend kissing the girl) then the compulsion (trying to analyze and figure it out which is rumination and then asking for reassurance which is another compulsion) None of that matters, you just want to escape the anxiety right? Just want it to go away. If the anxiety would go away, it would all be a lot more peaceful right? There would be no reason to do the compulsions or think about it because there would be no anxiety pushing you towards it. So the key is to sit with that anxiety until it lessens. And then do it again. It’s like a person getting into a cold pool, at first the water is frigid, but then the body adapts and it becomes less cold. The neurological system desensitizes itself to the discomfort. So your brain can do the same thing. Ocd is like a prison, and the only one that can get you out of that prison is you. The key is learning to sit with discomfort while minimizing compulsions. Because compulsions come in and don’t allow your brain to get desensitized to the fear. Like getting in the cold water and then trying to put hand warmers all over your body while your in it. A NOCD therapist can help you get key or you can do it yourself, if you are interested in one I would recommend my therapist Patricia Sinclair she has helped me a lot. I wish you the best!

NOCD Advocat...

User type: NOCD Alumni

Date posted: 2y

Remember Non-engagement responses. Really act like you don't care. Ok, shrug your shoulders and get into the present moment and don't talk back with those thoughts. Break the cycle! allow the anxiety to be while you resist reassurance ... which is the compulsion of asking your boyfriend. Also, what's the core fear here? If, he has kissed other people than maybe he doesn't really love you??? The acceptance of that uncertainty is also needed. This is examples of what has helped me in situations like this. plan some exposures around this and talk with your therapist.

JazzyRoses

Date posted: 25w

Being Cheated On OCD

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 😭

Anonymous532

User type: OCD Conqueror

Date posted: 9w

retroactive jealousy OCD

I stated dating my boyfriend about 3 months ago. This is my first boyfriend ever. He’s been in 2 serious relationships in the past and multiple sexual partners. I’ve had neither. When we first started dating/ at one point were just friends, he told me a lot about the last girl he was in a relationship including their sex life. Fast forward to us dating for about a month and I found out he had been texting her. We almost broke up. But also for context she broke up with him because she figured out she was a lesbian. But still… anyways we moved past it. And now… I’m sure we can all see this coming… I have this theme! I think about his ex gf all the time. I stalk her on social media and try to find hints and clues about their relationship. I compare myself to her. It really impacts my relationship because I’ll get mad at him for no reason. For example we went thrifting recently and he picked out stuff that completely wasn’t my style, but was hers. Which made me spiral. Is he purposely dressing me like her? Does he want me to be someone else, someone like her? The whole texting her thing was put in the past. I’ve forgiven him. But I can’t help but have resentment towards him and think/ visualize all these thoughts about them together and how I’ll never measure up to that. It makes me think I shouldn’t have got into a relationship. That maybe I’m better off by myself. But like all of us. I wish I didn’t have these thoughts. I wish I could believe he liked me for me. But sometimes it’s really hard.

willowpillow...

Date posted: 8w

Retroactive Jealousy

I just recently realized that this whole thing with asking about my partner’s past was a compulsion. At the time, I thought that the more I knew about his sexual past, the better I’d feel. I genuinely believed that having all the answers would bring me peace. But the opposite happened. The more I learned, and the more I pushed for specifics, the more it hurt. I pushed him to give me really detailed answers—and now I feel like my OCD has so much ammunition because of it. Now I’m trying to stop asking, stop analyzing, and stop hyper-fixating. Even though I feel intense discomfort and anxiety, I’ve been doing my best to sit with it and not give in. But my mind still races—it imagines him with those people, replays things I know, questions how graphic or emotional those moments were. It’s torture. And what’s hardest is that my partner has reassured me over and over that he’s never felt for anyone what he feels for me. We’ve committed our relationship to God, we got baptized, and we’re planning to get married. But the damage from all of the questioning and the OCD spirals has taken a toll. Now when I bring things up—even if it’s not about the past—he assumes it is. And it ruins date nights or intimate moments. It’s like this issue has taken over everything. We both love each other. We’re not giving up. We’re in therapy, and we’re trying. But it’s heavy. It’s draining us both. And I don’t feel like I’m choosing this—this feels like something I’m suffering through, not something I’m doing on purpose. He’s starting to understand that more, but I know his patience is running thin. So I guess I’m just asking… has anyone else gone through something like this? Has anyone pushed for too much information and then felt stuck—like you know too much and can’t go back? How do you rebuild your relationship when anxiety and OCD have already caused so much damage? Any encouragement, tips, or even just hearing that I’m not alone would really mean a lot.

Relationship OCD

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obsessed with my boyfriend’s romantic past

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