I don't know what to do. I am in my my first and only real relationship. We have been together for 1 year and 6 months. Before we started dating I told him that trust was a big thing for me because of my OCD and I just doubt and over analyze everything. Turns out, he has been lying to me about everything including his sexual history ( a lot of my ocd has to do with sex and the germs/"bad" that's associated with it). So story short I trusted him, I felt comfortable with him, and we had plans to get engaged. I have given him so many second chances. I keep telling him that I just want the truth. I may be upset when I hear it but it's better to find out from him than from him accidentally slipping up or me finding it on his phone. He has cried and looked me straight in the eye and said that there is nothing else he is hiding but there always is! He lies to others and he swears he doesn't mean it maliciously. He has past trauma as well. Abusive parents and was sexually abused by his sister. He also has ADHD and depression. I know that these things don't make what he's doing right but I also know from personal experience that mental illness and abusive parents can really mess with your mind. He also has a porn addiction which I was unaware of. We're trying to work through things but it's hard knowing that everything he says (even if it's heartfelt) could be a lie. I'm sad/anxious all the time. We have been through so much and I really want to make this work. Sorry... Just need to vent...

My husband told me recently he was going to hang out with a local friend he often goes to see. It got very late and I heard nothing from him. Tried calling and texting. Stayed up all night thinking maybe he was dead or injured. Logged into our cell phone account to see if I could find any recent location and discovered he had talked to someone on the phone that night but he was like 2 hours away from home at that time. And also saw a phone number he was spending hours on the phone with every day. I had been confronting him about his secrecy prior to that and he kept telling me it was this friend or that friend, or he was just taking the dog on a long walk or having a fire out back. He finally called me back in the morning and I yelled at him. He told me he was randomly with two friends from longer ago and had gotten drunk and passed out, and hadn't told me about these plans because I had a heart surgery a few weeks prior and health concerns and he didn't want to stress me out. He told me the phone number was a girl that he related to on trauma factors and that he views like a little sister. He said he didn't tell me because he was caught up in his trauma spilling of events he didn't share with a single person since they occurred to him 35 years ago, due to feelings of shame and anger, and that he thought I would view it as emotional cheating. I told him it really could be viewed as emotional cheating and in principle, honesty shouldn't be dependent upon the outcome... lying isn't justified because I would be upset by the truth. Since then, he's been more open with me and tells me when that girl is calling, talks to me about their conversations, answers her calls when I'm present. I talked to him about boundaries and things I'm uncomfortable with or bothered by and he changes those things. Especially because I have trauma from an emotionally abusive ex, having him lie to me when I directly questioned him about what I was perceiving or experiencing and telling me those experiences weren't real, when they actually WERE real, has really messed me up. Now when he wants to hang out with a friend, I don't trust it. But I'm handling these feelings in destructive OCD ways. I spend literally the entire time he's gone thinking and thinking and thinking about what if he's lying or what he might be doing instead of what he said. I call and text him intermittently and feel like all of my obsessive thoughts are confirmed if he doesn't answer right away. I'm always checking the phone history. The driving toll history. Scrutinizing everything. I cannot get out of this mindset. It's like this horrible mixture of emotional flashbacks and OCD. I don't want to live like this. I want to work on my relationship in productive ways. I want to be able to use my own time while my husband is gone. Even if he lied to me and is somewhere other than he said, I don't want to lie in bed just thinking and thinking and thinking for entire days and nights. I'm not sure what I'm really asking here. This is just the only place where I feel like I can share this without people thinking "wow she's crazy".

Hello! I just needed a place to vent.. Me and my boyfriend are having a hard time right now because of my anxiety and because I have had vestibulodynia for 3 years. If you have a flare up of relationship ocd then this might trigger or something but I don’t know. Anyway, my vestibulodynia has made me afraid of intimacy a lot and my partner also in fear of hurting me has withdrawn a lot too. I still want him, it’s complicated. This year, things have been tougher with finding a cure, and that’s when I’ve started to have the thought ”what if it would be different with someone else?”, but I don’t want anyone else. I have had these urges to stare at attractive men, which I don’t really know why, a lot of fantasies come up in my mind, just popping in. About two times this year, I have been staring at an attractive guy/or just a guy a few times without really knowing why. I take it as a sign together with my withdrawal that I no longer want him, and is cheating. The thing is, I don’t like what I’m doing, and I don’t know why it happens, it’s like I can’t physically look away. I have to control myself to not stare. I know I can’t ask for reassurance here, but I would really like to know if this is ocd. I also had a fantasy of flirting but not leading to anything more, I think I wanted more chemistry with my boyfriend and it manifested into someone random that can’t hurt me. I don’t know what I just said meant but when I had it, I think I was clear with that I knew I only wanted those feelings with him, my boyfriend. The times I can’t stop staring, what usually happens in my mind is that I see that they are attractive, then I kind of take in their features but then I remember not to stare, but it’s weird cause it’s not like a calm ”oh so beautiful” it’s like my head keeps being turned and I physically cannot stop. I have heard of stare ocd but I’m not sure. It’s complicated because yes I feel sad because my vulvodynia messed up for us, because I was in heaven with him, before this relationship anxiety, and that was like one year ago still. When I don’t feel shame and when I allow myself, he makes me so so happy. But right now I feel like I don’t deserve him. He would never do anything like that. It feels like I have cheated, because it feel unloyal what I did. I wouldn’t want him to do that and I don’t know what I would do but I think I wouldn’t want to be with him. I’m so afraid that I have messed up. Sometimes I feel like I need to tell him, but I don’t know. I’m so scared because my dad was a cheater, I NEVER want to be like that. The fact that I’m doubting so much of I should be with him makes me feel like I’m cheating and he deserves better. It’s strange because it came from nowhere it feels like, it started when I started to give up on my vulvodynia for real, and when I felt like he seemed to care less. I never looked at guys like I have this year before, I feel so horrible. I wanted our relationship to be pure and loyal.

Hey everyone, I’d like to get your perspective on whether this sounds like OCD or if it’s something I should bring up again in my relationship. last week there was a situation with my boyfriend: I assumed he would pick me up from work because he usually does. This time he didn’t. I knew from his location that he was at the bar. When I asked him if it was more important to him to stay at the bar and watch his friend play the slot machine, he just gave this kind of caught/embarrassed smile and laughed. Then he said that the real main reason was his knee pain. He did actually injure his knee a few days before, but the day before this he had still picked me up despite the pain, and by now the pain wasn’t as bad anymore. So for me it was clear: the main reason wasn’t his knee, but that he preferred to stay at the bar. In the end, after I kept pressing him, he finally said: “A little bit.” → meaning that he admitted he wasn’t completely honest with me. But that didn’t come out on its own, it was because I pushed it out of him. After that he justified it again, saying that he was still basically honest, because the knee pain was true as well. And at the very end he said that in his view he had actually been honest anyway, since he did say from the beginning that he was at the bar and found it interesting. I want to say that my boyfriend is generally a very honest and good person. That’s why it’s even more confusing for me that I can’t let go of this situation. I keep feeling like I want to bring it up again. So I’m asking myself: Am I reacting too intensely here because my mind goes straight into “all or nothing” thinking? Does this sound like OCD-driven distrust/need for reassurance? Or would you, in my place, bring it up again even though we’ve already talked about it? This situation really triggered me, and I keep ruminating about it. another situation from yesterday : yesterday there was a small situation with my boyfriend that I can’t stop thinking about. We used an online spin wheel to decide who should get ice cream. His name came up, but he didn’t want to get the ice cream at first and tried to talk his way out of it a little. At the beginning, he only said we would do one spin, then later he suddenly said he thought it would be three spins – and shortly after emphasized seriously that he meant it that way. For me, this felt completely contradictory, because I could tell he really didn’t want to do it. It’s not about the situation itself, but that he says he was honest, yet it doesn’t sound honest to me at all. My mind keeps spinning on it, while other people would probably just laugh it off. Does anyone else experience this? How do you handle moments where words and actions seem to contradict each other, even when your partner genuinely means what they say? Does that also sound like ROCD to you? need advice feel like shit..