- Date posted
- 6y
- Date posted
- 6y
What exactly has he been lying about? Has he cheated? If he has lied or omissed things from his past this may be because he knows you will react badly. I suffer from extremly bad ROCD and often question my partner about their past, when this is none of my business and is only assurance seeking for me. I had massive trust issues but managed to over come them when my partner started being truthful and I stoped asking questions about things that happened before me. Hope this helps.
- Date posted
- 6y
It sounds like for things to work out for you as a couple, he may need to see a therapist to work on his own issues. I'm not sure if this is something he'd be up to trying or if he's doing it already. Just remember that you cannot control the way he behaves or whether he actually takes steps to change his patterns of lying. You can encourage and support him, but it's ultimately his choice. All you can control is your participation in the relationship. And one way you might partcipate in the relationship is by letting him know that this is something he needs to work on for the relationship to be healthy and trusting. Although we can't control how others behave, we must speak up when certain patterns and behaviors are harming the relationship.
- Date posted
- 6y
Thank you for the responses. It's hard for me to think rationally with this. I'm going to try to remember what you both said. ?
- Date posted
- 6y
I’m so sorry you’re going through this! This type of relationship is hard for anyone, but especially for someone with OCD. And I actually really relate (sounds like a lot of similar issues to my first relationship, actually.) At the heart of all of this, I think the biggest problem is that I don’t see any reason to trust this guy. Not now. Not ever. I don’t trust that he will stop lying. I don’t trust that there aren’t more lies you still haven’t uncovered. I think he will continue to keep telling you whatever he has to in order to stop you from leaving, but he’ll ultimately keep doing whatever he wants once you say you’ll stay. You can love someone and want it to work out and still decide to go because you know the relationship will never have a solid foundation. I agree that he should get help to work on his issues. And I totally get why you sympathize so much with his previous abuse and mental health issues. But you’re right: they don’t excuse his behavior. You have a mental illness too: do you do the same things to him? My guess is no. First relationships are the hardest to let go of for a lot of people. I hope you can give yourself the love and care you deserve to make the hard decision and move on because you deserve so much more than this. Don’t forget in all of this that the most important thing is to love yourself and do what’s best for your heart. Good luck ?
- Date posted
- 6y
And in case you were wondering: I did end up braking up with my first boyfriend once I accepted that the trust was gone and irredeemable. The breakup SUCKED and it broke my heart. But now: I recognize it as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. I cannot imagine still being with him. The love I had for him was amazing to experience, and I’m thankful for what I learned, but I’m so glad I let it go and moved on. There’s a lot more life out there to live.
- Date posted
- 6y
I don't know if ever physically cheated but I found flirtatious messages. He lies about porn, that he was a virgin when me met, and even small things like what he had for dinner or facts about his childhood
Related posts
- Date posted
- 20w
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".
- Date posted
- 12w
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.
- Date posted
- 7w
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..
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