OCD and porn I am a happily married man with OCD. I have a strong confession compulsion and lots of sexuality-related OCD obsessions and fears. My wife and I have a good sex life but I still indulge in watching porn maybe once or occasionally twice a week. I told my wife about this and her reaction was that she did not care. She outright said, “I don’t have a problem with porn.” Still, I am always confessing to her when I watch it. Needless to say, this is annoying to her. Recently, I told her that I would stop watching it because it made me feel bad. Again she told me that she didn’t care. Well, I slipped up and watched again since I said this. Now, I feel this intense urge to confess again. She doesn’t care but I broke my word. I’m constantly confessing things to her and driving her up the wall sometimes. Can anyone relate to this? Should I confess for breaking my own word even though she said she doesn’t care if I watch? My guilt over this is super strong.

OCD / Guilt / Porn and Confession Not sure if this really falls under the umbrella of OCD or not. I have a bad habit of confessing things to my wife when I feel as if I’ve done something wrong. I used to confess to her if I thought I’d looked at another woman or if I had inadvertently flirted with someone else. In hindsight, in many of those cases, I don’t think I had done anything wrong, but at the time it seemed like I did. Or, I would confess if I had sexual thoughts about another woman. Stuff like that. I’m often obsessed with the feeling like I’ve been unfaithful. I love my wife. Would never cheat. She has been urging me to stop confessing and mostly I’ve been doing better, but I recently did something I feel quite guilty about. While out of town, I slipped up and watched porn a few times while we were apart. I feel particularly bad because the last time this happened was during a time when my wife was mourning the loss of our family pet, which she had had for many years. We weren’t in the same city when I slipped up and looked at the stuff, but I feel as if I stabbed her in the back during an emotionally rough time for her, even though I feel that I was otherwise completely emotionally supportive of her and was checking in on her constantly and giving her my support. I know I screwed up. I don’t generally watch porn anymore. I used to (a lot) but stopped when we started dating like 3 years ago. In that time, I’ve looked at it maybe three times. When I last confessed this, she said that she doesn’t care if I watch it and that I should stop confessing. I hear her and I believe her. I’ve also made up my mind to stop watching porn because it makes me feel bad. Maybe it’s fine for some people but it makes me feel bad. Part of me says that I should just move on, not confess that I slipped up a couple of times recently and just move on, but another part me says to confess it. That I’ve done something really wrong, especially when she was herself going through a rough time. Any advice would be much appreciated. OCD has clouded my judgement about when to confess.

Anyone have OCD where you have intrusive thoughts about your spouse and confessing them is the only way to get relief?

It feels like my mind scans for things for me to “confess” to my partner. Things that aren’t even important or necessary come into my mind and I feel so guilty about it and get super stressed and feel like the only way to get rid of that is to confess. I feel like it’s something I have to do. No matter how much I tell myself it’s something that doesn’t need to be said I still have to say it somehow. I don’t know if this is normal, but I just feel like my partner has to know everything. And this is causing arguments and making him upset. I don’t want to hurt my partner anymore as I can tell my OCD is really affecting him. If anyone has any advice that would be great!