ROCD

Hey there, I think what you're experiencing is normal and as someone who has dealt with that in the past and did not handle the situation of attraction well maybe this piece of advice will help. Like you already said, you love your boyfriend and you have no intention of doing anything to hurt him or betray his trust or your relationship. Being simply attracted to someone does not equate to wanting someone else. I mean, there are so many people in the world and the idea that we wouldn't find other people attractive while being with the person we love, i think, is a bit of a difficult expectation to put ourselves in. You could even think about on the reverse if someone else happened to be attracted to you would that have any impact on your relationship? Probably not and why would it? It's also important to ask the question for yourself if your partner happened to find other people attractive but also had no intention of doing anything without be betraying your relationship? Again, the answer is likely no. Heck, you never know you might both look at a person at the same time and find them attractive. But obviously as people with OCD it's not a simple as saying "Oh yeah that makes sense" and moving on. So then the question is what do you do and what don't you do? The thing I used to do in the past when I felt these things is that I would confess to my partner that I had these feelings. In retrospect, I fell to OCD's compulsion of seeking reassurance which in turn did not help either one of us. While I thought I was doing something that was honoring our relationship, in reality I was creating more problems for my partner and I because now I put it into her mind that I was looking at other people and I was desiring other people when in reality I just happen to find some people attractive even though I never had any intention to betray our relationship. At the time I didn't even know I had OCD and it was almost like opening up Pandora's box because it unfortunately I left my partner constantly wondering if she was ever wanted or if I was going to leave her. I think the thing that helped me was doing an exposure therapy where I would go and look on Instagram or whatever and if it was a particular person I'd look at the profile and either by myself or with my therapist. Just put a timer on and just look at a picture of the person or people. I would sit there while looking and say a script like "I happen to find this person attractive" and see what came up. I would get those uncomfortable feelings again of like am I cheating because I do find this person attractive and so on. But when those moments did come up in my mind while I was sitting with my emotions, I put them to the side. I didn't try to make them go away or replace them with good thoughts but more so just notice them and got comfortable with the idea of this uncomfortability. My therapist told me that the goal isn't to feel good when it comes to dealing with OCD which I remember telling her, "then what the heck am I paying you for?" We both laughed and she replied, instead of constantly trying to feel good, it's learning how to be comfortable with feeling bad because when having OCD part of the problem is we're spending so much time on these emotions that theyre eating up our lives and that's in part because we don't know how to properly Just let them come and go. OCD make us fixate on them and wants us to feed into our insecurities but like a bully the less power an attention we give OCD slowly over time the weaker it gets and the more power we get back. I hope this helps. You got this and you're not alone!