did i cheat?

I have confessed to my partner multiple times about a person who is kind of on the fringes of our social circle who I have a crush on. I told him that I fantasized about this person and scrolled through his social media out of curiosity to learn more about him. My partner reassured me multiple times basically that as long as my actions aren’t physically cheating, I am free to do whatever I want in my own head and fantasize. He said he’s had his own crushes too at his workplace and he fantasized about them. We both agreed that it’s okay. He told me to stop fixating so much on intentions and internal cheating and realize that my physical actions are all that matter. This person happens to be in a Discord server with me, my partner, and like 15 other people. Whenever I speak in the server, I take great care to ignore this person’s messages and ONLY directly reply to other people’s. I take great care to ignore them, not give them any attention, and not give a single hint that I care about them at all. Even the times where they addressed me, I keep my responses to a minimum. However, 2 days ago I met him in person (he ended up coming to an event that we were having). I went to dinner after the event with the group of people that I normally go to dinner with, and the person came along. I don’t know if he was planning on going, but I could tell he felt excluded and I asked him if he was coming with us to dinner. I also sat next to him during a part of the dinner (it was a fast food place and we went with a group of 10 people, all of which I am wayyyy closer to). I was ignoring him for the most part, but at one point I did ask him if he liked this place and I made normal small talk with him. I am worried that I cheated because I admittedly did have certain thoughts like: - I felt excited to sit next to him. - I was hoping I looked good. However, I intentionally didn’t shave my mustache that night because I didn’t want to seem like I was just trying to look good for him. I knew the mustache would make me look worse, and I wanted to prove to myself that I was okay with looking worse and that I wouldn’t try to look good for him. - I did however wear my hair in a way that I often do, but sometimes don’t, and I did do this to look more appealing. I took very very good care to NOT give this person any special attention, to ignore him and talk to other people, but I am worried that sitting next to him intentionally was cheating.

Despite the fact that I have never once acted flirtatiously with someone else over the course of my 3-year relationship, never talked to anyone inappropriately, never touched or interacted with anyone inappropriately, I have been battling constant ROCD obsessions centered around cheating ever since my partner and I got together. I am constantly worried about whether certain things are cheating: daydreaming about another person (already told my partner about this and he said it was okay and that he does it too), talking in a group chat with someone, sitting next to someone, speaking to them in person. I question my intentions. I worry that I cheated by wearing my hair a certain way in an attempt to look more attractive or by jokingly poking someone with a fake sword (despite doing it to other people too), looking through someone’s social media, etc. I have confessed so many ridiculous things to my partner and he’s always told me that none of them are cheating. I feel so guilty for being attracted to someone else, despite the fact that my partner said it was fine and normal. I have made a very very conscious effort to limit my interactions with this person. I never ever ever ever message them privately, I make an obsessive effort to NOT reply to their messages in a group server (constantly keeping track of the ratio of my replies to their messages compared to other people’s), to ignore them when I see them in person and hardly ever speak to them or initiate conversation with them. Yet I still feel like a disgusting dirty cheater who is hiding a big secret.

So I’m 22 and have had ocd my entire life. I’m about to hit 1 year in my relationship. I’m extremely happy and haven’t really had any rocd problems. Which is great. So here’s the problem. About 4-5 months into my new relationship I was bored one night and couldn’t sleep. I must’ve doom scrolled TikTok and Reddit for hours that night. Until finally I randomly thought about going on an anonymous chat site. I use to do this all the time back during covid when I was stuck in the house So for what ever reason I made a fake girl name and instantly connected to some random dude. I thought it was funny and decided to troll alittle cause why not I guess I just wanted to pass the time. He asked me where i worked and I said a bar (obv I don’t ) and he said “wow u must get hit on a lot u must be hot” and said yeah i do and then I felt really weird about it. So I closed the site down. Fast forward to now I felt like I cheated on my gf by flirting with another guy. Even tho I don’t like guys. It was months ago so I can’t rmeebr exactly how the text went but it was along those words and the convo had to been less then 3 minutes. Now since then all I can think is maybe I wanted the texts to go further. Or what if I said something sexual? What if I liked it sexually? On top of that, it was just a really weird one off thing I did. I mean I have no idea why I pretended to be a hot girl working at a bar lol. I guess I was just trolling or curious idk. Either way it would be really hard to explain to my gf and I don’t really want to tell her. Butttt , since I feel like I cheated I feel awful like I’m horrible person. These last 4 days I keep reading reddit post about ppl cheating on chat rooms and I keep googling to see if I should tell my gf or not. I understand sitting with uncertainty but I need to know desperately if I did something wrong bc my gf deserves to know. But like I said if I told her what happened it such a weird situation that she may think something serious happened. Also I dealt with a porn addiction at the time and I’ve gotten a lot better. So far I’ve been 3 days clean of watching porn and don’t even have the need too. How ever I think the real reason why I feel like I cheated was my intentions altho I went on just joking around I feel like I was on there for something sexual. Which I’m glad I never shared any personal things , pictures or anything graphic and the convo was less then 3 minutes long based off a fake character