Hello

My ex boyfriend broke up with me last summer and it was really rough on me even thought we only dated for a little while. He treated me terribly but I guess I wanted it to work. However during the fall I was healing well and met my current boyfriend. I knew him as a kid and we reconnected and started dating. It’s the most WONDERFUL relationship ever and I love him so much. However for the past couple months, on and off, I have been obsessively thinking about my ex, to the point of feeling so sick to my stomach. Just the thought will do it. I have been stopping myself from checking his instagram because that just makes it worse. I do not want me ex back at all and I am so happy now. I recognize these thoughts as intrusive and hurtful. I just want them to stop and be in the moment. Has anyone had a similar experience? What did u do? Also, I want to tell my boyfriend about this but I am unsure on how to do so.

there is this guy in my university. i think he looks good. but since im so afraid of liking someone else, everytime i see him i have wild intrusive thoughts about him. everytime he looks at me i imagine the tension. i hate it so much i hate him so much. yesterday, i saw him look at me multiple times but i avoided the thought. after a while, the picture of him wanting me desperately came to mind again and i thought “what if he liked me and what if he came and told me that i want a relationship with you” and i imagined that. i instantly got pulled and felt like id wanna be with him. like really really wanna be with him. and simultaneously i was terrified of thinking that so in the back of my mind i was screaming NO NO DONT THINK THIS and it felt like i was falling off from a building. but i thought it again and i had the same feeling. I love my boyfriend to death, i feel like im betraying him. Am i? I realized after days of rumination, that I had no reason for my attraction. Its not like I had any kind of physical bodily attraction. I thought the face was nice. But I didn’t even know the person. Why would I feel such a strong urge to be with someone I don’t even know? I thought it was invalid, but I strongly think it is because I have projected a personality on him that I would want to be with. He held a meeting today. Hes my colleague in a club. I was in the meeting. For the first half hour, I was stressed because I hadn’t written down a thought I had previously had. I was doing my work simultaneously. I was talking to people simultaneously. When I paid attention to the guy, I thought “yeah see he’s just a normal person, plus he has an ugly voice” the minute I thought this, I turned into a fan girl of his fully and I loved the voice I felt like I had a crush. And then I panicked. I moved past it. After a while, while he was talking, a little girl screamed in the background. I immediately pictured his younger sister. Like I pictured him having a sister and she looked kindof yk like him. Basically my first instinct was oh she might be so cute. See I think he looks nice, so I kinda pictured him having a sister who was pretty and all cute like how he looked. And then I flipped out while at the same time getting a one second black out, after which I had flashes and images of him being a father and me being attracted to that. I just got random flashes of images and I felt attracted to that I think. Im not too sure. I don’t remember any feeling/ thought/ order at all. It kept on replaying in my head and while contemplating about it I thought it is probably cuz I don’t know anything about their personal lives so it feels enticing to know that they have a personal life beyond work(since they’re professional connections.). After this, I had a billion other thoughts of this sort. “why am I still thinking of him” “does this mean I like him” “who thinks that” *replaying the thought over and over* “maybe he likes me” all these situational thoughts. I can’t even ground myself by thinking about love for my bf. “I love him I want him so bad” “no you don’t” “he’s the best” “you don’t really think that” “how will u handle ur life other guys ur relationship ur hectic schedulel” “fuck up” “these thoughts r supposed to be normal” “its just attraction” “attraction for so long? Everytime u see him?” “youre gonna try to downplay the thoughts like u always do” “this is not normal” I just froze there crying till I couldn’t breathe for 45 minutes. Next morning, I woke up thinking its just something that is not important, I love my boyfriend so much I should put my energy here. I was then called in for a meeting. I pictured the guy just being in university and I felt like normal softness towards him, I got pulled. And then after a while I saw his fair through the online meeting I was worried ill think something wrong. Then I heard him talk to a girl and I was worried ill think im jealous and get jealous. Then after avoiding the thought for a while I got the thought, I felt like I was jealous. But at the same time I was so anxious because I didn’t wanna think like this. And after that I saw him again and I pictured me being with him there next to him in a flash and then I got anxiety and I’m here now.

I met my current boyfriend after ending things with my ex a month earlier. By coincidence, my current boyfriend and I had a class together, we became friends, and of course I started liking him. By May 2021, two months later, my feelings for him grew stronger and stronger. At that time, I wasn’t really going through a depression over my ex. In fact, little by little, we had stopped talking since January 2021, and by the end of March I told him I needed my personal space because I was dealing with another type of OCD. Looking back, during all that time I was open to getting to know this new guy (my current boyfriend). Finally, in July everything was going well between us, and we decided to stop giving each other space. Meanwhile, my ex was stalking me on social media. I was very happy to be getting to know my boyfriend at that time. In August, we had our first kiss and then, as I mentioned earlier, we stopped dating for a while. In September, we ended things, which hurt me a lot, but in November we tried again. During all that time, I didn’t have OCD. Later, in January, when my boyfriend and I made our relationship official, the doubts started: “Am I still in love with my ex?” “Am I using my boyfriend to forget my ex?” “Am I really over my ex?” The memories, physical sensations, all of that. So, my question is: does OCD with thoughts about an ex only happen to people who just broke up and are still grieving, or can it also show up later on, even if you’re already in a new relationship? I ask this because I’m afraid I might not have gotten over my ex and that these intrusive thoughts mean something else, since I’ve read that some people develop OCD right after a breakup and get stuck there. But in my case, I just moved on, and then the intrusive thoughts showed up later.