- Date posted
- Yesterday
OCD after being involved w real emotional cheating
TW for infidelity I've been in a relationship with my partner for about five years now. For our entire relationship, my obsessions have always been focused around losing him and various reasons why I will lose him. I also have a big fear of losing other relationships like friends, not having enough friends, etc Back in September, an intern who I will call Jane started at my work. She is in a field related to mine so we spend some time together. I recognized my attraction to her quickly (I am queer) and initially brushed it off. Mid-way through October, I was starting to approach her with jokes so she would think I was funny, and dress cuter than usual to work. I began spiraling about this a couple days into it and called my partner at work. I explained to him that I had a crush and had been approaching her and wanting her to think I was cute. I felt awful. He laughed and brushed it off, saying having crushes and getting some excitement and dopamine from them is normal. I felt so relieved and realized I had been in an OCD spiral. Fast forward to the end of November, and I had befriended Jane. She was starting to spend pretty much all day every day in my office. My partner, in our previous conversation, had told me that emotional cheating to him entails "Going to someone else who you having feelings for for emotional support rather than your partner" or "forming a deep emotional connection with someone you have romantic feelings for". I know this because I wrote them down when he said them and would obsessively check back to them to make sure I was not breaking his boundaries. I became more and more confused on my feelings for Jane but kept brushing it off and re-checking my rules to reassure myself I was fine. I would repeatedly draw a spectrum of "crush" to "feelings" and place where I felt along that line. When it was closer to "crush" side, I felt reassured. After Jane's internship ended, we would snapchat throughout the day for 2-3 weeks. I kept panicking, then changing my mind that it was fine and feeling better, and repeat. The cycle felt very OCD-like which made me more inclined to brush off the concerns and feeling of "wrong" I was feeling. Looking back, it did feel different and involved more genuine denial. I started having doubts of "what if I want to be with Jane instead???", "what if I'm falling out of love with my partner???" etc. that looking back, WERE partially fueled by my OCD - but Jane really had started taking up more emotional energy and a shift started to happen. My "emotional center of gravity" started to shift I guess I could say. I wanted to go to her with exciting things first and all that. Sometimes I would go to her and my partner and sometimes even other friends to make sure I wasn’t only sharing with her. A couple weeks passed of back and forth and denial/confusion on what was happening while trying to re-center my partner by making sure we were spending adequate time together etc. but still communicating throughout the day with Jane. I was lying to myself that I could keep in such close contact with her because I was scared to lose the friendship and, in retrospect, wasn’t ready to face that I had done wrong which contributed to denial. First week of January I had a wake-up call, created a lot more distance with Jane and eventually cut off the friendship all together. I have told my partner in more vague details because he has asked to not know more. He knows that I got too close with someone I had a crush on/feelings for and I crossed my own core values. I haven't labeled it cheating to him because I was unsure where OCD ended and real concern began for a minute, but he has told me he doesn't want to know any more and I am trying to respect that boundary. But now I have come to terms that this does fall within emotional cheating. Sitting with the uncertainty is incredibly difficult because I want so badly to tell him I changed my mind and do think this was cheating but I don’t want to break his boundary when he has repeatedly told me he forgives me and does NOT want to know more. I am also just having a really hard time trusting myself after making this mistake which is fueling more and more spirals and i can’t tell what is real and is it exhausting. I don’t know whether I should tell my partner that I actually do consider what I did to be cheating or what to do and I’m freaking out