I don’t know if I need to confess

How to distinguish between what’s worth confessing and what’s not? Like I really can’t understand what is important for my partner to know and what is not. For example, I used to occasionally look at my ex’s insta stories (we were following each other at the time) before me and my partner became official. I looked out of pure boredom / curiosity, but not because I wanted them back or there were any feelings. Since then I unfollowed them, just because I thought it’d be a respectful thing for my relationship to do. But should I confess about looking in the past? I never made any contact and had no intentions like that… Feeling guilty and ruminating a lot about it…

Boognish

Date posted: 17h

Yeah this is the classic Relationship OCD trap. I have this with my partner too and it’s actually what brought me back to therapy years after thinking I had my OCD mostly in check. The reality is, it’s impossible to fully express yourself to a person. We all have things that we’ve done, or that we do, that may very well be upsetting to our loved ones. But there are just some things that we may have to burden ourselves, especially if it’s an OCD fear like this is. The fact is, there’s nothing wrong with what you’ve done—it has no bearing on your relationship. Satiating curiosity and wanting an update on someone you once had a deep emotional attachment with isn’t wrong, suspicious, or a metric on what you have now. This urge to confess is entirely OCD and confessing won’t make the guilt go away because the guilt itself is irrational. OCD will find a new way, post-confession, to make you feel “accountable.” Best to just stop it in its tracks at this stage imo.

AnxiousMind24

Date posted: 16h

@Boognish Thank you so much for your comment and advice! I know that my level of guilt is irrational… I already confessed something else to my partner and he was absolutely amazing about it. But now a few days later this new rumination started. So I feel like even I do confess this, my mind will find something new. And I don’t want this to put a strain on my very healthy relationship

Anonymous

Date posted: 17h

I understand where you are coming from. Knowing what to say or not say is really really subjective. This makes it super difficult. To help myself, I ask whether the thing is something I would like to know, if in the other person's shoes AND if the information is pertinent to anything at hand. And if not really pertinent, what kind of response might arise. In this case would you want to know what your partner did before you two were official? Would it be important to tell them without it coming up first, and if so would it create a negative emotional response? I hope this helped in some way. Im trying not to just reassure people and to also explain how I do things in my head, when they have become helpful for me.

AnxiousMind24

Date posted: 17h

@Anonymous Thank you, that’s a good perspective. But as you can probably imagine, my OCD holds me to a different kind of standard. I don’t need to know what my partner was doing or even if he still occasionally looks up an ex. That’s such a human thing to do. But I feel like if there’s even a slight chance my actions could upset him, he should know…

Anonymous

Date posted: 17h

I see what youre saying and I think that bringing up something like this requires a disclaimer like "my ocd has been telling me to let you know..." because randomly bringing this up will likely give the appearance that you still think about that person often (from what you've said its not that. Only it may present itself that way (I hope that makes sense))

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