- Date posted
- 6h
RE OCD and Relationship OCD combo or delusional ?
So I think experiencing what I believe to be real Event OCD and Relationship OCD combo. A little bit of background: my partner and I have been together for 3 years and 11 months and early on in our relationship I wasnt as committed to the relationship as my partner was and was engaging in infidelity and infidelity seeking behavior. I was frequently messaging strangers and even meeting up with them in the first couple months of our relationship. For context: I had never been in a committed relationship before and only knew how to be single and in non committed relationships up to my mid 20s. That's not an excuse but as I grew closer to my partner and decided my behaviors with contacting and meeting people were inappropriate I stopped and I came clean to my partner about 3 years and 8 months ago. More context: I grew up religious and was part of a high control religious group and one of the things that was frowned upon and condemned by this group was the use of pornography. I would try to skirt this by reading dating classifieds and getting off to those since I was a teen as a substitute for looking at pornography. I would not meet up with or chat with any of these people , I would have sexual fantasies about what they wrote about themselves and their attached picture. My current partner does not have an issue with me looking at pornography and I have been vague about occasionally drifting back in to looking at these posts and profiles people have made. I have never advertised myself or expressed interest that I am looking. As time went on and as boundaries became more established I keep questioning whether or not my once in a blue moon browsing of these profiles and pictures were cheating or not. Years ago my partner said as long as I don't contact or attempt contact with anyone from this place that it was within the boundaries of our relationship. I didn't browse this site frequently, more like once every few months for five minutes at a time late late into the night when I had trouble sleeping type thing. Over time I put forth the boundary for myself that my "substitute" for adult content was unacceptable and crossed a line and have largely tried to work on getting out of this behavior and overall deciding for myself that this long practiced behavior was unacceptable for myself in my relationship and I decided I would no longer do it. It's been difficult to stop this compulsion but I am experiencing some level of relief from it. That being said due to my failures in my relationship early on and the hurt I've caused I've developed severe relationship OCD about cheating on my partner again like I did in the beginning months of our relationship. Today a thought popped up that I had been continuing to cheat by having sexual fantasies to random people's profiles (more context: I am not on an app based dating site where you swipe and match with people in your area, this is more of a old school style personals site where I used people's self descriptions to have sexual fantasies) and that I need to confess to my partner and risk losing my relationship that I have put in a lot of work to improve and even to thrive. I'm not sure what to do as I confess to my partner out of guilt as a compulsion regularly when I find anyone else known to us as remotely attractive or if I have a sexually intrusive thought as I have a strong fear of sexually or emotionally cheating on them. However now I feel as If all the browsing I did , that I actually did cheat on them. I am struggling here because this is a little murky. With this post I am trying to figure out: is this real event OCD and Relationship OCD happening at the same time? I confess to my partner and my partner is aware of my confession aspect to my compulsions. Any ideas on how to approach this ?