The thing I struggle with in my HOCD recovery is the acceptance part. I’ve seen people say that a key part of their recovery was accepting their attraction to the same sex, but knowing they can still choose to be with a person of the opposite sex. But the whole concept of my ocd is this NEED to know that I’m not attracted to the same sex. For example, for someone with POCD, surely their recovery wouldn’t include accepting their attraction to children but knowing they can choose not to act on their intrusive thoughts, the whole concept is fear of this attraction. Would love if anyone knows more about this!

ultimately i think the point of this is that sexuality exists on a spectrum. you can find people of the same sex attractive and occasionally have sexual feelings towards them but choose to be with someone of the opposite sex and be very attracted to them. even people who have never had same sex attraction their entire lives and have been happily married to people of the opposite sex can become attracted to someone of the same sex later in life. ocd is trying to make us safe and trying to get rid of all the unwanted feelings so that we’ll never have to deal with them again, but there is no such thing as “safe.” we just have to exist and accept whatever comes our way, and sometimes that may be some attraction to the same sex but it doesn’t have to change everything about who we are. but of course that’s way easier said than done and i still struggle a ton ?

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Unset theme or content of the thoughts, all of us with OCD has to learn to accept uncertainty. We lean into "maybe maybe not", the more you accept uncertainty the more you will see that the thoughts are just thoughts, nothing more than that.