How do I get over real event/black out OCD? I got a memory of 1.5 years ago. I memory I hadn’t considered since my OCD began. I had recently gotten together with my boyfriend who I am still with. I went out drinking with some friends at their house by myself (stupid I know) I remember the night up until most of the end, when I was with my friend. We were alone briefly, outside. Then I blacked out and woke up in my bed and in my house and didn’t remember how I got home, but I knew my friend had something to do with it. I remember talking to my friend in the morning and he just thanked me for coming over and I thanked him for helping me get home and that was that. I felt guilty for blacking out but never considered that I did anything wrong in that period of time. But I have cheating OCD, so I was worried during the black out period if I did something with my friend to cheat on my bf? I got so paranoid and I didn’t have any memory of any kind of inappropriate behavior other than drinking. Especially because when I get really drunk I fall asleep and fully “black out” . Otherwise I have some flashes of memory here and there. I was also trying to replay the memory (I know it’s a compulsion) and I was starting to distort the memory so I called him. He had assured me I was just passing out from drinking too heavily and he ordered me an Uber home and that I probably fell asleep in the Uber which is why i fully blacked out on the ride home. And that the only time he and I were alone was when he was waiting for my Uber to get me. His story goes along with everything I remember too. Combine that with that I’ve never cheated, I am not attracted to my friend, and I always remember some sort of sexual contact I have with others even when drinking. There are flashes of memory here and there. And that there was no physical evidence left behind of anything. My body was fine the. Next memory, no stains no bruises. Nothing. None of that was present. I know that reaching out was a compulsion, but I had to because it was a real life event that had the potential to be immoral and I feel a duty to pay for any wrong doing I could have committed. I know uncertainty exists, and I will never get 100% certainty on anything. This is the closest I will get to evidence of me not being a cheater. But how can I move on from this? I don’t want to confess to anything I believe I haven’t done. It’s not in my memory, witness testimony, or in my character. I’m just not a cheater. I know that is a compulsion and i will not rope my bf into my obsessions. But that urge is strong. So the question is, how do I move on from this? I want to be able to say “I’m not a cheater, I’ve never cheated” without feeling like a fraud. I feel like a garbage person for not having the confidence in myself and for having to reach out and use the memory of my friend to help me out.

So I have been struggling with the same theme of ocd for 4 months now. My ocd centers around past events/false memories that ocd skews to make seem bad or it twists my thoughts on what my intentions were. this is related to cheating or being weird while I have been in my amazing relationship. I have never cheated on my partner and never will and I believe it is wrong. But my ocd is telling me other wise. I love my partner so very much and I would never want to hurt him but my brain is getting to me. I was getting better. I was trying “maybe I did, maybe I didn’t”, I have been back on meds and in therapy and I stopped confessing random interactions from years/months ago about 1.5 weeks ago and it really helped. But now I woke up this morning and feel the pit in my stomach again. I feel extra critical and like why would you do this? What does this say about you? What was your intention with this? And I’m just stuck mentally reviewing and ruminating on everything you could imagine. I know my personality and I know in the moment maybe I did find them attractive but mainly I was just being nice or funny or even just a good friend, but looking back now I’m like “was it flirting?” “Why did I still snap this person” “why would I even talk to them” and stuff like that. I feel this intense sense of guilt. I have told my partner everything that I keep getting stuck on and he didn’t care, he said he understands or “that’s a little weird but it’s okay” and hasn’t missed a beat. He said eveything I’ve told him is normal and I’ve heard that from my friends too. I just really need help. I don’t know what to do anymore. I am so disappointed because I thought I was gonna be done with this, so why am I still so worried and caught up in this.

I am a woman, my partner is a man. Two nights ago I was at a house party / movie night with my friends while my partner was at work. Many of the people there are also mutual friends of my partner’s. They all know my partner and I talk about him frequently. One of the people there was a (male) mutual friend who came over to my apartment beforehand to pick me up, waited for a few minutes while I finished up some chores around the apartment, and then we went shopping to pick up food and supplies for the party. During the party, this friend got EXTREMELY drunk. He was saying some pretty outlandish/unfiltered stuff the whole night about the movie were watching, laughing uncontrollably on the floor, that kind of stuff. I don’t drink, so I was 100% fully sober the entire time. The party pretty much consisted of everyone sitting on the couch for the whole night, watching movies and eating pizza and drinking. I do remember there being a point where I was kind of sunk back on the couch, the friend was sat next to me, and we made eye contact and he said something (I can’t remember what) and I remember feeling like we was a little too close for comfort. This must have lasted for less than a minute (everyone was kind of squeezed together on the couch since there were lots of us and a pretty small couch). I remember there being another point where his leg/foot grazed my leg, so I recoiled instantly, and then it happened again and I kept moving my leg away so we weren’t touching. I’m fairly certain that this was a complete mistake, as like I said, there were lots of people squeezed together on one couch, and he was very uncoordinated. Finally it was getting too late, so I called my partner and asked him if he could come pick me up since he was on the way back from work. While on the phone, several people at the party were yelling “HI” to my partner over the phone (pretty much everyone there was also friends with him). Then this friend, who like I said was VERY VERY drunk by this point), yelled (to my partner over the phone) something like, “YOU CAN HAVE MY SLOPPY SECONDS.” I was very very very caught off guard and confused. I instantly hung up the phone because I didn’t want my partner to get the wrong idea that there was something going on. After I hung up, the friend said “Oh come on I’m sure he would have found that very funny!” I was very bothered for the rest of the night and then went home shortly after, when my partner picked me up. The entire ride home, I kept replaying those words in my head over and over again, and I kept replaying the whole night over and over in my head, wondering if something had happened between us and I’d somehow forgotten within minutes or hours?? For the entirety of the next day, and the day after that, I keep ruminating on that night and trying to replay all the events that happened, what order they happened in, what exactly I remember, etc. I have absolutely no idea why my friend said that over the phone, especially since neither of us has ever expressed any sort of romantic or sexual interest in one another. When we met, I had already been with my partner for well over a year, and I talk about my partner frequently. My partner is also friends with this friend, and the three of us have had some good times together. This friend is also absolutely NOT the type of person to be sleazy, a womanizer, a homewrecker, etc. Perhaps I’m leaning into stereotypes too much here, but I should note that pretty much everyone at the party (including this friend) has mild to moderate autistic tendencies, and the friend group was brought together because we all met in a heavily anime/DnD/politics based club at a university. I say all this to illustrate that the atmosphere at the “party” was definitely NOT the type of atmosphere where anybody was hooking up, hitting on each other, flirting, etc in any way (of course I’m not saying that people in these demographics can’t hook up, but just that it was a cozy movie night with respectful friends, not some sort of crazy party). It’s the third day after the party now, and I’m still ruminating on this. I still have no idea why he’d say that, and I’ve replayed it so many times in my head that I’m wondering if maybe I just imagined it, or misheard it, or maybe he didn’t know what that phrase meant, or maybe I misinterpreted it or something. I mean, we were showing a mature cartoon movie that night that both me and this friend absolutely love, and both of us were making jokes all night about being attracted to several of the characters in the movie. Some of the jokes this friend was making about the characters were very sexual, so maybe his comment had something to do with that? Maybe he was extrapolating some sort of “sloppy seconds” meaning from the characters to me?? I’m not sure. Either way, I’ve been sitting, replaying and ruminating for days and of course I’ve fabricated lots of false memories. I’ve run through all the possibilities. Did I kiss the friend? Did we cuddle on the couch? Did he have his arm around me? What if, in those few minutes that we were alone in my apartment before we left, what if I took him into the bedroom and did something with him while my partner was gone? I do remember having intrusive thoughts about THAT before he even came over. I’ve been dealing with on-and-off ROCD for the entire 3 years that my partner and I have been together, and it always ends up coming back to an obsession related to cheating and false memories. It’s so hard to know what’s real and what isn’t, especially since it’s so easy for me to picture these things happening in my head. I’ve been absolutely lost in unrealistic obsession-induced delusions before, to the point where there was a time where I was legitimately convinced that I had cheated on my partner with a friend 18 months prior, and even went as far as messaging this friend to ask if anything had happened between us. Of course the answer was no, and things were so awkward after that. I just don’t really know what to do. I keep imagining scenarios where me and this friend were getting handsy or touchy, and I’m starting to come up with so many false memories. It’s stressing me out and I keep compulsively replaying them. What bothers me is that when he made the sloppy seconds comment, I remember feeling some sort of guilt that almost felt like it was already there? Like preexisting guilt? Which leads me to wonder why I already had felt guilty if I hadn’t done anything? I even feel like I almost remember there being a point during that night where I thought something along the lines of “Okay, I’ll allow this.” And I am so confused and trying to figure out what I was allowing. It feels very difficult to enjoy time with my partner when I have this fear in the back of my mind that I’ve cheated. Every time I try to conjure up a memory of me cheating with this person though, I always come up with a different one and none of them make any sense. What was said between us, what was done, etc? I keep making up the details as I go. The other thing is: every single person at that party knows my partner and respects/likes him. Surely if we were doing something inappropriate, someone would have said something? Surely I would have felt worried that someone would tell my partner? Surely I’d feel anxious by now about my partner finding out? I don’t know: deep down, I think I know it’s a false memory. But the situation feels so weird and unsettling that I’m considering either talking to my partner about it or confronting this friend. My next therapy session isn’t for another 2.5 weeks.

4.5 years ago my boyfriend and I finally became official- it was a time where my SO-OCD was bad but i was determined to get over it so I kept fighting for our relationship. A month after this, i went to a party where I found someone attractive which was shocking at the time as I rarely found men attractive during my SO OCD, I don’t think i was outwardly flirtatious but I did speak to him during the evening and he asked for my instagram at one point and I gave it. I remember the morning after I thought he would message and I would have to make sure to say I had a boyfriend incase he got the wrong idea but he never did so it was fine. I admitted this to my boyfriend as I have had these thought for years but they come with different intensities- now 4.5 years later the memory is hazy ‘what if we slept together’ I was a virgin at the time so i doubt i would forget that as I wasn’t that drunk. ‘What if we kissed’ - again I really don’t think i would do that BUT WHAT IF?! We’re looking to take that next step soon in our relationship but how can I move on without knowing for sure? Anyone else going through/gone through something similar?