Does anyone have tips for ROCD exposures on fear of being cheated on? I’m having trouble working with the app to setup exposures. My therapist has me limiting contact with my bf as exposures. I’ve also been forced to watch tv shows or movies on cheating (which wasn’t too distressing).. I’m at the point where it’s costing me my relationship and I don’t want this to happen at all. I’ve had way too many relationships that I’ve sacrificed unwittingly to my ocd. I really need help with this or I’m afraid he will break up with me because he’s so fed up with the daily chaos.

Yes , you are searching for something that doesn’t exist ! It’s not the theme , it’s how U react to the thoughts

Yeah almost everything for my ocd is evidence of cheating. It’s horrible. I really am scared it’s going to cost me this relationship but I guess if he’s the right person for me he can see thru all the chaos for the person I really am.

P- my husband is very supportive. BUT-we separated for a time(prior to having children) and this last pregnancy was super tough. We fought so much and he drank a little too much during that time. We’re not perfect. He’s not perfect, and his character and his worth was and is being trampled on. I do realize that being supportive is almost a necessity. But our SO’s are only human. They feel it personally even if it’s only OCD to us. It feels like an attack on their character, and it will eventually catch up to them and cause issues. The best thing I know is to not tell or confess to him that you are thinking it. Keep him out of it so that he can catch his breath. It will be tough but it’s necessary if you want to stay together.

I am working on an essay explain my concept of “thoughts” being different from “thinking”. I will post it soon!

But in the meantime, let me try to explain. One’s mind, one’s brain, one’s consciousness, experiences many different kinds of things. Some of them are beyond our control, and some of them are within our control. Still others are perhaps, or may at least seem to be, somewhere in between. Let’s look at the out-of-our-control category: Images, ideas, emotions, urges, desires, and so on, “pop” into our head. We literally cannot control this, it is simply the nature of an awake mind, that these phenomena will appear on their own. In the context of OCD, we are taking about what are often referred to as “intrusive thoughts”. Now let’s look at the mental phenomena over which we do have control. Let’s say you have to write a paper for school. You go about this task by purposefully engaging your mind in activities and processes that are specific and goal oriented, such as evaluating data you’ve collected, looking for patterns in the information, making conclusions about the meaning and significance of information, grouping ideas together, weighing the importance or likelihood or truth of one point of view against another, and so on. I call this “thinking”. I believe we have a choice as to whether or not we think about something. Sometimes we say, “I’m too tired to think about that right now,” or “Let me put my mind to that and try to figure something out.” For this point of view, “thoughts” (ie: intrusive thoughts), are the Obsessions, and “thinking” (ie: to bring down anxiety), are the Compulsions. Now some might say that sometimes the “thinking” happens involuntarily, and this would be the grey area in between volitional and non-volitional mental phenomena. But I believe that with practice, especially through meditation and watching one’s mind, we can discover that thinking is indeed volitional, and we can, with practice, and with the right motivation (ie: to beat OCD), learn not to do it when it pertains to an obsession. Does this make sense to anyone?

Yes ! Thank you ! I had an in between thought this morning

What is your fear ?

It’s so hard. I have the same problem. It’s so difficult when the OCD isn’t about you but about someone you love. I have struggled with OCD thinking my entire life and when I got married it latched onto him and his morals and his character. Hopefully your boyfriend has come to the place where he refuses to give you reassurance. When I am triggered or when I feel like I need to question him or look through his things, I try to not give in to the compulsions. To simply sit there with my thoughts and not do anything. Are you questioning him? Are you searching through his things, his phone, his online accounts? If you are, you must resist doing so.

The way I see it, if something is going to happen then it will and it won’t require me to go through all of this to “find out for myself”. So you just have to allow yourself to think he may cheat, but until I have proof I have to trust him.

Mikila is correct... Ultimately the theme doesn’t matter. The problem is how you react to the thoughts when you get them.

If you need an idea for an exposure to do I have one for you. I wouldn’t think watching a show or movie about cheating would be too distressing. An idea for an exposure would be to think about it happening or even picture/imagine it happening in your mind Without engaging in a compulsion.

I have this theme, too. My OCD thinks my girlfriend might cheat on me. I hate this OCD soooo much. The intrusive thoughts/images/ideas, are so torturous. She knows about this, and also about OCD in general, and ERP, so she will not engage in ANY reassurance behaviors. And I am pretty darn good about not doing any physical compulsions, like checking her phone or clothes or car or whatever crazy thing my OCD thinks it wants to know to try to get reassurance. BUT, it’s mental rituals that I am having a heck of a time stopping. I do mental review, I do self-re-assurance, if I don’t nip it in the bud, I can ruminate pretty badly. I just went to the IOCDF Conference in DC, and it was phenomenal! I learned that EVERYTHING I do, mentally (or physically), related to the arrival of an intrusive obsessional hit of anxiety, IS A COMPULSION. So “sitting with thoughts” might be compulsing, if you’re not careful. “Thoughts” are the obsession, but “Thinking”—active, word based, thinking, to achieve a goal, like problem solving and anxiety reduction, is a compulsion! Hope this helps a bit. Feel free to ask for clarification

Thanks everyone for the replies. As mentioned my ocd fear is that my bf is cheating. I do not go through his things or his phone but sometimes if he’s on his phone I’ll ask him who he is texting. Sometimes if he’s sitting in the car and using the phone it really agitates me. He finds himself avoiding using the phone around me b/c of it (even tho I tell him not to) - but he just doesn’t want to deal with the conflict. We are in a ldr so most of my compulsions involve calling/texting him excessively and asking him details about what he was doing or where he was at. But I’m getting better at this. I also ask him a lot for reassurance that he loves me and wants to be with me and why he loves me. I don’t feel like I am that bad with compulsions but he gets extremely pissed anytime I engage in a compulsion and starts going off and it has now gotten to the point where he is avoiding me altogether. I don’t want us to break up b/c of this - I’m trying to avoid compulsions as much as possible but I’m not perfect at this..I’m just scared I will lose him - he keeps telling me I am amazing but he can’t handle my ocd ?

I’m so sorry P. My marriage has suffered a lot over the 11 years we’ve been married. I can tell you that my husband has suffered greatly because of my constant checking and accusations. It puts a strain on our marriage. But we’ve stuck it out so far, and I can only attribute that to God. I pray that you find relief from this monster.

@MusicNinja can you explain more about this thing you learned at the conference?

@Ashley thank you for the support. Part of me thinks that if the person cannot handle the ocd part of me, maybe he’s not the right person. I’ve heard people on here comment on how supportive their partners are. I think that’s so important and my therapist has emphasized that so many times as well. I’m not sure if mine is the right one - I guess time will tell.

@pineapple that is a good exposure - I do that sometimes naturally (idk why, it’s kind of sick imo)....! My therapist suggested the shows, articles to read, etc but they don’t bug me as much...it’s too impersonal I guess but I think she realized that relatively quickly. I think I also do a lot of mental rituals for example with time (how much time he takes to do xyz)..

P that’s how mine started. Unfortunately mine didn’t go away but just jumped from thing to thing. And o see something as “evidence” when it really ends up being something I did or something that just happened and is unrelated. My ocd wants to take it as evidence. Its awful

I also just don’t know how to get him to be more supportive. Sometimes he is great and other times it’s a disaster. I tried explaining how to not reassure me or get defensive or yell but often it turns into a yelling match where he’s yelling, I’m crying and that adds to the stress. He always realizes later that it was wrong of him but I mean that doesn’t help

Thanks Ashley. The hard part for me is not anxiously blowing up his phone with texts and calls when I can’t get a hold of him. I had an entire day of this today. It was agony for us both. My rituals other than that are mostly mental but I’m afraid of them devolving into accusations again or asking too many questions. I wish I could somehow get him to understand it’s not about him but I get what you mean - for him, there’s no separation. Just the not being able to get a hold of him...ugh. The ldr thing is probably something I should have not gotten involved with - he also travels for work...double whammy. How did you manage?

Nice job perceiving that!

Thank you !