- Date posted
- 3y
- Date posted
- 3y
I think your boyfriend is being overly possessive for saying that and it sounds like he could be doing more harm to you for controlling who you speak to than you could ever do to him just by being a kind person who talked to others. Don’t assume you’re doing something bad just because he says it is because sometimes people want to totally control your l life.
- Date posted
- 3y
I think your boyfriend is mixing up finding someone attractive with liking someone in a more than friends way. There's a difference. It also sounds like projection. For him, he stays away from girls he finds attractive so he doesn't have any inner conflict while dating you.
- Date posted
- 3y
No, i shouldn't talk to men because they are attractive. I can talk to attractive men. But I shouldn't have my main reason for talking to someone be because they are attractive. It's not controlling. It makes sense. Why would he feel the need to talk to another girl because she is attractive? If it's not my intent before hand then it's not an issue, but I'm overthinking weather I choose to talk to the person because they are attractive or not
- Date posted
- 3y
OCD will always make you doubt and it will always take things out of context. OCD takes things you fear and with the intrusive thoughts it creates doubt for you. You are not alone. I deal with the theme of false memory and OCD will make me think horrible things about myself but remember OCD will always attack your morals and values and creates doubt around the things you care about and create untrue scenarios and false messages. You will get through this. I just started working on ERP and it's not easy but I'm taking it one step at a time. Have you started or considered ERP therapy?
- Date posted
- 3y
I feel the same way at times. Sometimes I wonder if I dress up because care what other guys think of me. One of my lab partners at school is attractive and I worried if I wanted him to like me. He was nice to me and I wondered why I liked it. Do I want to be with him? What if I hurt my bf? Thankfully my bf is supportive and tells me that it is okay to find other people attractive because we are human. I don’t want to reassure you but being in a relationship doesn’t make you stop finding other people attractive. I try to tell myself this too. We can’t try to avoid everyone who we find attractive. This is where therapy becomes helpful. I haven’t started mine yet but hopefully I can soon. Right now I am also dealing with this on my own. It’s really scary to doubt my faithfulness. I really know how you feel. I usually say to myself “yes I find him attractive and that’s okay.” I don’t know if this is the correct way but it helps me sometimes.
- Date posted
- 3y
I get this! I started working at my current job when my relationship with my boyfriend was just kicking off and I thought that because I found some of the men around me attractive that I must have not had genuine feelings for my boyfriend and I almost talked myself out of my relationship, which I'm glad I didn't because I'm incredibly happy and secure in it. I didn't realize I could have possibly had OCD and that was what it was stemming from so it made me pretty unhappy for a while, and now at college I had a similar issue for a few days. I'm glad it isn't just me!
- Date posted
- 3y
Add on: I would like to clarify this is a rule we both set in our relationship. We are allowed to find other people attractive and talk to attractive people, BUT our main insensitive shouldn't be to talk to them BECAUSE they are attractive. My brain had the thought "oh he's attractive I shouldn't talk to him" and then I did, I think I talked to him BECAUSE he is attractive. (but I also might be overthinking it) I broke a rule we had established in our relationship
- Date posted
- 3y
Resist the compulsion to confess. If you feel an urge to confess things after obsessing, it's the ocd and it will not making anything better.
- Date posted
- 3y
It's completley normal to think other people are attractive, or even be attracted to them while in a relationship with someone else. It sounds like you did nothing wrong.
- Date posted
- 3y
And you would have said welcome to the new co-worker regardless of what they look like. We talk to many people everyday no matter what they look like. Just recognize the negative messages OCD is trying to attach meaning to when there is no meaning there.
- Date posted
- 3y
I think there are always gonna be people that you immediately find attractive that you are going to want to talk to or need to talk to and that it’s unrealistic to have the expectation of never doing that or to blame yourself when you do do it. I talk to people I find hot all the time and I know I find them hot but then I still go about my day and I tell my partner about it too just cause I feel like it and we have been happy together for over 2 years.
- Date posted
- 3y
I think it’s important to respect rules in a relationship but also make sure the rules are realistic!
Related posts
- Date posted
- 20w
I was doing fine today until I asked ChatGPT if i cheated and they said it could count as emotional cheating if you are engaging in intense daydreams and looking someone up on social media to feed a fantasy about them. My partner and I already spoke about me fantasizing about this person and he said it was totally fine since it happened in my head and he has had crushes and fantasies on coworkers too. However I feel absolutely devastated and wrecked with guilt and anxiety and panic right now. I genuinely feel like a horrible horrible horrible cheater. I don’t know what to do. I have therapy scheduled for later this week but I really really need some advice right now!!! I feel like it could count as cheating since it did happen during a few weeks where i felt a bit distant from my partner and I feel like the daydreaming was excessive. I am so so scared. Do I confess? Do I tell him I cheated? He already told me once that cheating is a physical interaction (and I literally have not interacted with this person outside of surface level responses in a group server that my partner is also a part of). Do I have a moral obligation to tell him I cheated? I need to know.
- Date posted
- 15w
I feel wrong because at one point i didn’t tell all my coworkers about my boyfriend because i wasn’t sure if we would break up or not and i wanted to i guess keep my options open and i thought one of my coworkers were cute and he also ended up being my plug later on but i never did anything with him i swear also he’s like 16 and i’m like 19 pregnant with my boyfriends baby do you think it’s ocd because i know if i tell my bf it would probably just make him angry
- Date posted
- 13w
I cannot tell if this is OCD assigning meaning where there is none, or if it is something else entirely. I have ADHD, and I tend to hyperfixate on people, specifically men I find interesting. It feels like a crush. Maybe it is a crush. I do not know. It does not matter. I daydream a lot. I have posted about this before, and the responses were helpful, but right now I am spiraling again. Lately, what I think is a dopamine-driven hyperfixation has latched onto my supervisor at work. I actively stop myself from ruminating too much about what it could mean. I remind myself they are just thoughts. I love my boyfriend and I am committed to him. But I have noticed that I sometimes *hope* something goes wrong with an order, just so I have a reason to talk to my supervisor, even if the interaction is only a few sentences. I do not even smile at him because I am so afraid of being disloyal or disrespectful to my boyfriend. The other day, my voice sounded nice, and I got scared that I did that on *purpose* because I was talking to my supervisor. I know how to make my voice sound smoother, and I worried that I subconsciously did it for him. I know people do that kind of thing to seem pleasant in general, but it feels wrong when it is tied to one specific person. There was another moment where I had to bend slightly, and I knew he was behind me, though I didn’t know he would walk in my direction. It turned into a kind of awkward traffic situation, and I started wondering if I *hoped* for that. I even caught myself thinking about whether he finds me attractive. I know that these thoughts might be in the normal range, but the fact that I think about him so much, daydreaming, hoping for interactions, mentally replaying things, feeling excitement, makes me feel incredibly guilty. Is that disrespectful to my boyfriend? I don’t think I’m flirting. But I feel like even hoping/looking for interactions or tweaking my voice counts as some kind of betrayal. I just don’t know. To me, it sounds like a mix of ADHD and OCD, It really does feel like chaos inside my head. I want to be honest with my boyfriend, but I know talking about this stuff makes his jealousy flare up, and understandably so I’m a jealous person myself. But if I don’t confess, it feels like I am hiding something and it feels *extra* disloyal. I know that daydreaming and a bit of excitement are normal, especially with ADHD and dopamine-seeking, but when I go out of my way for a few-sentence interaction, or crave eye contact, is that disloyal? I am not asking for reassurance. I genuinely want to understand if this is normal or if it crosses a line. I am scared that I am just making excuses for bad behavior. I am scared that this is not okay and I am doing it anyway. I wish I could ask my therapist about this, but I had to stop going recently. She always understood how my brain works, especially the difference between reassurance-seeking and genuinely wanting clarity. She was really good at helping me figure out whether something was common or explainable. It helped so much to just know if something was normal, even if knowing did not stop the rumination. That’s kind of what I am looking for now, just someone to tell me if this pattern makes sense or if it crosses a line. Please help :(
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