I’m exhausted and so done with analyzing every sexual encounter with my fiancé. My thoughts are there during and after. I then Google after which I know isn’t good. I now have the thought that he thinks I am a lesbian because intimacy is so hard for me. I have never been a very sexual person so of course my mind goes to “welll a lot of late to lesbians said this too”

When I was single, I watched a lot of porn, specifically lesbian porn even though I’m straight. When I got into my current relationship I dwindled down and eventually stopped watching porn of any kind, around six or so months ago. I had a flare up recently that has caused me to question every part of myself including my sexuality and my identity, my relationship, and other things that are important and valued to me, and porn keeps popping up in all of these things. I feel like my porn usage was me cheating on my boyfriend, especially in the early parts of our relationship. I broke down to him last month about it and he said it was okay, that he forgives me, but I’m still hung up on it because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve wronged him and that I’m a terrible person and that I need to leave him because of this. This is so excruciatingly painful. I don’t want to keep confessing over and over and over again, but I don’t want to be a dirty lying cheater, which I feel like I am.

I have a lot of trouble with my sexuality. I’ve been trying to figure out my sexuality for years. I’ve dated a man, and I wasn’t really into the whole time. And since then I’ve thought that maybe I’m a lesbian because I’m attracted to women, which I know for sure. But then my brain spirals, I constantly think back ti memories with my ex, how I felt with him, I check how it makes me feel. I often google to see if other lesbians have felt similar, I ask ChatGpt over and over again. I feel like I have to be 100% certain or that im faking for attention, or thst I’ll end up with a man. I guess im wondering has anyone else felt like this ? What’s been your experience how do you manage it?

This is going to be long and all over the place. To give some context I’ve dealt with SOOCD for a long time now and it had very bad effects on my past relationship. I had a hard time being intimate with my past partner because I was always subconsciously checking if I was getting aroused enough, if I was attracted to him, if I truly liked him, or if I was lying to myself (yk the whole deal). I literally felt nothing but anxiety when we did things which made everything worse. I was also extremely depressed which made my libido and attraction towards men completely vanish (still have low libido and my attraction is kinda the same). Me and the guy broke up and a couple years ago we reconnected. When I saw him again I was extremely attracted to him, romantically and sexually. This made me so happy because I finally felt some confirmation that I knew who I was and my thoughts weren’t real after years of being tortured by them. We didn’t end up lasting because my feelings started to shift but I truly blame that on the fact that it was just a dumb old high school relationship, he was a terrible boyfriend in the past, and we had nothing in common. However while we were together, I had dealt with really bad relationship anxiety. I found other people attractive which gave me reassurance, but also made spiral because I thought it meant I didn’t like him anymore, I was lying to myself about my feelings, and I questioned everything about the relationship. Fast forward to now, I am now in a new relationship and I’ve known this guy for a long time. I developed a crush on him which again made me really happy bc I haven’t had a crush in a VERY long time. I made a couple of posts on here about how I started to overthink everything (pls read those to get more context I don’t want to make this even longer). I started to get really anxious and had more intrusive thoughts about lying to myself about my feelings/and sexuality, not really liking him, not being attracted to him, yk all that. I was able to manage it by watching a video about rumination where the guy basically just said “stop thinking about it.” He said to just let it float there, don’t engage with it, don’t try to solve or understand, don’t try to replace it, don’t say a mantra, don’t be mindful, just let it be there and move on. I also went on reddit and this guy said to stop hyper focusing on the attraction/ the “right” feelings bc the more you try to look for them the less you will feel it. Anyways, I took the advice and the next time we hung out I felt comfortable and just so much better. It was the sweetest date and I truly had a fun time. However, when we kissed I immediately started over analyzing and questioning everything. I had bad experiences with my ex because I kept trying to analyze my feelings like do I really like this kiss? Am I actually attracted to him? Why am I not feeling super excited right now? Why did all these good feelings just go away? It was so annoying and heartbreaking for me because I just want to be normal, I want to truly enjoy this relationship. I want to stop automatically checking and over thinking everything. We’ve discussed sexual things and it automatically made me hyper analyze everything making me feel more anxious and unsure about the relationship and my sexuality. There have been times where we talked about them and I’ve thought about it with no worry, and I even got turned on by it (tmi i’m sorry). But I’m worried that I’ll have the same bad experiences I did with my ex and it’ll ruin how I view the everything. I was so excited for this but now I feel so scared and anxious again. I really want to enjoy this, he’s truly an amazing person and I want to be with him without being bombarded by this shit 😭. Sorry if none of this made sense. Please give me advice if you have any!!!!