I’m spiralling

Hi everyone! I have been having a rough time. So my boyfriend talks to his ex still as friends and I’ve been struggling with it lately and I can’t tell if it’s OCD or not but it does feel so distressing. She wasn’t texting him for about 2-3 months as she got into a relationship with this guy and they broke up. She had messaged him saying that she has no one else to talk to and needed to vent to someone. At first I felt okay, but my intrusive thoughts took over and it seemed like she was trying to get with him after the fact. It’s probably just my intrusive thoughts talking but he looks on Discord (the app where the message) constantly now and my intrusive thoughts convince me that he’s still in love with her. Then yesterday I saw one of his BeReals (a little photo app that shows a photo of the day) and I saw that he was watching one of her streams as she is a streamer. I struggled to talk about it because it made my worst thought feel like it came true where he is still in love with her. When we talked he gets a lil mad that I don’t tell him right away like straight up what I’m feeling but it’s hard to process because my thoughts flood in of all the worst things and I don’t want to come off as toxic at all and I know relationships are built on trust and I want to trust because this is literally the only thing that makes me nervous about him. It also doesn’t help that I’ve been cheated on before so I’m trying to protect myself but I’m lost. I get so depressed and so anxious because I feel like I have to grieve the relationship and it’s just so dramatic. I’ve never loved anyone like this before and I don’t wanna lose him by bringing this stuff up constantly when something occurs with his ex. I don’t know why I get triggered so easily and I just wanna heal from it and be the good girlfriend I’m supposed to be 😭

Every 30 minutes I spiral about something different. It’s exhausting. Right now I’m freaking out because I was finally feeling a little calmer, got on TikTok, and saw a post saying that comforting a guy or giving advice to a guy is considered cheating. Or “microcheating.” And so many people in the comments were agreeing. My OCD already gives me so much crap about having guy friends and comforting them during hard moments. Another post said that even giving advice when a guy texts you his problems is wrong, and like, I give advice so often. That one really struck me, because how on earth is that unacceptable? There was also a part about how hanging out with a guy is cheating too. I don’t really agree with that one either, but I guess I can understand that perspective a little more, especially if your partner feels uncomfortable with it. Still, it just added more fuel to the fire. I already doubt myself constantly, and then I read a comment that said, “*If you do any of that, all I’m hearing is ‘I’m a microcheater and proud.’*” I just started crying. I haven’t been able to sit with the uncertainty of whether I’ve been unfaithful or disrespectful to my boyfriend for months. Especially since my guy friend has given me comfort and advice too. Everything I do feels like cheating. ***Everything***. And seeing that just made it all feel so much worse.

I have this deep fear I’ll accidentally cheat on my long term partner. This fear was initially triggered a couple years ago after being at a bar with my friends where I enjoyed the attention of being flirted with by a stranger. Because of my enjoyment of receiving verbal attention, I began spiraling about what if I accidentally cheat. Since then I have made multiple confessions to my partner to seek reassurance, replayed events over and over in my head, spent hours googling/looking at reddit threads, and now I dread “bar like” situations where I know my partner won’t be around. Today I was triggered and have wasted about 4-5 hours of my day ruminating. Does anyone else with relationship ocd struggle with this fear and have any tips?