please help

i have been with my boyfriend for almost 2.5 years and he is the love of my life. i want my future with him and want to marry him. we spend so much time together and i love hanging out with him and don’t ever want him to leave my house when we hang out. throughout our relationship i have avoided certain situations with other men because i don’t want to make my boyfriend upset and i don’t want something to happen and me get put into a bad situation. towards the very beginning of our relationship i unfollowed all of the insignificant guys on instagram, tiktok, snapchat etc. i have been so so loyal in our relationship to the point its almost concerning to some people. 2 months ago i had this debilitating fear that came out of nowhere that told me “what if i cheated on my boyfriend before i removed all of those guys and i don’t remember” i removed those guys a week after we started dating. and ever since then i have been in the worst place i have ever been. all i do is cry, can’t eat, no motivation to do anything and all i do is think and get stuck in my thoughts all day long. i do have some severe compulsions. i go through old photos, i recovered data from snapchat, tried to get data from instagram, and piecing together timelines all day to try and figure out if it even happened or not. i do not remember any specific conversations at all with any male online during that first week or any conversation at all. first it started with one guy i used to have conversations with before my boyfriend and i was worried it overlapped to when we started dating and then it got me thinking about to a different guy i talked to a couple years ago and then i wondered if i had him on snapchat when my boyfriend and i were dating. i saw that they both liked my tiktok’s from march 2024 and the last time the second one reacted to my bereal was in march 2024. i started talked to my boyfriend in april 2024 and we started dating june 2024 i have never had any thought like this at all i have NO memory at all of even talking to these guys when my boyfriend and i first started dating but my brain is showing me memories and trying to convince me i did. there is absolutely no evidence i ever did this. cheating is one of my biggest fears and it feels so real and i can feel it physically. i don’t know if it’s a real memory or a fake one my brain is making up. my relationship is my priority and i would absolutely never do anything to hurt our relationship and these thoughts are really really unlike me. i just don’t know what to do because i feel so so guilty and i have been avoiding my boyfriend because of the guilt i feel i want to tell my boyfriend to get it off my chest but i don’t even remember doing anything. we started dating when i was 16 and he was 15 and i turn 19 soon. please please help i feel so alone

Community AI...

User type: Staff

Date posted: Yesterday

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anonymous1670

Date posted: Yesterday

@Community AI Helper yes please

Community AI...

User type: Staff

Date posted: Yesterday

@anonymous1670 - Happy to share! One thing worth naming first: the data recovery, the old photos, the timeline-piecing, the mental replaying — those are compulsions, not investigation. Checking gives a few seconds of relief and then the doubt comes back a little louder, which is why two months of searching has left you feeling worse rather than settled. Wanting to confess to your boyfriend to get it off your chest works the same way — it's one of the most common compulsions in this theme, and the relief it brings usually doesn't last. "What is False Memory OCD?: Signs, Symptoms, and Treatment" https://www.treatmyocd.com/blog/false-memory-ocd This covers the exact mechanism you're describing — a brain generating vivid "memories" of something you have no actual recollection of — and what treatment looks like when certainty about the past isn't available. "What if my partner cheats on me—or I cheat on them?" https://www.treatmyocd.com/what-is-ocd/common-fears/fear-of-cheating-ocd Written for the cheating-fear theme specifically, including why it latches onto the relationship you care most about and why reviewing, avoiding, and confessing keep the cycle going. Is this something you've been navigating on your own so far, or have you had a chance to talk to someone who specializes in OCD about it? 💬 Was this response helpful? Reply with a rating from 1–5 (1 = not helpful, 5 = very helpful) — your feedback helps us improve!

username0192...

Date posted: 23h

I am so sorry you are feeling this way. OCD is trying to convince you that you need to figure out what happened and what is true or not. You don’t. You will never be able to find certainty, so you have to accept uncertainty. All of the mental reviewing and “figuring out” are compulsions that just make it worse. confession is a compulsion. Ocd attacks what we care about and our morals so this just is classic ocd doing classic ocd things. And I know how truly awful that is to experience. Are you working with a therapist? they can provide more support than I can. I am here to talk more though if you want. One thing that has helped me a lot are disengagement phrases — “maybe this is true, maybe it’s not” or “I don’t need to figure this out right now” or “I am having the though that ___. I don’t like it, but I don’t need to do anything about it.” So to answer your question about what to do—the answer is to accept uncertainty, not do compulsions, and to be kind to yourself. You don’t need to do anything else.

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