Dear Stargazer:

In the title you chose for this thread, you asked for help (“Please help me“). If you are reading this, you are welcome to read or not to read the following, to reply or not to reply. My purpose is to understand better and perhaps to be helpful to you or to anyone who may be reading:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly referred to as OCD, includes obsessions (thoughts and images that create fear), and compulsions (acts that create temporary- only temporary-  relief from the fear). For many, asking the same question, or the same questions- over and over again- is an OCD compulsion. Each time the OCD sufferer gets the desired answer, he/ she feels a temporary relief, a reassurance (a temporary relief from a particular fear).

very well mind. com/ excessive reassurance seeking: “One of the things that family and friends of people affected by Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) find to be the most stressful when interacting with their loved one is the excessive reassurance-seeking that can often accompany the condition. Excessive reassurance seeking is the need to check in with someone over and over again to make sure everything is OK with respect to a particular worry or obsession. While responding may seem supportive, it only serves to perpetuate OCD behaviors and thoughts… Excessive reassurance seeking is a compulsive act done in hopes of reducing the anxiety associated with an obsession.. The compulsion often goes up when levels of distress are high and/or when the person feels unable to tolerate uncertainty. What people feel the need to be reassured about varies, but there are often consistent themes for each individual“.

Stargazer, Let’s look at your consistent theme:

1) 1st thread, Feeling Guilt & Shame (screen name arabella), original post, Aug 8: “I’ve currently been with my current partner for 4 years and love him very much… I haven’t seen or spoken to my ex in over four years until recently when we ran into each other at a mutual friend’s wedding. We spent almost the entire time catching up and drinking. I had one too many drinks and got really inebriated and told him I missed him… Once at home, I made the stupid and drunken mistake of keeping our conversation going over text. We mainly just talked about.. how good our sex life was and how it was hard to replicate with someone else (it’s true)… I just feel very ashamed and guilty…  for the things I said when I was drunk, especially because some of it was true… I feel if I tell my partner it’ll only hurt him and nothing good will come from it since it was a one-time thing. Do you think I’m a terrible person and deserve to be left?… Can someone please help?”

You posted 7 more posts on the same day, all within 8 hours. In your 5th post, you wrote: “Do you have any tips on how I can let go of this shame and guilt.. ? I’m scared I’ve done a permanent damage to my relationship… I don’t think telling him would bring anything good. I guess I just want to know if I’ll ever be able to be okay again”. On the 6th post of the day, you asked: “do you think I’m making the right decision in not telling him?“. You then deactivating your thread, and “Anonymous” replaced  “arabella”.

Less than 2 days later, on Aug 10, you started a 2nd thread titled “what’s the right choice? ” (using “anonymous” as a screen name). You posted 11 times on that day, all posts within less than 7 hours. Original post: “I recently made a mistake. I didn’t ‘cheat’ but came quite close. Enough to the point that I’ve felt immense guilt over it… I love my partner very much and don’t want to hurt them. we’ve been together for 3 years and are happily in love… is it worth it to tell my partner? This other person means nothing to me, I was simply drunk and saying things I didn’t mean… I feel like telling my partner would only hurt them.. so what’s the right choice? should I tell or not? and if not, how can i feel close to my partner again.. How do I let go of these feelings and move on from this terrible mistake?”

In your total of 30 posts on your 2nd thread (Aug 10-Aug 19), you also wrote: “the thought of hurting my partner in this way has brought me great shame and regret… I feel like irreparably broke something in my relationship.. my question is how do I move forward with my partner if I don’t tell them?… How do I make myself feel worthy again and let go of these feelings?.. Do you think it’s possible to move forward in our relationship? Or do you think I will carry this guilt with me forever? Why do you think not telling them is the best choice?..

“I just hate myself.. Whenever I try to act normal, I feel a stabbing pain of guilt inside me… How can I overcome this? Do you think guilt fades with time? .. It feels like my brain is trying so hard to get past this but my body just won’t listen. I feel anxious all the time… Do you think one day I can go back to how I used to be? before these feelings?.. I am feeling much better this afternoon after internalizing everyone’s advice. in fact, I think I’m getting past the situation slowly. At times today the guilt has left me, it returns but I’ve never felt it left for a while before. Sometimes when it was gone, I felt happy and carefree…  but then I felt bad because I felt like I was letting myself off the hook. What do you think that means?… Maybe I also do suffer from obsessive thinking… So you think I shouldn’t feel like I’m ‘letting myself off the hook’ when I stop having the guilty thoughts? it just means I’m letting go?… I’m trying to discovery why. Why can’t I simply just let go and move on?…  I’m stuck in a loop I don’t know how to move past. I keep feeling like a terrible human being for keeping things from my partner… I feel so lost and confused… Do you think it’s possible to love someone so much and still be capable of hurting them? And do you think that it’s okay for you to relieve yourself of that hurt at some point without saying anything?… I have experienced rumination before and in similar situations. Whenever I feel I’ve made a deep error/mistake, I tend to ruminate on it .. I inherently believe that not being fully honest is a bad thing and that’s why this is hurting me.. I feel so much better now and the guilt is disappearing and I’m moving on, but I’m still scared”.

On Aug 23 you started your 3rd and current thread titled “Please help me, I deserve to be judged“, under a new account, screen name: Stargazer. Original post: “I have been with my boyfriend for 8 years, from 16 years old to now 24…  my issue is I’ve just gone on my first ever girls holiday with my friends… drinking every night…  we all took drugs… I f*** up and f*** up BADLY. I met this guy in a club and I was extremely drunk and we kissed. Also add loads of flirting and whatever else…. What do I do? Do I tell my boyfriend I kissed someone and risk losing my 8 year relationship, house, dog, life?… The first person who told me he thought I was beautiful I jumped on. Which is completely awful and I’m so disgusted in myself. I do really mean it when I say I hate myself for this and I probably will forever”. In the 5 posts that followed (Aug 23-Aug 25), you wrote: “The guilt and shame and hatred is killing me but I almost feel like if I did tell him it would just be off loading my guilt and hurt onto him… What do you think?.. I really feel like I’ve ruined my life”.

In all three of your threads, there are three main characters to the story: (1) you, the girlfriend; I’ll refer to you as A, (2) your boyfriend; I’ll refer to him as B, and (3) another guy with whom you almost-cheated on your boyfriend; I’ll refer to him as G.

In all three of your threads, the main event of the story: you, A,  almost-cheated on B, an incident that happened while A was extremely drunk. I’ll refer to this main event as Event.

In your 1st thread, A has been with B for 4 years, G is A’s ex- and first- boyfriend of 4 years, and the Event happened in a friend’s wedding close to your home and during the night after the wedding via texting. In your 2nd thread, A has been with B for  3 years,  G is A’s ex (“with my ex”, Aug 11), and the Event was not described. In your 3rd thread, A has been with B for 8 years, G was a stranger in a club and the Event: a girls’ holiday in Spain, a county away from your home.

In your 1st thread, the Event included A and G communicating about how great sex was with each other. In your 2nd thread, the Event was not described, and in your 3rd thread, the Event included 2 kisses, “flirting and whatever else“. In your last post on your 3rd thread, on Aug 25, you wrote: “I also think the idea that I’ve only been with (B) since 16 years old, I was missing out on something (I now know after what’s happened that I am NOT missing out)”.

If A has been with B for 8 years, 8 years (or so) of sex, and all that happened with G was one event of 2 kisses (while A was very drunk and on drugs), I would imagine that those 2 kisses wouldn’t be enough to determine, in A’s mind, that she was not missing out sexually by being with B. I imagine that the “whatever else” that happened between A and G was memorable enough and extensive enough to lead A to the determination that indeed she was not missing out.

It is as if A is saying on one hand, “I deserve to be judged” (title of the 3rd thread), but on the other hand she greatly minimizes the Event so to present herself as one who does not deserve to be judged negatively. The question is: if A is so desperate to find out if she deserves to be judged as a terrible person (“Do you think I’m a terrible person..?), desperate enough to direct this question to strangers on an online forum- why not provide the true facts of the case: was the event with an ex-boyfriend or with a stranger? Was it just texting or was it 2 kisses or.. was it more (“whatever else”)?  Did the Event happen near home or in a different country? Has the length of the relationship with B been 3 years, 4, or 8 years, etc.

There are other inconsistencies, for example, in the first thread A says (twice) that she told G the truth when she told him that sex with him was better than sex with anyone else (second time: “I just feel very ashamed and guilty…  for the things I said when I was drunk, especially because some of it was true“), but in her 2nd thread she posted: “I simply drunk and saying things I didn’t mean“.

You (A) wrote: “I inherently believe that not being fully honest is a bad thing“- so why not be h0nest about the facts of the story?

My best guess (and it is only a guess, but not one that I arrived at in a moment notice), is that A is feeling too guilty and too ashamed to tell the truth, so she offers a bit of the truth here, a bit of the truth there, injecting falsehoods here and there, all to evade judgment.  Also, and most interestingly, I doubt that B exists because of the complete lack of any personal and concrete emotional description of B. All descriptions of him are vague and non-descript. Maybe he exists, but not as a boyfriend or a partner (I don’t know, and how can I possibly know..). If B exists, the perfect relationship (before the Event) that A described in very vague terms, is fiction (there cannot be a perfect relationship when so much shame and guilt exist in any one of the partners).  I tend to believe that G exists because of A’s expressed enthusiasm about the sex she had with him.

“This shame and guilt and start the journey to heal myself?.. How do I let go of these feelings and move on from this terrible mistake?… how do I move forward with my partner if I don’t tell them?“- tell someone the truth, just as it is: what is your shame and guilt really about? What was your perceived “terrible mistake”?

“How can I overcome this? Do you think guilt fades with time?“- the truth shall set you free, so it says in the bible. At the least, it is the beginning of setting yourself free. And I would like you to be free from shame and guilt and doubt and fear.

I am guessing (and again, it is only a guess) that you posted your three threads asking the same questions because you ran out of people to ask irl. Therefore, I am closing with more quotes from very well mind: “No doubt, if you cater to someone’s excessive reassurance-seeking, your intentions are probably in the right place. It can be difficult to watch someone, especially someone you love, struggle in such a way, so your inclination may be to simply give them what they seemingly need to feel better. However, in the end, your efforts are likely only hardening the hold OCD has on them. It can also end up having a negative effect on you. Excessive reassurance seeking can result in the following unwanted results:..  Friends and family members, who are often vital sources of social support, often become annoyed and withdraw from the affected person, which only serves to raise stress levels for all parties.  Of course, stress is a major trigger of OCD symptoms and needs to be managed effectively…

“It also reinforces the idea that the person cannot cope with the uncertainty or distress associated with an obsession, and that avoidance is the only way to deal with it. Avoidance is particularly harmful in the case of OCD as it keeps the person from discovering that their fears may be unfounded… Every time someone with OCD engages in a compulsion, it serves to reinforce the validity of the worry or obsession”-

-I think that your obsession, Stargazer, is about avoidance: avoidance of what is really going on and how it came about, avoidance of the truth. But this is not something that is unique to you: it is very common for people to put aside the Real Problem and focus on.. a Substitute Problem, trying to solve what is real by proxy.

I would like to add a few thoughts to this tomorrow.

anita