Dear j,

since you didn’t have sex, there is no basis for him pressing any charges or considering you a rapist. None whatsoever. But in your mind, you feel guilty, exaggerate your responsibility and believe you deserve to be punished:

I feel as though I am not allowed to have friends if they don’t know what I’ve done. My first instinct is to isolate myself because that’s what I deserve. I feel like I’m not allowed to enjoy things because I’ve shown a pattern of problematic behavior and it would be wrong of me to feel happy. I know I did a bad thing, and I feel immense guilt and shame over it. Even now I feel like I’m making things sound less harmful to make myself look better and I worry I’m not reflecting properly.

You might have exhibited some problematic, rash behavior, under the influence of drugs and alcohol. However, when you say “I know I did a bad thing, and I feel immense guilt and shame over it“, you believe you actually coerced a man into having sex with you, which isn’t true at all. You even think that you’re trying to sound less harmful here on the forum, and that in reality, your misdeed was much bigger. So you’re having an unrealistic picture of what happened – you’re harshly accusing yourself of something you didn’t do.

That’s a part of your OCD, it seems – having a compulsion to confess things you haven’t done and feeling guilty for things you haven’t done.

This could be related to your childhood. Were you condemned a lot as a child, and often told that you’re guilty for various reasons?