My boyfriend has been in this really bad place for the past couple of weeks. He says that he doesn't feel like himself (or act like himself) & that he feels like 'nothing'. He's saying that he doesn't feel like a friend or a boyfriend. And that he feels nothing towards our relationship, even though he loves me like crazy. He just feels nothing towards everything right now.

Because of this he wants us to take a break from our relationship so he can focus on himself and getting better. He wants to do it alone.

I am really worried about him. I can't just leave him to battle this on his own when i'm the only one that knows he's in this bad place.

Even though we are on a break I really want to be there for him and help him. I just don't know how...

OK. so first of all my name is Phil and i am 17 years old and a few months ago i have had the fear of becoming gay. I am a very anxious person and have always worried about things ever since i was about 5. for example, i would worry that i would go deaf, blind, have a heart condition etc. Every time i get over a fear and stop worrying a new worry comes to my mind maybe a few weeks later. my longest fear was that i had a retinal detachment because i saw floaters in my vision which were completely normal. i went to the doctors 3 times in 2 years. they scanned my eyes and did the best eye exam i ever experienced but afterwards i would always convince myself that there was still something wrong. i would always check and squint to see these things floating in my vision to the point i would feel sick and have panic attacks. when i was 11, i also felt a pain in my eye 24/7 and it got me really worried. but 1 month later when i went to the doctors and they said everything was OK, i never felt it again. it is clear to me that this was pain that i was causing by thinking!
now to the HOCD. A few months ago, i had this dream that i was watching 2 men kissing eachother. i felt no pleasure in the dream whatsoever. i then woke up sweating and panicking, disgusted by this dream. this was always in the back of my mind for 1 month until i really started to think about it. i was forcing these gay thoughts on myself to see if i would get aroused. it didnt at first but i was thinking about not getting an erection so bad that it increased in size a tiny bit and i had a panic attack. it didnt feel like an erection i would get though that i would get when i think of something nice like girls. Before all this, i had never had a gay thought and i actually used to think about gay stuff to make my erection go down when i had an unwanted one when i was in school last year:) I have always loved girls ever since i can remember and and i know deep down that I am not gay and this is just a worry like my other OCD problems in the past. I always look for attention from girls when i am shopping for example. i am apparently a cute/attractive guy and i love it when i know girls are checking me out. today i saw this girl and i would walk around her on purpose so she would see me because i knew she was checking me out and i just love that tingly feeling. But then i thought "what if i am just imagining this attraction" and gay images came into my head and i started to worry again. I have never checked out guys in my life until this HOCD kicked in. As soon as i see a good looking man, i just look and fear that i am attracted to him which i know im not but i just wait for ages for some feeling to make myslef worry even more. I cant control it.
However, when i am totally relaxed and haven't thought about gay things all day and then think about it, it doesnt do anything to me. i dont worry and i dont feel disgusted. but the more i think and think i find it hard to breathe and get this weird feeling. yesterday when i was really relaxed, i had an erection and went on gay porn to check if this is just my mind and my erection went down so fast.
This HOCD was much worse than it is now but it keeps coming and going and i want it to stop because it is really ridiculous but i cant control it whatsoever and it is ruining my life. it is as if i am like possessed and there is another person inside me making me worry.
please help me. i dont know how to stop it. i have had so many OCD problems in the past but this is really the worst one.
thanks for reading!

I have always heard that when being accused of something (that you aren't and haven't done,) it's more than likely because your accuser is guilty of such. I'm certain this doesn't apply to every situation, but realistically, how often does this actually happen to you?

Based upon my husband's past experiences with a wife that cheated, drank, and drugged herself into a stupor, I understand his skepticism. I however, do not do anything at all similar, don't look similar, don't act or speak similarly. We are not the same. I am his second wife.

For the past year, it has turned into him yelling, screaming "shut your f***ing mouth" "listen to me when i speak to you" "you will respect me," and things of that nature. He tells me not to talk over him, not interrupt him, and then when I ask for a moment of his time, he cuts me off and uses his hands as a "stop" gesture to end what I have to say. In all honesty, I do not feel as though my husband respects me, or cares at all about the things I say. I am a very brutally honest and blunt, and some would say pessimistic person. I believe I just know better how to prepare for situations, and expect others to disappoint me, so I work things our in such a way that I do not get disappointed. I look at life with a very real sense of what can and cannot be accomplished in a given amount of time. I am very time-oriented.
My husband tells me that I assume to much. An example:
I tell him one thing in the A.M., he forgets by lunch 5 days in a row, and tells me that he forgot every evening. I tell him the same message on the 6th day, he gets bent out of shape because "I assumed he would forget and now I am nagging." I personally do not find that nagging or assuming. It is using deductive reasoning or taking what was learned from first-hand experiences, and applying it to the situation. This is something that happens every week.

He accuses me of being childish, immature, and needing to grow the f*** up.
I do not raise my voice at him. I am the mother of his child. I keep the house running. I am overseer of all of the financials. I went to college. I make more money than him. I have two college degrees. I am a female in a predominately male professional trade, decisive, direct, and dedicated. I have more real-world experience than he does. I am literal. To the point. Callous, if you will. I do not mince words. I say exactly what the situation calls for, and I use the correct vernacular for emotions and feelings. I had to grow up fast, and by whatever means necessary, while he grew up in the same house all his life, was the youngest of three children with a stay at home mother, and overly religious upbringing, had no responsibilities, and never been told no. I do not play games. He says I do. He is the one that plays games, blatantly ignoring repeated phone calls and going out of his way to make me feel inadequate.

Really, that's just two examples..but just this morning we had the biggest blow-up of our relationship because I asked for clarification on what he meant by a statement, and it turned into very seriously hurtful words and screaming.

Any advice, folks?

First of all I would like to apologize because this is going to be really long so I would like to say I really appreciate you reading this till the end and trying to help.

Since november I have been having flashbacks and thoughts of everything I have done wrong in my life, and now that I think about it those things are absolutely horrible.

To start with typical things normal people would have heard of before, I've done things like cheating on boyfriends, lying to parents, sneaking out etc... I lost my virginity at 15 years old with a 21 year old guy and also had sex with a 28 year old who lied to me about his age, which disgusts me when I thought about it.

Now more weird things, as a kid, I would always lie. I would like about everything. I would lie about having cancer, about having relationships with celebrities ( I would even make fake accounts and catfish people) , about being anorexic, i even catfished a real person in real life to show people and pretend he was flirting with me. I lied about having a brother that died, about people I knew, places I went to etc... I don't know why, can anyone help me figure out why I would like so much?

Now the darkest part is sexual. As a child I remember making my dog eat me out. Of course at that time I didn't really know what i was doing but now i see it's bestiality and I can't get over what I did. Likewise, I've been recalling sexual games I would play as a kid which really mess with my mind. I remember licking my cousins' vagina because she said she wanted me to. I also remenber pretending to be asleep while my cousins and sisters licked my breasts because I liked the feeling of it. Is this sexual abuse? Also, I remember once i asked my sister to touch me down there and my dad walked in the room before she did and stopped us. I don't know what to do about this because everytime I see my sister all i think about is if i sexually abused her and why I would do something like that with her.

So when recalling all those wrong things I have been really bad anxiety since and I'm not too sure what's happening. Along with his comes thoughts I don't want to have that I just can't stop. I keep on thinking in my head that I have been raped and my body feels so unsafe even though I know it isnt true, the feeling is still there. I get thoughts about harming people and myself all of the time, I get thoughts about violence and sexual stuff, and i don't know why. I have read online that this might be OCD which could make sense as I recall having weird 'if i don't do this then this will happen" things as a child. For example:

" If i don't run down the corridor in less than 10 seconds then my mum will die in the future"

a lot of games like that in my head that I see now might have been the start of this.

I just do not understand at all what is going on in my head right now and why these thoughts don't stop. I can't figure out if i have been raped or if it's my imagination playing with me because i have no memory and i have been to the extent of asking family members who said no and gave me support. I can't figure out why i started thinking about all my mistakes all of a sudden. Please help me figure out whats happening?

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