Just out of hospital, not strong enough to fight this..

Hey there.

I realise this is probably not an ideal post and I should be battling this in my own, but I am recently out of hospital due to throat issues, am very (legally!) drugged up and don’t seem to have the strength to fight this.

For some context - I'm male and a sufferer of chronic OCD and BPD and have been all of my life. I am in a committed long term relationship with my girlfriend who I love and adore and I have MASSIVE historic issues with guilt.

I feel the urge to confess to my s/o - which I don't want to do in this situation.

Whether that’s because she’s taking care of me or not, I don’t know. Maybe that is increasing the guilt.

I'm hoping that my sharing my thoughts here, it will help me and any advice that can be given about if I have fundamentally done something wrong, would be greatly appreciated. I’m sorry this may be long - I’m not in a great way and I appreciate your patience.

The guilt I am currently experiencing relates to something which happened last week (and although I felt initial pangs of guilt at the time, it went away, until getting ill. The fact it went away and has come back leads me to think it's the OCD but I can't be sure).

So, I sing in a band and last year I bumped into another local band, which contains 2 guys and a girl. They are a bit younger than we are (maybe early 20’s) and the two guys said that the girl loved us and always listened to us. She wasn’t there at the time. This was great to hear because I never think anyone does! It was great to hear they all liked us!

She is quite an attractive skater chick, but I’ve never spoken to her and would have no reason to. I’m not a sleaze or a creep.

However, one thing I have noticed about myself is that I do get a ‘buzz’ when attractive females pay me some attention/like a social media status of mine/like my band. It’s probably a flattery thing and also a throwback to not really having any sort of attention when I was younger (typical I know).

Since they told me they and she liked my band, I fixated on it a little bit. There’s a mutual respect and love between local bands for sure here - but sometimes there is back stabbing and competition - so if you find a group who are decent and kind, you stick with them.

Up until I knew she liked us, I paid no attention. We’re not a big band by any means - but we do have fans across the world scattered about and we always have a good relationship with them.

Since finding out, I followed her on Instagram so she’d follow us back. I do this with other people who like us too. Male and female. I have also liked one status of her’s.

I’ve never sent any messages or flirted or ANYTHING to her. But I was flattered that a cool person liked us and that her being seen to like our posts was ‘cool’. Pretty pathetic I know.

The other day I wanted to send them all a message saying how much I enjoyed their new song, but I think part of me wanted to impress her by her reading it (it’s worth noting I do this to other bands who don’t have females either) so I sent it to a group chat with all 3 members so they would all see it.

Totally harmless and polite message. I ummed and arred about including her, but did anyway, hopefully in retrospect to try and beat my OCD worries. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but now I am unwell I am.

Now I am wracked with guilt. Why did I do it? Why does a small part of me crave and seek validation from anyone who I think is cooler than me, made worse when they are attractive?

As a person, I’m faithful to my girlfriend, I have never cheated, never flirt or act inappropriately in person to anyone.

But in my head I have now concocted this weird little thing that makes me feel there is some little sordid affair I’m hiding, despite the fact that she, my girlfriend anyone else reading or monitoring it would think anything weird has happened from the outside looking in.

It’s the REASONING behind it that bothers me. I feel like this seedy monster who’s relationship is tainted and fake now and any love my girlfriend gives me isn’t deserved as she doesn’t know who I really am.

She has joked before about me talking to other girls from bands, but in a harmless way. She also knows I get obsessed with famous men from bands too (I try to reach out and get acceptance from them).

Am I just blowing this out of proportion? Am I fixating on something that’s harmless and most people would just do and not think about? Is my over analyse creating this into a bigger issue than it actually is?

People hold doors open for people all of the time, people smile at attractive people or go out of their way to do something nice for them (even if they are in a relationship and even though they should be doing it to anyone, regardless of attractiveness).

I have since unfollowed her on social media. It all stemmed from when I was told she liked our music. I’d never given her a second thought before then. I have no interest in perusing or even talking directly to her. Don’t know her, she’s just someone in a cool band who’s kinda hot who I was flattered liked us.

But I shouldn’t be thinking these things. I shouldn’t be acting in a harmless way with seedy reasonings.

I’m going out of my mind here and I know this is incredibly annoying to read. But any support would be so helpful.

Thank you (and sorry).

FoYD x

Hi FoYD,

In "real world" events, I don't see anything remotely wrong with what you did. They may see these things as innocuous communications but you see them attached to something that is deeper, even if that is conflated beyond the reality of the situation.

Your internal world, however, is certainly making something of it and it seems like the net effect is self-destructive. Since you suffer anxiety/OCD one can see how you might obsess over the particulars. But you also suffer BPD (Borderline, I assume, not Bipolar) so there is a lot at play which is connected to how you perceive these relationships and react to them. This latter part is far afield from my own experience, so I'm not sure how much feedback I can offer in that respect. It might help to visit our BPD forum and post the same.

borderline-personality/

Do you have support in the real world? Do you see a Psych or therapist? Can you talk to your girlfriend about this or family members, friends.etc? I'm glad you posted here. You are certainly not alone in what you are going through, I have seen aspects of this in others.

Otter.

Thank you Otter, I will post there.

I hadn’t thought of the BPD side of it, but I’m not sure if that will make me feel better or worse truth be told. I always feel as though I am hiding behind some diagnosis to justify being a bad boyfriend, or human.