Rape!

"The way I see it, when you worry, you suffer twice."

When I find myself worrying about intrusive thoughts, I ask myself if there is any actual benefit to worrying about this.

- Is there something you can do to prevent it?

- Will worrying about it now make it less bad if/when it happens?

- Is there something useful you can do to prevent it by worrying?

If the answer is no (which it is in your case), then there is absolutely no point in worrying about it, or even thinking about it at all. It does you absolutely no good.

I get frequent persistent fears about my dad dying. Or anyone in my family, but mostly my dad. Worrying about that, or even thinking about it all, does me no good. I can't prevent it, I can't prepare for it, and no matter how much I worry, it will still completely suck when it happens. So all I'm doing by worrying is making myself suffer now AND later, whenever he does actually die. It's pointless to make yourself suffer twice.

I know OCD complicates things, but you NEED to stop worrying about this. Every time you think about it, say "stop thinking about that, it's pointless to think about" and think about something else instead. Until hopefully the thought will just stop coming up altogether, or come up much less frequently.

 

Assuming you live in a relatively safe part of the world, the chances of her getting straight up raped are pretty low. It's of course not impossible, but unlikely. Unless she wants you to be her full time bodyguard, you can't do too much about it anyways. Except maybe encourage her to carry some kind of a self defense tool like pepper spray with her and/or to take up lifting weights or some martial art etc. But if she isn't interested in these kinds of things, you shouldn't push her.

If you feel like you can't calm your thoughts yourself, you might want to talk to a psychologist or a therapist or some other professional. Intrusive thoughts can be a pain in the ass, but they can be beaten.

 

Continue your fight against PMO my brother! You already have benefits and that's amazing! Just imagine how it can affect you as you go further along in this journey! Maybe it can even help you to get a clearer perspective of this OCD and allow your mind to de-fog and work properly. If all else fails, I would recommend a sex therapist. I see one and she works wonders for me so far! Best of luck to you!

 

I'll pray for you too, Bro. Sometimes intrusive negative thoughts can be a spiritual attack.

 

Well I hope you can shake these thoughts and hope somthing bad like this never happens to your girlfriend. But is there evidence that somthing like this has already happened in your girlfriend's past?

Almost 2 year ago my wife told me about her rape trauma from when she was 14. It devastated me, led me down a dark pathway of thoughts, mental anguish, worry, hate and anger. I had constant nightmares every night and even developed "waking nightmares" where I would completely zone out and blank out for minutes on end as my mind was consumed by what happened to her. For a very brief moment I even thought suicide was way to end these thoights, obviously I did not take that route but it almost happened. I worried, much like you that somthing would happen, again, or worse something would happen to my step-daughters and I would be unable to stop it. For her it happened 15 year ago(at that point of her telling me) but for me it just happened and I felt helpless. Then eventually I relapsed and turned to porn again to try and "normalize" what happened to her, searching for porn in the vain of what happened to her. Obviously not the right answer to seek help. Now almost 2 years later I still worry about her and our kids, not nearly as bad but I still have nightmares ever now and then.

So I can relate to you worrying about your girlfriend but for me it comes a place of real trauma in her past. Which is why I ask if something happened in her past that you know about or sense?

 

That's awful. No wonder you have these worries. That's completely understandable.

Of course I still stand by everything I said about worrying, but don't forget to give yourself some grace! You've been through a lot, and it's natural to feel the way you do after something that traumatic.

I have this weird thing where a) I worry about my Dad dying, as I mentioned, and b) I just in general worry when things are going too well, that the other shoe is going to drop and everything is going to come crashing down. Which hinders me from enjoying life when it's actually going well.

I was wondering why I feel this way so much and feeling frustrated about it, when one day my mom mentioned that I've been through quite a lot of crazy moments like that. A lot of unexpected tragedies. The most notable of which being my dad collapsing in the hallway when I was a kid, because his spinal cord has essentially snapped. I remember sitting in the backyard with my sister, crying and trying not to hear him screaming. He ended up having to have surgery and stay in facility a couple towns away for like a month or more. He was (and still is) partially paralyzed from all of that. He was in a wheelchair for s while, then a walker, then a cane until he finally learned how to walk on his own again.

And then fast forward to a couple years ago when he had a heart attack out of the blue and had a couple stents put in. The blockage in his heart was in such a position that they literally couldn't possibly do a biopsy. So basically if the stents don't work, there's nothing else they can do. He's changed his diet and it doing much better now, but still....

And then there have been other crazy things as a teenager, too. Losing the home I grew up in because my parents went bankrupt, a pretty traumatic and awful breakup that really messed me up for a while, my sister getting married and moving out was pretty hard as a kid who had lived with her so closely for so many years, etc.

I find it somewhat comforting to remember that I have some reasons why I have these fears. It helps me to give myself grace. If someone else told me these stories about their life and said they had these fears, I would be like "well of course you do! That's a lot of crazy stuff to go through!" But we are often harder on ourselves than we are on others.

 

I hope you change your mind on that, man. That's the worst thing you can do for yourself. We were not designed to be alone. We were made for community. In my experience, one of the greatest lies and ways the enemy deceives is by making us think we are alone, that whatever we are going through is unique and nobody else could possibly understand.

I will say every single time I feel that way, when I end up sharing my thoughts and feelings with someone anyway, despite my fear, it has always been a really good thing. Sometimes I have even found that they struggle with the same thing, and we can help each other through it.

Please don't believe the lie, friend. You are not better off alone. And if she loves you, she wouldn't want that for you either. You are doing her no favors by pushing her away, trust me.

 

Your lies and breaking up with her propably hurt worse than her being with you. Also you stole her freedom to make her own life choices.