No, they were very hurtful. These "thoughts" made up almost the entirety of my OCD. Very little of my disease was displayed through outward compulsions -- almost all spent within the corridors of my mind. I would see an attractive woman and think to myself, in a very scared and anxious manner, "How does this person rate on the scale of attractiveness? Would I think that person would be more attractive than my W if I didn't know either one of them?" etc. I would then analyze these thoughts for hours afterward in the belief that doing so would cause me relief.
I hated these thoughts very much for the obvious reason: because they posed a threat to my R with my W. I felt horrible for having them and almost half the time didn't know if they were "true" or not. Sometimes they felt real; sometimes they didn't. I almost always came to the conclusion that they were not true and told my W this. I also always told my W that, despite my thoughts, they did not change the way I felt about her: that she was perfect to me and that I didn't want anybody else, no matter what they looked like. I always felt like my thoughts were "outside" or "apart" from how I REALLY felt about her.
For much of my R, I felt that I had to confess such thoughts to my W -- this, I believe, was a big compulsion (along with analyzing such thoughts for hours a day). At first, my W didn't care, but because my thoughts became an almost-daily struggle, she began to believe that they really were true -- because then why would they matter so much to me? (As a psychologist, I thought she would understand my brain-scape, but she did not.)
In the year or so prior to my W's A and the D, I felt that I had gotten so much better. My disorder was nowhere near how bad it was in the past, and in fact, on my W's B-day last year, less than a month before the revelation of OM, I thought that my thoughts were better than they'd ever been. There was a point when we went on a whale-watching trip together and had a blast; walking around somewhere, holding hands with me, my W looked up and said, "WCF...you're my best friend," and looked as though she might cry. I thought things were going to be okay. Then she met OM and things just fell apart.
I guess I could use some input on this. I don't feel that I was 100% to blame for my W's reaction to my thoughts. She already had some huge insecurities about her image (as I understand is normal for rape survivors), and my disorder unfortunately fed those insecurities.
I do, however, accept the reality that the things I did or said throughout our R was incredibly hurtful, and I wish (as I have told W many times) that if I could have done so much differently, I would have.
