Constant Worry after One Night Stand

[lmnost]

I'm a guy in his 20's and can get pretty hung up on worries and would say I suffer from anxiety quite heavily between long periods of absolute calm when things are normal! Usually an incident sparks a long period of worry for me that I just have to power through until it subsides. Unfortunately, I started the year by giving myself a crazy worry that's played on my mind every day for the past 2 weeks now.

I had a one night stand 2 weeks ago and because I'm aware of my anxieties for getting a girl pregnant, I didn't have sex with her and instead, we both just performed oral sex on each other (i did not climax). I woke up the next day feeling good about this as I know how worried I can get about stuff after-the-fact, however as the day progressed and right up until today, I'm finding myself constantly running over the events to make sure I've not missed something out, and my brain looks to any tiny chance where she could have got pregnant, even though she did tell me in the morning she was on the pill (obviously I cannot confirm that is true as I doubt I'll see her again and did not know her well).

I find myself continuing with things as normal, then out of nowhere, the tense worry will creep into my mind again and I start to obsess things such as - that when I gave her manual sex I might have had pre-cum on my hands that I inserted into her (yupp, I've already read the 4000 threads on this here at Scarleteen), or maybe when we naked spooned after, somehow my penis touched her and got her pregnant (no evidence it did), or somehow someway there was an impregnation despite no penetrative sex or genital touch (to my memory/knowledge!) and I had peed several times since my last orgasm (referencing that for pre-cum).

I've decided for the future, one night stands are definitely not for me, since I clearly cannot handle them with my anxiety and worry levels. I already have a therapist and have booked in to talk later this week as well as a doing a checkup at the STI clinic earlier today, just to put everything in my mind at ease.

Just looking for some reassurance from you guys I guess as I'm feeling so down and struggling to get on with things Bad timing as well as I have an academic test tomorrow and I'm struggling to focus A part of me is aware that the odds of pregnancy here are absolutely ridiculous since we didn't have sex and I didn't ejaculate, but 2 weeks on, I still can't shake the worry for some reason! I've read the "can I get pregnant from that?" page, but my mind is still going crazy that I've got this girl pregnant someway in some odd unusual manner!!

Thanks guys x

[Heather]

I'm sorry that chronic anxiety is a struggle for you.

You know, I wonder if it might help to try and recognize that even IF you had taken part in anything that COULD present a risk of pregnancy, you're not someone who can get pregnant, so would be pregnant, so really, this wouldn't even be about you after-the-fact. Nothing would likely change at all for you if someone you had a one-night-stand with got pregnant because they'd probably either terminate that kind of pregnancy or, if they wanted to parent, wouldn't be likely to ask someone they barely knew to be part of that in any way: asking a one-off to have anything to do with a pregnancy someone is experiencing is the stuff of romantic comedy films, not so much real life. So, even when we ARE talking about for-real-pregnancy risks, the person whose real concern that is is a person who could, themselves, become pregnant, as that's whose life a pregnancy really impacts. And I assure you, those of us who can become pregnant are generally way more concerned about it than people who can't, and put the efforts we need to into prevention when we know pregnancy is a risk.

But ultimately, this sounds like a mental health issue to me, not a sex ed issue, so your therapist is going to be the right person to bring this irrational fear and ongoing anxiety to: anxiety like this isn't rational, so facts don't tend to have much impact. Instead, what you'll need to do is approach the anxiety itself, not what's triggered it. We just can't provide that kind of care here.

But it also sounds like you might want to have a check-in with your therapist in terms of what they're doing with you to help you learn to manage anxiety when it happens for you: it may be that you need to approach it in different ways than you have been and try some new techniques. I'd also be sure to tell them about you trying to reassurance-seek with this: that tends to only make anxiety worse in the long run, so it may be you need some help from them when it comes to learning to avoid doing that, so that you don't stay in anxiety rather than working through it.

[lmnost]

Hi Heather,

That's some great advice, thanks, and I agree with your later points regarding approaching the anxiety and mentioning the reassurance seeking, that is a problem and only seems to temporarily soften the worry before it re-surfaces again. I realise the worry is completely irrational, yet that does not remove the terror of the situation, so I definitely have a lot of work to do I guess in myself to feel comfortable with things

[Heather]

I think of reassurance seeking the same kind of way I think of eating simple carbohydrates or sugars: it's a momentary fix, but one that tends to only leave you feeling more crashed when it wears off. Ultimately, reassurance-seeking is kind of an anti- approach to anxiety, not a sound way to manage it or work through it. In fact, in some ways, it's actually something that often distracts people from what would help them, which usually is centered on experiencing the anxiety, not trying to do things to push it away.

Has your therapist ever suggested the book "My Anxious Mind," by Dr. Michael Tompkins for you, or "The Mindful Way Through Anxiety," by Susan M. Orsillo and Lizabeth Roemer? If not, those are two of my favorites to suggest, and that I feel offer a lot of very helpful DIY management, either for people who don't have access to therapy, or, for those who do, as something to pair with therapy that's likely to fit nearly any therapeutic approach a therapist is working with a patient with.

(Just an FYI: your profile lists you as 30, but your first posts has you saying you are in your 20s. We can provide service for people in either age group, but it is important for us to work with users being as factual as we are, and to know what a user's age is to best help them. Can you rectify that difference for me, please?)

[lmnost]

I agree with the excellent metaphor with anxiety/sugar for sure, I know exactly what you mean. It's just the automatic reaction. My brain and gut tells me, "if I can seek confirmation it's probably fine, that will help". I can't think of many situations though that has actually been the case unless I'm waiting for a particular exam result or some sort of definitive answer to something.

Thanks for the book advice, I will check amazon now and have a look!

Oops, I meant to write "in my 30's", or more accurately - "30" as my profile says, sorry about that!

[Heather]

Gotcha, thanks!

And for sure. That's one thing I really like about the first book I gave you: it does use the framework of talking about what your anxious mind does -- like making you think things that keep you in anxiety, and fooling your logical brain into thinking they're what'll help, instead. And probably, your gut isn't telling you to seek reassurance, but instead, your anxiety is kind of creating a barrier between your intuition -- which generally tends to be right -- and your brain.