It isn't not cheating, they haven't talked about it and what the rules are. So what it is is heartbreak on all ends.

Why don't you leave him a message and say that Halloween is your favorite holiday and that you don't want to be alone. Maybe both of you can hang out on that day. Casual.

Or maybe you decide to not be alone but not sleep with someone else.

If you want to sleep with other people like this, even though he is on break, I think you are just not interested enough in this relationship. It's okay to just call it quits from here.

When you start therapy, talk to your therapist about books that you write in. Maybe it is a workbook about what you like to do. Maybe the physical Act of writing in a nice moleskin notebook book that actually looks like a book will help you with desensitization. Or puzzle books. Or books where you color or reverse color where there are colors and you draw the lines. There is a book series called burn this book where the purpose is to deface the book that you have bought and that might be another idea.

As others have said, you are on the right course, I am sorry that other people made it sound like you are having these problems because you just haven't found the right book yet.

As an experiment to yourself, you might also try writing something on paper and then reading it back and see how you do and if it triggers your OCD ticks or if you do okay. This will help you to think about what things specifically are triggering the ticks.

Check out your local goodwill / second hand clothing stores for the cheapest books of all

Hi, there are a couple of book clubs that center around fiction books that have food in them. For example, "cook the books" seems to be an internet book club where anyone can read any of the books and then write their own blog post response, kind of Tumblr style comment linking.

You might also enjoy fiction books that are heavily inspired by food like the Julie and Julia my year of cooking dangerously. Another book that I have been thinking about is called sourdough by Robin sloan.

There are all kinds of gimmicky cookbooks out there where you make everything there is one style. For example, one pot cookbooks where you make everything using minimal dishes, or where are you make everything inside of a slow cooker or a smoke cooker or inside of a steam cooker etc. They are also other cookbooks that have cutesy themes like cook like a man and the dude diet

I've seen a lot of cookbooks while trying to shop for family members and holiday gifts but I just don't really recommend very many of them at all. So many of them like you said are just rehashed and it's kind of expensive to pick up a cookbook just for the pictures. Normally I would consider checking out your local library and renting books that way as well but when there is food around I feel hesitant with a borrowed book.

Are you sure that you're reading the right books? It sounds like the word that you are looking for here is "immersion", and most fiction books do a pretty good job of keeping the reader immersed in the world but some books do a really awful job and keep kicking the reader out of it, especially if things are too implausible or the book is not well written or if there are too many plot holes, your hindbrain kicks in and says wait a minute and then you are kicked out of the immersion of the story again as if it was a giant portal and you are back in the real world again

Personally every story that I read the first time I am immersed in unless the book is too poorly written and I keep getting kicked out. If I want to study the book or the writing or the language I have to approach it carefully and I can do that but the very first time I read anything I know that I am going to be "in the story"

I would also recommend that you take a step back and look at your personal reading environment. Are you reading at your desk with your drafting pencil and protractor and red pen ready? In this kind of setting you would be in the mind space to do work rather than to be comfortable and leisurely. So make sure that you are snug and cozy and comfortable and things are to your liking. I recently discovered that there is a hobby that I like to do but I was getting angrier and angrier with it and it took me about 10 years to realize that I was hating the hobby because I was physically very uncomfortable with the way that my desk was set up and my posture because of it. My hobby was physically painful for me. And it took me 10 years to realize. Yeeeeeeaaaaahhh.