Yes. Of course fantasies come knocking when least expected.  But I'm not entertaining them, following them through.  I catch it early.  I talk to myself: "Alex, this is not OK, we're not doing this." I get busy.  Listen to shiurim in the car so my mind's not bored.

On Yom Kippur, there's an Al Cheit...."B'Yetzer Horah"
What does this mean?  It means we entertain the Y"H. Invite him in. Let him stay.

And when they come knocking, I right away start my tfila.

I am sorry for taking so long to post, but it's almost as if the yesser hara cares more about me not posting than anything else.
What all of you have said so far sounds so true and so amazingly pressuring, but I know that you are only telling me all of this out of experience. Thank you for all your wise words. You have no idea how much impact they have on me.

I just received the books from yitzi.26@gmail.com, and I have started to read the handbook. The yesser hara will, be'ezrat hashem, not stop me from completing it this time.

My only problem now is I need someone to discuss it with, and someone wise to help me out. My current partner helps me out, but I need someone who I really look up to, and so far, all I have seen are great role models.

Thank you very much  to anybody who can help, and to anybody who has helped or even thought about helping.

I really appreciate any effort that anybody will put forward for me.

Helpless Jew Boy

Baruch Hashem, I was able to hold back last night from falling. However, I do not feel that I am strong enough to keep this up for long.

It seems that once I've started, there will be an inevitable fall.

Does anyone have any tips to put me back into clean mode again? I so hope and wish to avoid this inevitable fall in any way possible.

I don't think I can accept much more of this abuse from the yesser hara. It is so hard to function when the only thing he is doing is making things deliberately come into really close contact with me at the wrong times. More than twice I've had to muster enough strength to hide my embarrassing situation from my family.

It seems too hard to avoid the yesser hara and my family.

But I cannot reveal to my family anything. It would be too disastrous.

I need to get rid of this on my own or with my friends. But no family.

Any tips for that as well would be highly appreciated and welcomed.

Thank you so much for all your help.

Helpless Jew Boy

helplessjewboy wrote on 07 Aug 2011 13:53:


It didn't help me much in recovery to look at WHAT I DID TO STOP THE FALL and why it did or didn't work.  Because it always seemed to be some new sneaky trick of the yeitzer hara each time.  Oh my!  Outsmarted again!  Why didn't I see it coming!

What did help, is trying to examine what I was doing BEFORE I FELL.  Not just the minute before, but the hour before.  I was feeling upset about something, or I just had a fight with someone, etc.  Often fear, often resentment.  A feeling of restlesness, irritabiliy, and discontent.  THAT is what drove me to act out, because I was feeling bad and I want to feel good.

And, then I started dealing with those feelings.  Trying to be less self-absorbed.  Trying to think of others.  Trying to look at life in a more positive way, with an eye more towards giving and meeting other people's needs, rather than towards taking and making sure all my own needs got met in every detail.

With that, I have been able to take a step back.  These feelings sometimes fester for weeks before driving me to act out.  With practice, I am learning to catch them earlier and earlier, keeping myself further and further away from those irresistable urges to escape reality and make myself feel better with imaginary pleasure.

Does any of this strike a chord with you?

--Elyah

Please bear with me. I am not a complete idiot. I have stood in your shoes (or shoes very similar to yours). I am sympathetic to your need to remain secret from your family at all costs. I am sympathetic to your conviction that either you solve this problem of yours on your own - or with the help of friends - or.....or...or what? Not solve it? Is that it?

You are clearly stating that you cannot tell them - that you must get better this way, or that....what room does that leave for G-d? For reality? None, I say.

Do you hear what I am saying? Do you hear what you are saying? You are limiting the value of your getting clean, and saying: "as long as it does not cost me that much, I'll pay."

So.

I think you are entirely too fixated in the "hide it from the family" thing. I think that your assumption there is a huge mistake. Far greater, actually, than your mistake to masturbate in the first place.

I would bet that isolation has been your problem - and that sex with yourself (that's masturbation!) is just a symptom of your isolating. And your isolating is based on fear.

And your fear is a lie, as it always is (unless there is a lion bearing down on you right now, which there is not). Bogeymen ruin our lives, k'seider. You are being buffeted around and guided more by your fears than by your lust.

I believe this.

Think about it. If you want to punch me in the face, i will let you. Then maybe you'll be able to see the truth and finally unite with your family. You are disconnected from what you are essentially connected to! And when you get married, the pattern will continue exactly the same. The ones you will be beholden to will be the ones you "need to protect from the truth". This is foolishness.

Don't do it.


Unless you have been abused by your family, your family people are more trustworthy than your friends - and will always be so. They love you and always will - your friends do not and probably will not.

dov wrote on 07 Aug 2011 19:56:


Dov,
I relate completely to JB's situation. I share a lot in common with him and completely understand his point of view of not wanting to tell the family.
At the same time, I completely relate to and understand what you wrote about isolation and how family is the closest and most trustworthy. But it's not clear to me what your opinion is re. someone who IS actively working on getting out of isolation with family and others. What if someone is making great strides both on the source issue of isolation, and also on the symptoms (mas***). Do you still feel that it is necessary to put a Mother/Father/Spouse through that terrible shock?

I thank all of you for your kind tips and helpful remarks.

Unfortunately, I fell again yesterday, on one of the saddest days.
The yesser hara always hits me when I am weak and on the floor.

But I take solace in your advice and in what you told me.
Elyah, your words truly struck a chord in my heart and soul, and truly gave me something to think about. I realize now how true your words are.

Dov, thank you so much for the tough love. I deserve it, and I need it. From now on, be'ezrat hashem, I will do more to speak to a confidant and some of my friends.

I appreciate both your's  and Elyah's remarks.

To kidushashem, I understand what you are saying but consider the fact that if you don't tell them, how could they know to be more sensitive in certain areas. After all, they don't know the other side of you, the one more prone to do certain disgusting acts. I sometimes very often feel that I am living a lie, and that nobody truly knows who I am. But I cannot help it, because I don't want to put anybody through that torture. There are only a handful of people on this earth who know the true me, with varying degrees. There is only one person on earth who knows everything about me and he is my Rabbi. I love him and I opened up to him about everything, including showing him this post and the replies.

It's hard but necessary if you don't want to feel that you're living a lie. I don't know if I plan on telling my family everything, but my wife deserves to know the truth.

Helpless to do anything else.

Jew Boy

JB, I'm so so sorry that you fell yesterday. That must really hurt. I'm amazed though that you seem to be functioning to the degree that you can post what you did with clarity and feeling. Shkoyach!

I completely hear what you say about sharing with your wife. She deserves to know. Also, your marriage will be so much stronger afterwards and like you mentioned, she will be more sensitive towards you in this area.
I'm in awe of your decision that you must tell her and I am so happy for you. It will bring amazing results.

Can you please let me know what you decide vis a vis the rest of your family? For me, it has always been a dilemma between shocking and hurting people (especially my Mom who views me as the apple of her eye), and living with a lie that not too many people know about (1 friend and 1 therapist).
I feel like no matter what, there will always be that feeling of "living the lie" because I'm not going to tell every single person I know. Not all family, Rabbis and friends are going to know.
I guess that with time, once I've stopped for a while, I won't  have that feeling so much anymore.
One thing for sure is that I want to tell my wife (I should get married Bsha'a Tova) about it all b/c she is the other half of my soul and needs to know everything about me in order for us to be as close as possible.

Take care and keep posting, you have a lot of strength!

Love,

Levi Yitzchak - KH

Glad I could be helpful.

Also, whatever you may discover as you re-trace your walk off the cliff...

POST IT!

You've got to get it out of your head.

--Elyah

How you doing JB?

There is certainly nothing bad about being helpless - as long as you give up to Hashem, and not to the toilet of more of our truly endless and bottomless lust;

There is no shame in being a Jew, if you know that a Jew is a son of Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov;

And there is no shame in being a boy - as long as you are 100% clear on exactly who your father is!

Love,

Dov

I'm afraid that I must have led on some people falsely and I'm sorry. My fault for not clarifying that when I said I would tell my wife, I didn't realize that many have wives of your own. Unfortunately, I am not yet married. I am a yeshiva bochur going on to college in september. I am only eighteen, but I feel so much older from my horrible experience with this terrible disease that is sexual addiction.

Baruch Hashem, I have been talking very closely with AlexEliezer, and he gave me some great tips, including leading me to Gevura ShebYesod's Forum which was amazingly helpful. It seems that he and I are very much alike, except I am much younger and my progression through his challenges was much quicker. Be'ezrat Hashem, I should be zocheh to be as strong as him.

I worked so hard in school to get to this point of being top of my class, and in an awesome scholarship program where I pay literally almost nothing to get a stellar education. Why can't I work hard enough of myself??? That is my main issue. I keep losing steam frequently.
However, Baruch Hashem, posting makes me stronger and reading people's struggle makes me believe in myself more, because I see their triumphs. Gevura ShebYesod was faced with an enormous challenge and I don't know, if I was in his position, that I would go the same path. He is my true role model (for now, there will be others as well, I'm sure). I am so lucky to be surrounded by people who care about me, both virtually and physically.

Baruch Hashem, today I feel amazing, and proud to be a jew, son of Hashem!!!

Jew Boy

Dear helplessjewboy,

You call that tough? Ok, maybe it was a bit...

Be"H, I will run through some thoughts and then get to practical stuff at the end. Please bear with me.

One of the most descructive things about my disease is that it feeds me a double life. No unity with those around me, no unity with my G-d and no unity with myself. Emess cannot even grow, and recovery that way is completely impossible. We end up chasing our tails by maintaining the hiding - and usually at all costs!
In fact, the 'emunah problems' that many of the addicts (particularly the Jewish frum ones) describe they have, I believe to actually be self-emunah problems. Hashem simply gets blamed automatically when we lose all faith in ourselves.

All that gets healed with recovery, and more.

Kiddushashem is a real kiddush Hashem, and it is nice to read his post, too. I guess I sound pretty unsympathetic. Nu. I can't help you by agreeing, nor by lying. So I will share what I have, and hope you take what you want. Nothing I say to you comes from my seichel - it is all my actual personal experience.

You talk of sharing it with your wife. But you are not married yet, are you? How can you possibly know now what you will be able to actually do in a new situation - or what you will even want to do - when the time actually comes? I, for one, have given up assuming that I know how I will behave under new circumstances.
Then again, I am in my 40's (and am a severe pervert [in recovery with Hashem]) both giving me the opportunity of suffering through much more failure than you have, I bet...so what do you expect from a curmudgeon like me?

As far as the 'suffering' our parents or other loved ones would have if we told them the truth about us, I need to say that I wonder how much of our desire to keep it secret is actually simply because we are incredibly ashamed of telling them. Trust me - that's painful. I know, for I have been there a number of times so far.

And fear bogeyman comes in here, too. I always imagined that admitting the nature of my problmem to someone was exactly the same as bringing them into the room with me and having them witness me searching throigh the porn for hours, and actually seeing me masturbating myself.

That would be awful and horrifying for all parties, indeed! But  telling them is simply not the same as that.

Thankfully the truth is much nicer than all that. Our fears are usually just another lie that we very sincerely believe. I believe that in my own case, self-preservation creates the fear, and it is another way I get totally self-absorbed. It is not really from caring and loving. And I am innocent (and so are you - if that's your deal, as well) because it comes from simple instinctual survival instincts gone arwy. And it makes our shame build so high that we cannot even imagine telling anyone who loves us. We'd actually feel naked before them.

But it's really never the way we imagine it, at all.

People really do generally understand. And people are generally much more sympathetic than we imagine they will be, and usually far less condemning and loathing of us than we are about ourselves. Living our lives at the mercy of that lie is thus a tragedy.

But most of all, it is a trick of the disease. The deepest realest reason I hid the truth about myself from others was simply in order to protect my ability to keep acting out!

Every person I have ever met who has worked the 9th step (at the right time) and made amends to those they have hurt says the same thing: "I can't believe I held it in for that long. Why did I do it? It turned out to be no big deal! " I imagine the same would hold for 'coming out' to those we love.

Practically speaking, SA's White Book gives great advice NOT to tell those close to us too soon to those people with whom sacred bonds and trust have been violated by our behavior. It recommends both a period of sobriety and consultation with friends in recovery (or a sponsor) before revealing our past to them. It reminds us that when we get that overwhelming desire to just 'tell all' to those we love, we need to remember that it can be cruel - "dumping our guilt or just a big show of willpower".

But that is talking about people who are plotzing to tell. They want to get the burden off them and are just dying to sacrifice those near them, naively thinking "they'll understand - cuz I am so sincere."

This may sound completely at odds with what I wrote above.

But it's not.

Every case is different - and if parents can be of help, that is a lot different than a spouse. What sacred bonds and trust has been violated with a parent? If they are healthy parents, they want nothing more than to help - as you would, no? A spouse who has been fooled and tricked for years and years, is a completely different matter.

It is a great tragedy hiding and lying to a spouse. The aftermath and pain are terrible, and the 'coming out' about our adiction to them is a very difficult - albeit usually indispensible - step into our recovery.

But I think parents - and certainly recovery buddies (as in a meeting), is completely different.

Wishing and davening for your hatzlocha always,

Dov

Dear JB,

I am truly humbled that you found inspiration from my story. I really wish I could have caught myself when I was your age.

In truth, it was by reading stories such as yours, and seeing the love, caring and guidance from everyone here, that gave me the strength to work on my own recovery, and eventually gave me the courage to post my own story here. So I owe a great debt of Hakoras Hatov to all of you (I will not name names because I will surely leave out some important ones). I feel truly privileged to be a member of such a group of Ovdei Hashem.

May you continue in your path of recovery and growth in Avodas Hashem, and at the right time you should be zoche to find your true zivug and have a happy and wonderful marriage. Hopefully by then you will be so long over this that there will be no need to tell her that it was ever a problem.

Meanwhile just take it one day at a time. As the days and weeks add up, it does get easier.

Keep On Trucking^TM!

Gevura!

"That a (helpless jew) boy"!

Keep it up JB, you're on your way to Heaven!