Chachaman wrote:


No, I cannot, chaver. I think that helping people perhaps get sober is far more important than whatever reason you may have for me being less explicit. And I respect you as a friend (at least a virtual one !). I also believe that sugar-coating is exactly what we all do in order to maintain just enough self-respect so that we can continue the same lifestyle of meshigineh 'struggling' and losing.

So why would I want to be part of the problem?

I respect you and what you do here, a lot, Chachaman. And much of what I wrote may not apply to you. I recognize that not all guys here are as bad as some others here. So let's make a deal. The last time I checked, the average porn-using frum guy here was not just looking at girl-scout cookie ads. When most of us here look at our porn or use fantasy in our heads, it's about terrible, embarrassing stuff: naked people having sex, plain and poshut - and worse. We are looking at the most explicit stuff there is. So I need to be explicit about recovery, too.

As soon as you can show me that 'impropriety' is not occurring over and over at the hands of us frummies here while we are at our computers going from image to image of schmutz, or while we are desperately masturbating ourselves to explicit fantasy, I will gladly tone down my descriptions of what our lusting is really all about. And I mean that seriously, respectfully, and as a real friend.

Sincerely,

Dov

P.S. So many guys say they 'opened up' to their Rabbi or a friend about this issue, or that they "pray to Hashem for help" for it, etc. Yet many are not telling the truth - for they are not explicit about it enough to give forth an honest picture of what's really going on with them!

For example, they say, "I was nichshol, rebbi, in shmiras eynayim and come lidei zera levatola, often b'ratzon....I am so ashamed." Or they say such things in sh'moneh esrei at Sh'ma koleinu or S'lach lonu...as if Hashem has time for such meaningless talk.

Here we were last night, sitting and chatting with some strange girl and using explicit and vulgar language - because it's expressing ourselves and our real desires (at the time)...but when it comes to talking with Yedid nafsheinu the Ribono shel Olam, we are indirect? All of a sudden makpid on nivul peh?! And no, I am not talking about using the F-word in davening at all! That's just cursing, and totally different than what I am referring to. No, I am not saying 'two wrongs make a right' - and I am not advocating the describing of sexual fantasies to Hashem or others in lurid detail. But there is a big difference between frivolous detail that is meant to excite - and between blunt, painful honesty that I can cry about. It's just the truth. It hurts to expose the truth - so it helps. Cuz it is the change that it hurting so much, not the shame!

So I use the phrase 'sex with my wife' in sh'moneh esrei when I am talking to Him about concerns I have with sex with my wife. I use the word 'masturbation' when I am talking to Him about masturbation, and if I was struggling with the desire to look at a certain woman's chest, I say to Him in Sh'emoneh esrei those exact words. He knows it all - He won't faint ! I see no reason to pretend I am really about bechinos of klipos, or something. He may see it that way, but it's none of my business. He wants my heart - Rachmonoh liba bo'ei. Your heart si your real heart...not what your heart 'should' be.

Isn't Emess the only avodah sh'bleiv there really is?

So I believe that anyone who says considerations of 'lashon nekiyah' gets in the way of being factual and honest, has a very different experience and understanding of tefiloh than I do. And such tefiloh would be useless to me now, just as it was all those years that I was busy masturbating myself in yeshivah and davening with 'propriety'.

But if it is working for you, that's great. And I mean it.

(Boy, another megillah! )

Shlomo,

You explain yourself very well, but you explain it in absolute 12 step disease model ways of understanding things. You make it that you are your biology and if you reach out to your higher power then he can save you, and you state is fact.

I'm not here to argue about your experience, but in my personal experience I did much WORSE subscribing to that and much better subscribing to the idea that it's my responsibility. I was in twelve steps with two different sponsors, everyone told me I was an addict (and I may have been and still have some of the stuff that you describe) but I'd just wonder if you might leave room for the possibility- both for those reading you and maybe even for yourself- that maybe with work it CAN go away.

One of the biggest deterrents for me right now not to act out is......because I don't want to. I may still at some point, and it's not like I never struggle, but right now I wouldn't want to hurt my insides because when I act out it makes me so anxious and I like serenity, I don't want to hurt my wife which didn't used to stop me but we have a better relationship so I actually care more now, and so I've seen in MY experience that I play a huge role.

Of course old habits still die hard and there are some challenges that I'm not getting past, but overall things are headed in a good direction. You're more than the sum of your biology, and I think people also need to be told the possibility that you might be triggered if you're in that space, and no one should do it on purpose, but it could be it's up to them.

Workingguy wrote on 21 Nov 2016 15:36:

You sound exactly the way I used to, our stories are only vise versa, I at the end of the day came to realize that I am in fact an addict and you went the other way around.

What I learned is that an addict lives in a total different reality than normal people, normal people can take a few shots of vodka over kiddush, get a little high, and move on with the rest of the day, an addict on the other hand, once he takes that first shot he's done, he cannot stop, I'll repeat, HE CANNOT STOP, no matter how much he understands the harm and how much he wants to, he just can't.

​My point is that you not being an addict B"H cannot understand this concept, so while to you it's a bad habit and you CAN control the situation, addicts don't know what the word control means once we take that first shot, and very often that first shot - a TRIGGER as we call it - is something we didn't choose, but it's still a first shot nevertheless.

YFM: What are the boxing gloves for? I put mine down a while ago