After 183 days and 3 hours (6 months, 1 day and 3 hours) of working really hard on myself and staying clean, I had a fall this afternoon.

I am posting this here because I had made up that in the event of such a situation, I would be open and honest with my wife (unthinkable a short 6 months ago!) and everyone here. I will post more of my thoughts here after I tell my wife.

As I have encouraged others and will continue to do so, I am picking myself up, not getting down about it and continuing on with my life.

More Soon.

MAZAL TOV on your "182 days and 15 hours (6 months, 15 hours)".

May Hashem give you renewed strength to KOT!

Thank you, Hashem, for the inspiration and the strength to be able to be clean for the approximately 15,822,000 seconds that I was. Please continue to give me the inspiration and strength to continue being clean.

Thank you to my wife, who has been incredibly supportive the past few months and is continuing to do so.

Thank you to the guys of GYE who have allowed me to support them all this time. I didn't write much about myself on this forum, but when I write to you, I am talking to myself and it really helps.

May we continue to have hatzlacha together!

An email from my wife after I told her (I had to leave the house right after):

Thank you so much for being honest with me.
That means more to me than anything else. More than the days racking up, I need to know I can trust you.
And I do.
I do trust you, and I do know I can.
Thank you for that.

But I still want to ask you to be understanding - it's still hard for me. I'm still going to have questions (not accusations, not criticism, but questions) for the next couple days. Please bear with me.

I love you!

WOW! You have quite an amazing and understanding wife! You are VERY fortunate!

i am at a loss over who to admire more, you or your wife. kol hakavod. your attitude, honesty and keep-on-trucking-ism is great!

It wasn't always this way.

We had a VERY rocky 6-7 years or so (out of an 8 1/2 year marriage).

Boruch Hashem since I began working on myself with the help of this site, my relationship with my wife has improved immeasurably. She noticed the change in me before I even let her know that I was working on things and she said so. That alone has been very encouraging to me. Just to give you a picture of where I'm coming from, a few nights ago my wife told me that this past anniversary was the first time since our first that she didn't wonder if it would be our last.

I'm in a much better place than I was a short 6 months ago. I was a guy who used to fall multiple times a day. I was just able to go a day over 6 months, I was able to be open with my wife about it almost immediately and she was able to take it a lot easier because we've been talking about this stuff much more openly recently.

Boruch Hashem!!

Wow, I just saw this now. You are giving us a lot of Nachas.

Stories like yours are encouraging to us all and give us the strength to continue!

Tip: Make sure to figure out what led to the fall and see what new fences you can put up to prevent it happening again. In this way, you will be uplifting the fall to Kedusha!

You are very lucky. I am not married, but I could hardly imagine a more supportive wife than your. You truly blessed.

--some_guy/Elias/Eliyahu

I think that most people in our situation are very curious, and as the well known saying goes, "curiosity killed the cat."

So I allowed a curious thought to enter my mind. The thought itself wasn't SO terrible, but there was really no reason for me to follow it. That was my mistake. If it has no real relevance to my life now, I should have just dismissed it, but I didn't.

I followed the curiosity and it led me to other thoughts, much more dangerous thoughts. I tried to tell myself all the things that I have been telling others and though they did help, the other thoughts kept mushrooming. At that point a big part of me, remembering what I enjoyed so much from the past, wanted it. It was a struggle though, because another big part of me was picturing very clearly the consequences of going that way and I already began to feel the effects and how it was consuming my mind.

All of this started this past Friday. Sunday was a huge struggle for me, but I managed to stay clean. On Monday, I began to feel my resistance falling away. Monday evening, I was in the car driving home from work. I usually have the radio on while I'm driving, but for some reason or another I had it turned off that night and I suddenly decided to talk out loud to myself. Like, really out loud. I said things like, "I can do this. I'm much happier being clean. My wife is much happier. I don't want this garbage in my life. I don't want it! I'm clean for about 6 months now, I don't want to mess it up with this narishkeit." I kept saying things like that over and over, and I tried smiling as I said it. It felt amazing and though there were little aftershocks of temptation, for the most part, it was over.

Tuesday was a special day for Lubavitchers. As a Lubavitcher chossid, I definitely didn't want to fall on that day after having been clean for so long, but again those little aftershocks were there. That morning I got an email from the Lubavitch broadcasting division, JEM. They have a series of interviews with people who had encounters with the Rebbe. For the most part, the email was a fundraising letter, but there was a link to a video with an interview of one such encounter with Rabbi Weinreb of the OU. While reading the email, I had decided that I would watch the video in honor of the special day, but then when I finished reading the letter, I instinctively deleted it. And I almost left it that way until a thought popped into my mind. "If this were an email with a link to the stuff on your mind, you would most probably be searching through the Deleted folder for it, go find that link and watch it like you had decided you would." So I went, found the link and watched the video. The video literally made me cry.

Rabbi Weinreb had called the Rebbe's office because he had a lot of questions of faith that were bothering him very much. When asked who was calling, he told the Rebbe's secretary that he was a Jew from Maryland with questions. When that was relayed to the Rebbe, the Rebbe told the secretary to tell the person on the phone that there is a Jew in Maryland who can answer his questions - his name is Weinreb. Rabbi Weinreb was in shock, he had purposely not given his name! Telling the secretary that he was Weinreb, the Rebbe relayed that sometimes it's important to talk to yourself!
The rest of the day, the temptations were pretty much non-existant.

Wednesday around noon, I was driving home from work (I work two part time jobs) and the storm of thoughts hit me again. This time, however, I unfortunately didn't offer up very much resistance at all and the rest is history.

I am extremely thankful to Hashem for the life He gave me. It's a bit strange, but I couldn't be happier than I am right now knowing I have so much support and I know that this time I will b'ezras Hashem succeed beyond my wildest expectations. With the past behind me, I can now continue living a much better life.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU NOTSOSKEPTICAL FOR ALWAYS BEING THERE FOR ME. when i read that you fell i cant begin to tell you how i felt. you're always there for me when i fall, feeling vulnerable, upset, you shoudn't have to deal with those terrible after-emotions, you are pictureperfectdream, the one who helps others. i was so glad to read that you are still happy, and going strong. As i wrote to you before, i admire you, particularly for your honesty, that after so long, with so many people looking up to you, you were ready to admit that we are still human, that after 6 clean months you had a fall, and B''H you have picked yourself up. wishing you only hatzlacha in as you put it 'succeeding beyond your wildest expectation'. you will do it. im sure you will.

SKEPTICAL.
You're one of the first people i met on this site and one of the people that i'm closest to here.The chizzuk and friendship that you continue to give me means too much to describe.I have no doubt that you're going to pick yourself right up and keep going and continue to inspire me and the rest of gye.


KOT. KUTGW.

Keep up the great work today, friend!

Since I've joined this site, people have been asking me why my name is skeptical/what I'm skeptical about.

As mentioned earlier, when I first joined this site, I was in a very different situation. I was deep into my shmutz.

My wife and I had several years of grief tied to this issue. She even left me one night. It was not a pretty picture. Years ago, my wife saved bookmarks in my web browser to bris kodesh type sites and I'm pretty sure to here. I don't think there was a forum here at that point, just articles (Is that possible?). After glancing at the sites, I dismissed them pretty much off the bat.

Towards the end of the summer, last year, she signed me up to GYE's Shmiras Einayim email. I didn't pay much attention to them, occasionally I would glance at them, but for the most part they just got deleted. I felt people were making a bigger deal than they should be and I didn't completely agree with the approaches being taken. At about the same time, my wife started backing off my case. It was kind of like a don't ask-don't tell kind of situation, aside from the occasional snappy comment that I had learned not to pay much attention to. So I continued doing my stuff and my wife tried to act oblivious about it.

One day after reading one of the Shmiras Einayim emails (I have zero recollection of what it said or if it mentioned the forums), I decided to check out GYE again. I signed up, but my overwhelming feeling was one of skepticism. I was skeptical of many of the approaches I was reading about, I was skeptical about myself and whether or not I would actually change from being here. For the first few months (from just before Rosh Hashana until the middle of Chanukah) GYE was just another tab opened in my browser. I would still be doing my other stuff, but would read the forums too. Occasionally, I would call a phone conference and just listen in, not participating at all. Some things made sense to me, other things made me roll my eyes. I had absolutely zero commitment invested.

After a particularly low fall, I decided I had had enough. I was ruining my marriage, my days at work were suffering because so much time was going to this garbage. I just had to stop. That was the most important first step, the commitment, the realization that I couldn't keep going the way I was and that I had to let it go. There were a couple of motivating factors at that point that played a big role in making the decision and I'm not sure how much I want to get into at the moment, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Is any of this helpful to anyone out there? If so, I'll continue in following posts.

Of course its helpful
Definitely
Please continue
2 points are crucial

One that after 6 months, one can still fall
How careful we must be
How strong we must be
And even afterwards, you get up and start again

Second, is about telling wife
I hear your story
Seems she knew somewhat thruout

My situation I'm not sure
20+ yrs of. Marriage
She doesn't really know

How can I just tell her?

Thx so much