@skeptical right, but I suppose he has to be profficient in addictions or so long as we work out the issues it doesnt matter?

I think Twerski writes that he must be good in addictions

Definitely would be a good idea.

Thanks for your help, think I'll wait until I try the 90 day thing until after speaking with therapist then.

endofmytether wrote:


The reason i ask is first of all to help you realise that you are extremely blessed to be married, married to a lovely girl as you put it, got married young, have 3 kids etc. Not everyone has these things. I'm sure you realise this already but it never hurts to remind oneself. It's important to count blessings in life.

Secondly, if you find your own wife attractive then there's no real reason to look at other girls. Personally, i find that very very hard. However great one's wife is, a guy might find himself attracted to other girls, possibly comparing them to his wife, possibly wishing he had married them instead. But your wife is perfect for you. She has been given to you by HKB''H because she is perfect for you. But it's human nature to want more. Hashem gives us a wife, one woman to be with, and only one woman. It's Hashem's world and He has decided that we should only have one woman and we want more. What does it all come down to...

Ego. It's human nature to be grasping whether it's women or money or whatever. We always want more. But that's our ego. we have to let go and let G-d. trust in Him to give us everything we need, and believe that we don't need any more. When we have something, Hashem has given it to us, and when we have lust, that's from Hashem also. If we feel a lack, that feeling was given to us by Hashem for a reason. If we let go and trust that our lives are right, our lives are perfect and they are exactly what we need, then we are well on our way to recovery and living our lives right.

I'm talking to myself here. I think that stress causes most of my falls. I feel stressed sometimes, and why should I, mighty and important I, have to feel any stress in life!?! So I self-medicate with porn to get rid of the stress that I'm entitled to live my life without. Nonsense! I'm not entitled to live a stress-free life. Hashem knows what's right for me and at times He gives me stress. I need to accept the stress, embrace the stress, thank Hashem for the stress. Of course, maybe He wants me to relax in a more constructive way, but just because He's given me stress doesn't mean I have to get rid of it the quickest way I can (porn).

So it is with everything. Hashem gives us many challenges in life and we have to accept them. Of course if we can deal with them in a good way that's fine (and if you think therapy will help you, by all means get therapy) but we shouldn't try to resist the situations we're in, we shouldn't try to fight against them and change them any way we can. Hashem is our all-knowing, all-benevolent father, and sometimes we just need to accept what He gives us.

The 90 thing is a very short-term motivational tool to get started. Therapy means you need real help (which you might) why aren't you willing to try something in between?

I also gather you are trying to get out of working on it (I may be wrong). you are asking others to decide what you need. you'd like to see a therapist - presumably so the therapist can solve your problem (i realize I'm making assumptions, but this is how it sounds to me). Then you decide to try 90 days which isn't really a tool at all.

I have to go, and may not post until next week, but think about what makes sense for you. Don't be afraid to do some work. There are no shortcuts. oh, and please forgive me if I misjudged you, I am short on time, and have to go. we can "talk" more later.

hatzlacha rabbah!

Welcome aboard!
You've been doing good today.

the 90 days is good as an assist, but the commitment is your primary goal.

A therapist, like was stated above, would probably be a good idea.

b'hatzlachah

I always get a bit nervous when the opening poster doesn't reply. I hope I haven't upset you.

Dear 'endoftether' guy,

Nice username. Really.

OK, that having been said, I want to say this:

Good G-d, man. I feel your pain so deeply and I hope with all my heart that you put yourself out of your misery by getting yourself to a good therapist as soon as possible, my friend.

Your situation is so not ready for 12 step recovery, yet. You may benefit from reading the SA White Book, though. And I would not read anything past the sections called "Step Zero" and "Step One". The rest of the book will probably seem very nice, but will not help you. You are not ehere yet, brother.

Opening up to a therapist about your feelings and thoughts will help you become ready for recovery, if you need it at all. You may not be an addict at all. Most guys here are not addicts, you know.

You do think way too much, though, as many of us do. But really, you have already built a wall and a set of coping mechanisms that are very toxic. You will hurt this wife of your terribly if you do not get help, and there will be other people hurt, too.

Please chill with the figuring out and thinking. It has not and is not helping you. And please get a good therapist. And don't waste any time trying to get him or her to like you - just tell the therapist 100% all the truth without holding anything at all back for shame c"v. Please do this. You are worth it and so is your wife and family.

No need to wait till it is 'convenient'...or until it is too inconvenient not to wait any more.

Hatzlocha, chaver!

@gibbor120

Perhaps you misunderstood me, I am willing to work very hard to fix myself, I just want to know the right path!

@Cordnoy

Thanks for the tip!

@DrWatson

I am not so easily hurt

@Dov, it seems like your words carry weight around here so I read your response a couple of times. I appreciate your warm words and caring advice.

Can you clarify a few things for me?

You
, this sounds like I definitely need a therapist.

You then


1) Does this mean that perhaps I dont need help and reading the SA white book will be enough? What is the point of the therapy if I dont need recovery?

2) Where do you see that I think too much? (You are probably right)

3) What kind of therapist would you advise, a sex addict therapist or a general one?

Thanks a lot for your time and response!

endofmytether


You definitely need some sort of "recovery". The question is how to go about it.
The point of therapy is to help figure yourself out.

endofmytether


There are general therapists who happen to specialize in addictions.

there are therapists posted on this site that would help, but yes, one that specializes in sexual issues

endofmytether wrote:


Ditto here to the guys who responded to you on #2.

Asking the question that "maybe then reading the White Book might be enough?" shows you still want to do this all by yourself in your own head. I understand 100%! Because I spent over 20 years there sweating and crying it out till I found something else that actually works. So, if you have the patience to read it, here is my best shot be"H at clearing up a few basic biggies - not being any smarter than you, but just becs I've been through the murk (in quintuplicate!) myself:

This may seem harsh and opinionated, but I suggest that the main reason most of us are where you are right now in this lust-mess, is this: our very best thinking all on our own. It is by far the main thing that got us here - not our penises, hormones, the porn, the 'accursed internet monster'...none of 'em of course got up and attacked us. Our choices to use them (and use them we did!) was developed, complicated, and perpetuated by our private, secret, 'ingenious', sick thinking.

The secrecy (we prefer to call it 'privacy') that you and we all painstakingly maintained, has made it as easy as possible for us to continue doing the very same things: porning, masturbating, rolling in the terrible pain of the (private, secret) shame...all as we get lonelier and lonelier. It sucks. No wonder many of us us feel so liberated inside when we finally start posting here - even though most of us are just using fake names! Our terrible loneliness is finally being broken! It's a mechayeh, isn't it?

But breaking the loneliness is of course NOT the solution itself. It is just opening the bathroom door - and yet not walking out. "Hey! You still can't learn Torah and daven in there, buddy, yer still in the bathroom!" ...But the door is at least open! 'Walking out' is done by taking the actions of recovery, itself.

That - not more information - is what makes the difference. Even Torah information will not save us. Now, how to walk out of that bathroom...hmmm...

The guys who wrote the SA White Book and AA's Big Book all discovered that we cannot think our way into right living - we can only live our way into right thinking. There are real steps that are necessary for us to just do. They are not done in the mind, but are actions. If we do them, we get better. If we just think about them, we are not doing them, and nothing happens over the long term. Zero. Back in the bathroom.

I am not sober today because of my intelligence. In fact, my intelligence is what got me twisted into a sweet, frum, sincere yiddeleh with a raging porn and sex problem that just got worse and worse over the years! [Please refer to my post called The Nuclear Reset Button for more on that topic. Thank you. :) ]

The only reason I am sober is because I had hurt enough to be machniyah myself to reality, accept it, and chose to take action accordingly. 'Leiv nishbar' does not mean 'being sad'. Rather, 'leiv nishbar' means hachno'oh to the painful and often not-pretty, Truth. It is the best state to be in, as the s'forim say, and it is not sad, at all! In 12 step recovery we have a word for that state: Surrender. It's beautiful. And for an addict, it works a whole lot better than pretending we will eventually win the romantic battle against the yetzer hora or the internet or against whatever we are wrestling with. As the Kotzker used to say, "When all you do is wrestle with muddy people, you get very, very dirty even if you win."

And even though I have none of that pain any more at all, I am still a leiv nishbar (on most days). My hachno'oh allowed me to start setting my 'genius' aside 16 years ago and actually take direction from other sick people like me who were sober and to actually do the work. That is, to work the 12 steps with other real live sex drunks like me. And I am better for it, one day at a time, and so is every department of my life, b"H. And if I can let Hashem take care of me and be sober today, then anybody can do it. That's why I am here on GYE working my 12th step with you (sharing recovery with a new person) instead of on my knees desperately masturbating myself to a sweet naked image or with some hooker in my car - as so may here (and not yet here) are, right now.



Now, I never said 'you are an addict, endofmytether' (I do not even know your name, so how would I address you, anyhow? ) and certainly not everybody needs the 12 step Programs to recover. But going to a therapist is one of the ways to find out if you do and to get help, in general. I hope that you do that be"H. You are a sensitive and intelligent guy whose heart is certainly in the right place - you will eventually do what you must to save your marriage, sanity, good life, etc.

But I suggested to you in particular, endofmytether guy, to go to a therapist because your history and writing tells me that you are not ripe for recovery right now. That is not an insult at all. I am allowed to be honest, right? I believe that if you went to a 12 step recovery meeting right now in person, it would be very brave...but I feel that you would quickly think your way right out of the room. 'These guys are too sick, too good, too old, too weird, too nice, too frum, too goyish, I think I figured it out and can quit this and do it on my own, or I am different than him or them, etc.' You are looking for ideas to enable you to fix yourself. And that will not change because you wish it to be so, or agree with me. This is just the way you are, and the way you have been for many years already. It's not changing so fast, and certainly not on your own, chaver.

It doesn't work that way. As Chaza"l say: "ein chavush matir atzmo mibeis ha'asurim." Relying completely on your own brain to guide your recovery is exactly putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. It will not work. If it could, then you woild never have gotten this screwed up in the first place! Right?

So. Hatzlocha doing the right thing. Post here as much as you like, it is a very good thing for many of us to do. But my heart tells me clearly that you will find the menucha you seek with any 'information' you will get from GYE, reading the Torah, or lehavdil from reading the SA White Book. As many good points that you have, you are clearly still a mess, quite frankly. But you will find your menucha in taking real actions of change and growth with real people. Do it, for a change.

...get it? "do it - for a change"...heh?? Cute, no?

- Dov

As always Dov has taken the time to write a full and thoughtful post. Thank you.

I just have a further question to ask, cos I'm still a bit confused by your first post. You say you have 'a problem' that you want to change, but you say you're not so bothered by porn and masturbation. I assume that means you are bothered by them deep down but you've become a bit desensitised to them, but I don't really want to make assumptions. Can I ask you to clarify, what do you see as the problem?

Also, apart from therapy, we'd love to read your progress through recovery here on GYE, so please stick around and keep on posting.

@DrWatson

My masturbation addiction does not bother me so much because it does not control my life. Say I masturbate every night in the shower, it does not affect my day so much. Porn addiction I go through different times when at times it doesn't attract me and sometimes it does, but I could have lived with acting out on it occasionaly although it might be getting slightly worse.

What I cant live with is constantly seeing girls on the street without checking them out and counting every piece of eye candy as an asset! I cant live knowing I cant trust myself to behave like a respectable human being in front of girls, such as walking in underwear.

I appreciate that do be rid of my big problem it probably also necessitates getting rid of the porn and masturbation problem as well, but they aren't the reason I have reached out!

I will hopefully update all of you and keep taking advice from you all, I am in Israel so the timing is a bit wierd but I will try my best. Thanks for your help!