Dov,

Extraordinarily well written....as you know I have been fighting this battle for a while...have had successes and failures. I have recently come to the conclusion that what I have been doing (posting) is not enough. The first and only time we spoke...I admitted what I had done for the first time to another soul...who really understood...there was a certain epiphany that hit me then...there is a light at the end of this long dark tunnel I have traveled for so many years....

Perhaps it is smokescreens trying to mentally protect the stash...by solely posting...makes me feel good enough that I am fighting...but heart of heart knows can't beat it with half measures....then the dilemma sinks in...do I really need to go to SA....expose myself to a room full of perverts (pun intended)....risk of meeting some one that god forbid knows me....too frightening....back to the safe confines of posting....I have made the decision to dip my tow slightly into deeper water....a phone conference seems like the next step....Dov how do I sign up? Stepping a bit further into the light...hope it's not as scary as I imagine it to be


Sorry for the ramble

For the phone calls guardyoureyes.com/tools/calls

Please see my apologies on your thread.

Hi Dov,

There is nothing personal about this discussion. I am/was not insulted by you. I agree with most of what you write, as is evidenced by the fact that we are apparently in agreement over this, too. The reason I brought it up in the first place is because what you mean and what you write are not always as clear as you may think it is.

When I first joined the GYE forum, there was an active poll asking how GYE members would react if they were recognized in the real world. Believe it or not, though I didn't vote in the poll, my answer was that I'd be mortified. There was no way, no how that I wanted to be identified. It was way too scary a thought for me.

There are lots of guys on GYE today who are of the same opinion I held when I first joined. And it is for them that I am most concerned about with the way you and others sometimes write. They come to GYE, get some tips and start to work on themselves. Sometimes it takes them a few tries in the beginning before they really get going as they are learning new tools. Sometimes they actually do pretty well, but then for whatever reason (complacency, rationalizing, being triggered, etc.) they fall. Sometimes instead of getting the support they need to get back up, stay connected, keeping on being honest, etc., they are being told, "See? You can't do it alone! Are you ready to finally try to get real?" For someone who is petrified to meet anyone, this is poison, for he is being told that the ONLY solution is to go to meetings which is totally out of his element. He may as well just give up now!

For someone who has already shown his face in association to this stuff by having gone out to meet women, while the idea of an SA meeting may be scary to him, perhaps it's not really such a huge leap. But for the guy who had been perusing stuff in the comfort of his home and would never dream of showing his face in association to it, it's quite different. Maybe that's what Rabbi Dr. Twerski is suggesting.

You mentioned in your last post that getting open and staying open is one of the main things. Why don't we encourage guys to continue to start and maintain real relationships on GYE, even with their usernames? Let them get comfortable with the real people on the other end of the computer and be open and honest, just as I did, and maybe one day they'll feel comfortable enough to meet. Let's assure them that there is still a lot of hope out there, because there are real, live people very much like them out here, who really care.

I really hope you read this.

First, the poll was "if you were recognized in the real world" - what does going to meetings have to do with that? Nothing. People who are so untrustworthy of themselves (cuz they swear - and end up masturbating again anyway!) of course indeed find it very hard to trust that they could go to a meeting of real perverts like them - even meeting other frum 'real' porners and masturbaters like them there - and not be jeopardizing their anonymity in the community at all. GYE is not really where anonymity is found...it's 'unknown', not 'anonymous'. 'Anonymous' (as in AA, SA, NA, etc.) is anonymous because we keep identities within the fellowship and do not share the names or identities of anyone we meet in the meetings with anyone not going to meetings. We do not tell our wives the mechanchom, rabbomin, doctors, and kolel guys we just met in our SA meeting. We do not tell our wives or anybody anything at all about who is there, ever! 'Anonymity' of 12 step groups is of course not 'anonymity from the people in the meeting'! That's just 'unknown'. Like GYE, and it works for some - but that is not the legacy of AA. It's just not. It's something valuable, maybe, but very different.

And people come to (real) meetings and remain anonymous every day!

Ask the frum guys in SA meetings in Montreal, Monsey, Borough Park, Baltimore, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Monroe, Beit Shemesh, Chicago, Miami, and Yerushalayim. They will tell you (if you are safe). Meetings are a lot safer than people think they are - even for frum people (who are sadly often not the least curious and talkative bunch). I have met over 300 frum people in person at a time in SA Shabbosos twice a year, where many of the wives are even present for the conference as well. There is davening, a sefer Torah, seudos together, and shrtreimels all over...we do not get 'found out' on the outside. We do not drop dead from shock when we meet each other. And the experience has ALWAYS been helpful - often life-altering. For we all have these fears, and they are just, plain silly.

The fear should rather be for our acting out and ourselves, not for our meeting 'real live recovering perverts like us in recovery venues. For we eventually get caught with our porn, dirty emails, secret phone calls and chats, anyway. We get caught with our sperm on the laundry. Whatever. It may take 20 years of 'great fun', but the truth grows out of the ground, you know. I think the sweet guy desperately masturbating in the corner and getting back to his frum wife, kids, and tikkun klali, can learn this before it is too late: we are actually the worst keepers of our secrets. It's good to know. I love that sweet, suffering guy. I am him, too.

But you'd rather protect them and tell them none of that is true, just to keep them here? If they hear that stuff and 'give up' or 'run away', then I personally doubt the issue matters that much to them anyhow, man. 'Kol mi sh'ein bo deyah assur l'rachem olov' must have some practical application! I think it is for the guy who cannot be told his real options because they seem scary. I say let him alone with his beard, peyos, and porn. He (or she) is obviously not ready for change yet cuz it doesn't hurt nearly enough. But protect him from facts about options they have for getting more? Why?

And no, I have never posted that meetings are needed by everyone to get real or to really stop or to really recover, and I have never even told anyone that he is an addict in the first place.

skeptical wrote:


Please tell me when I ever written or implied that the only solution for a struggling person is to go to meetings? Find it please and let me know here.




I have suggested this very thing many, many times, here on GYE. It's not my fault you have not read those posts. (Frankly, I wouldn't read them either! )

It seems to me that what is going on here is this:

In a few cases here and there I have posted to specific guys in the context of their posts, that meetings would be a great option for them given what's going on with them and that things are not working yet even though they have opened up a lot here. I have occasionally suggested it to them as part of a process - knowing that there is shock-value in it; because the fellow might be very scared of the entire idea (who wouldn't, really?). Through this discussion, many guys finally realize that his fear/shame is actually far smaller an issue than his sexual acting out is...and that people actually are doing this 'meeting' thing and not dying. This is a necessary shock - and yes it is practically always a shock. So?

Again, I have never to my recollection EVER told guys that here on GYE that the only way to get real for them is to go to meetings (what they call here 'face-to-face' meetings) as a general necessity for honesty and recovery. But if - as you say - I have somehow been misunderstood that way here, I refuse to take responsibility for other people's misunderstandings and assumptions. Especially since it is probably only in discussions like this one which are not practically relevant for the guy himself anyhow, that I am drawn into making statements that sound more global...which you are probably referring to in the first place. Gevalt. Do you hear what I am saying here?

What are you exactly suggesting I do different? Please tell me and I will promise you that I will consider it.

I will use BLUE for my responses, Doc:

Dr.Watson wrote:


Of course it's taken well! We are here to learn and grow together, I hope. I know I am...

Your plight is very common. I think that you may not be an addict at all, and are coming up against a wall of some people who have only a hammer in their toolbox, so suggest to you that you must be an addict and therefore you must need the 12 steps and therefore you must admit you are powerless and that your life is unmanageable". But who says? Why not do what Jews have always done? Open up fully honestly with a trusted Rav, mentor, expert (ie., a good therapist) and hide nothing about the facts of your behaviors since day one. Get it all out there with a safe, trusted person who is wise, and then go from there. Jews have always done this. Even the tzet'l kotton (#13)recommends this. "k'sui chato'oh" has nothing to do with being honest with safe spiritual advisors about all the whole truth and getting help. If it did, then you would be saying something equally absurd as the (good) point you are making about your 'needing to get worse in order to get better': namely, that if the problem involves a sin, it precludes the option of getting help from another real person. Get me? I hope you understand that.

Get real help, if you have a real problem. If the help you are getting is not working, then it is probably not because the help you are getting isn't right enough - but because the help you are getting is not real enough. Look, you are saying that you are doing the posting-thing here and yet not stopping, and unsatisfied with that. Fine. Then if your problem does not upset you enough for you to actually open up with anyone real to get help that is more real, then that means your pain is not great enough.

And I am not saying 'you need to have more pain from worse acting out'. Please! Rather, I am just avoiding whining and instead simply accepting the fact that this issue simply does not bother you enough to get realer help, whatever that help may be. And I am not referring to 'the 1st step' or to 12 steps help, at all. And as far as I am concerned, that's fine. I am not a bleeding heart sperm-saver guy judging you as a sinner and not good enough to stop, or anything like that. It's your choice, period and I do not judge your morality, b"H.

Finally, about your "Oh shut up, there are no emotional aspects of it," statement. I just want to let you know that it is an experienced fact that many people including myself have discovered a strange thing. We are no dummer or smarter than you are - but we found that it was not clarity of the emotional issues and pain that brought us to sobriety. Rather, it works the opposite way around. Sure, pain is what motivated us to get into recovery - but the true extent of our self-lying, loneliness, self-loathing, hatred of others, doubt in G-d, fear of life, worship of women, and love of porn and fantasy never became known to us until a while after we quit using it completely.

So I am not moved or surprised by your contention that you have "no emotional aspects of it!" You - whether or not you are an addict - are still in it...even if you happen to get a few weeks here or there clean. You are still inside the box, and it usually takes good a while out of the box to begin realizing how sad and silly we really are, sitting in there.

One day at a time - today is a new day - BH I am healthy....
Wishing everyone well.

Thanks for sharing!!!

KOMT!!!

Fell twice in the past couple days... donated money to gye, sponsored someone on a 90 day journey, texted my gye friend and might join taphsic

That's amazing! Keep it up!

Ani Nishba (I swear), beshaim Ad---- (in the name of G-d) that until __April 1st [Fill in the end date we decided above]
If I have a fall, which is defined by one of the following things:
Either
(a) I intentionally motzi zera livatala (masturbate) while fully awake
or
(b) I intentionally obtain in any way adult sexual material of any sort, digital or printed (including magazines, DVDs, etc.)
or
(c) I intentionally go to any websites or web pages, pictures, videos, chats or forums, for the purpose of viewing adult sexual content (including any type of adult oriented images, drawings, videos, audio, or erotic reading material) and I actually viewed or listened to inappropriate content
or
(d) if I initiate contact with - or respond positively to - any woman other than my wife for a sexually related purpose (including by e-mail, chat, webcams, etc.)
or
(e) if I partake of any illicit sexually oriented services of any kind (including calls to adult phone lines, massages)
Then, if I called my partner, sponsor, or a fellow GYE member who knows me, and I told him that I feel I want to fall, and I stayed on the phone with him for at least 5 minutes. [Fill in Distraction 1 that we decided above]
Or/And . I did exercise for 15 minutes (sit-ups, push-ups, jumping jacks, etc). [Fill in Distraction 2 that we decided above. This is optional]
Or/And went on walk [Fill in Distraction 3 that we decided above. This is optional]
within the 90 minutes proceeding my fall, then
within the next 36 hours (or other time frame) I will _ I will take a lukewarm-cold shower _______________________ [Fill in 'Normal Knas' that we decided above].
for each day (or 3 hour period) in which I fall.
If I did not do any (or all) of these things in the 90 minutes proceeding my fall, then
within the next 36 hours (or other time frame) I will email a Rebbe of mine and tell him what I did [Fill in 'Heavy Knas' that we decided above].

Some disclaimers to say immediately after making the shvuah (Toch Kidai Dibur) :
• If I had to do [‘Normal Knas'] more than 3 times, the shvuah should no longer be binding on me.
• If I had to do [‘Heavy Knas'] even once, the shvuah should no longer be binding on me.
• If I had a fall without remembering that I made this shvuah, I will only do [‘Normal Knas'].
• If I am honestly not sure that I had a fall, I will not have any KNAS.
Advanced Tip: If you find a specific situation to be a major stumbling block (for example, if you found a loop-hole in your filter which is tempting you to fall more than anything else) you can use the TaPHSiC shavuah to help you make this particular loop-hole not even an option in your mind, by adding the following words in bold (at the end of the Shavuah above):
If I did not do any (or all) of these things in the 90 minutes proceeding my fall,
[Or if I use ‘a given loop-hole’ to fall],
then within the next 36 hours (or other time frame) I will email a Rebbe of mine and tell him what I did [Fill in 'Heavy Knas']
By making the consequences of your particular stumbling block into a ‘heavy knas’ regardless of what you did before falling, it makes this particular method of falling no longer an option in your mind.

strugglingguy


This is my favourite part But why do you have to only call a partner, sponsor or GYE member when you near a fall? How about even when you're happy?

ok - ur saying bottom line that accustoming myself to calling someone randomly will help me to call when I need to (I have heard that svara before and it makes sense)

ok il take u up on very offer

imho looks like you are heading in a GOOD direction.
KUTGW.

Hatzlacha in all things GOOD!
chaimyakov

So some things happened today this afternoon after a class and a shiur:
a) I wanted to look at stuff so I told my friend and together we helped myself move on. a victory
b) Later on I went to the couch with my phone which BH has NO capability of accessing anything - but I still tried to do so but to no avail
c) Then later doing work, etc. I got urge and looked at stuff - it lead to videos and a fall.
what lead to it? home alone. doing schoolwork for my wife. havng my own work - stressed about those things. my wife not feeling well and dealing with that, etc.
how did i feel afterwards? good, i guess. some of the videos turned me off - irnocially that happens - we want to look but then we dont. u guys experience tat? talk to me.
one guy told me I succeeded and I guess not to let my failure ruin my success....
what du guys think?
Also I guess I have to check my Taphsic to see what I need to do for that - altho i never actually took a verbal shvua so maybe I am ok....