An idea? Block the app store on your phone because just as much as she can and has installed whatsapp, you may also. I think it may be helpful to tell her that you find it to be an inappropriate app and you would greatly appreciate her not putting it on your phone. Maybe install a game for those times when you're bored.

thx - she has my pw to install apps so i can't do anything on my own
im not trustworthy enuf to install apps like games bec. i have a funny way of finding my way to stuff i want.

BH A good Shabbos and a good Sunday!!

Keep asking Hashem for help! we are powerless...

Past few days - I have looked at some explicit material.
I deleted yet one more app (ESPN radio) because it too lead me to twitter, etc.

Please, don't be specific of where you are going. PS Do you have an iPhone? Cause theres a built in filter. Not sure if android has this.

Also, how many more apps will be deleted until you take different step? All of them?

Specific!?
espn radio!?
twitter!?

my goodness...
these are from the "lamed-vav-niks"!

strugglingguy wrote:


Personally I never felt free until I got rid of any possibility of accessing porn. I was working the program and doing kind of OK but I still felt the pull constantly because although I had a filter, I also had a way round it. A difficult and limited way round the filter, but a way nonetheless.

It was only after I completely blocked every avenue of porn that I realised how much it was pulling me, even when I wasn't looking at anything. I was never free.

A few days ago the filter on my tablet was rendered useless because I discovered a way round it. If there's a way round the filter there is no filter. So the tablet had to go. There was no other way. And let me tell you something, it was scary as hell. I felt like I was giving away my breathing aparatus, my lifeline. How will I relax, how will I get the news? But I had no choice. I'm slowly getting over it, but I believe that it's all gonna be fine. I managed for over 2 decades without a tablet, I can manage again.

If there's a way round the filter there is no filter.

So kol hakovod for deleting dangerous apps. The more we give away the more free we can become, because the things we give away are in truth the chains we're so subtlety bound up in.

And to echo what Watson said, I did not regard myself as bein' "free" until I lost the possibility of connectin' to my woman friend. There always was the pull....even when the Skype connection or yahoo messenger was closed, and even when it was removed from the phone altogether, for I knew the potential to bring it back was there. Now that the relationship has been severed, I can experience that feelin' of freedom once again. That 'pull' which the Doc spoke about is hardly there at all.

b'hatzlachah

I agree....but we cant just throw everything away! At some point we have to change internally as well! I know you agree with that and maybe I'm being stupid and too subtle. Just saying that one may think if i go hid in a cardboard box i will be free! (good luck convincing your wife to come with me you, haha!)

dms1234 wrote:


Yeah, but those who expect to grow internally at all while hanging onto the same basic liberties, are fooling themselves and trying to do it the hardest way possible...cuz it seems easier, of course. Real sacrifices in action for sobriety is the only way for 'yearnings of our hearts' to actually be real. All along our path to personal hell, the signposts seemed to be pointing to 'Teshuva Gemurah' and 'Kedushas haBris', etc...but they were just BS cuz we were not taking real actions and making the real sacrifices. So they led us deeper and deeper into confusion and obsession.

No?

dms1234 wrote:


I think there is also a common sense element as to what needs to be given up. But common sense is not that common which is why it's important to have a sponsor.

In this case I didn't ask my sponsor before I gave away my tablet. It wasn't a question of common sense, it was a question of life and death.

Watson wrote:

We may not be able to throw everything away, but we can throw away the things we are certain will do us in. Part of what Dov responded to the good Doctor last week:
Dov

Sounds pretty extreme? I think not. You gotta take care of yourself at all costs.
Sometimes I feel like life is reminiscent of a video game. Every time you get killed, fall off a cliff, etc., you have to go back to square one. But now you know how to avoid that bad guy. And that cliff.
If a tablet will kill you, figuring out a way to avoid it is, although difficult, a brave and important step to take.

I'd like to make an addendum to the video game mashal: just like in the game, if you save it along the way you get to go back to that point instead of all the way back to the very beginning. So too in life as we grow in our struggle, we're constantly saving our game so that when we do fall, we only have to go back a little bit.

it's a good postscript to the mashal, but sadly, it does not fit the nimshal at all times; people have asserted (myself included) that after great strides (perhaps), a fall can take you back to where you were before, and beyond.

That is why real change is necessary.

b'hatzlachah

cordnoy wrote:


Depends where you were going.

If your goal is 90 (or whatever) days of sobriety then of course a fall takes you back to the beginning. If your goal is personal and spiritual growth then a fall will not take you back to the beginning IMO. Yes, if a person begins acting out again they might find themselves just picking up exactly where they left off, but that in itself doesn't undo all the spiritual gains they made in the interim, unless they allow it to.

Life is full of aliyas and yeridas, not aliyas and nefilas.