Welcome everyone and a gmar cahsima tova!

Ok I had a terrible day erev rosh hashana. Yes two of my kids were up back to back during the nite, both sick. Then early morning sleichos. I fell at nite. Then after being so tired and exhusted I was a grouch all day which led to more falls as I tried to work for a few hours too.
I guess I should cry a little more when I daven al tevinau lidi nisayn. Because the nite was just a recipe for disaster. As much as I am trying to tackle lust, I think the hardest is when you get curve balls thrown at you and you just get bogged down. I still need help in that area.

One silver linning from my erev rosh hashana fall. I was feeling pretty good about myself this rosh hashana. However after erve yom tov I was a bit broken. I never cried as much as I did this year since my high spirtual bochur days. I really begged hashem to surrender and take over my lust because I can't kill that beast.

Anyhow so far aseres yima teshuva is great. Lets hop I can stay clean till Yom kippur.

one day at a time, one day at a time. yom kippur is in 1000 years for all you know. mashiach will come by then, we have no idea what will happen tomorrow.

if you feel that this is a lust issue, then yom kippur is just another day, this isn't about taharah anymore, this is about having a life. hashem loves you no matter what, you aren't a product of your actions, hashem doesn't love you less because of your sobriety date. if he judged his love based on your days then he is a pretty twisted god, not a god that is full of rachamim.

Thanks shlomo great post.

I have said this before though. I am who I am. I can't totally detach myself from judiasm. So yes its a lust issue. But lust wouldn't bother so much if I wasn't a frum jew. As a goy family values don't matter as much. Why would I be concerned about my wife & kids. Why would I care about being boyal an eishes ish. At the end of the day it has alot to do with being a frum jew. And yes I believe in hashem who doesn't want me to be commit so many issurim. Thats part of why my lust addiction is unmanageable. And thats why making it to yom kippur is important for me.

waydown wrote:


that is true

waydown wrote:


that is shallow minded and not true in the slightest, it's a common mistake though

waydown wrote:


because they are your wife/kids and you love them

waydown wrote:


are you referring to an affair? not sure exactly what this means. if it is an affair then any person with a brain would care, regardless of religious denomination.

waydown wrote:


i hear, but it doesn't mean that you are bad if you don't do gods will. would you say that a down syndrome kid is a bad person when he is driving his parents up the wall? i wouldn't, and what about the parents perspective, do they love him any less? i hope not. well that's ur situation, you are sick getting better, you have a DISEASE. the reason why i don't wanna act out is because my LIFE is unmanageable, the things i did while lusting was crazy, not from a religious perspective. i would say that everyone in the world agrees that staying up till 7:00am watching porn repeatedly is crazy, that having sex with married men is crazy. nothing to do with religion. that's my story at least. but my higher power loves me to pieces and all he wants is for me to be a beacon of his spirituality and will. but he has a hell of a lot of patience, he knows where i have been and how hard it is for me. and he won't smite me for not being sober, he loves me too much.

and while you care about the aveiros involved (if you want to call it that, or think of it that way), it doesn't mean that w/o the aveiros there are no problems. i try to think rationally about it. maybe it's extra motivation for change, although i know that i don't need extra motivation to be sober and also when i think about all the aveiros i have done i just get depressed and sad, which inevitably leads to acting out.

Shlomo,

Some goyim have open marriages and divorce is more accepted as well. Its accepted by many to fall in love with another women as well. Plus I wouldn't have a wife and kids necesarly certainly not at a young age. So I am who I am because I am frum.

Yes I can't deny that these stuff took over my life and made it unmangable. But again thats not my only drive. Part of what made it unmangable is because I am jewish and it ate away on my conciscious as well.

I think rationally one must throw judiasm into the equation. I don't think you can detach the two. I must admit that I probably wouldn't be here if the only unmanagble aspect of it was physical and not religious combined. If a prerequiste for recovery is just to feel you life is unmanagable from a non religious aspect then I don't know that I have reached that feeling yet.

It is an interesting point that you make. On the one hand lusting has nearly destroyed my marriage and made me crazy, not because I am a frum jew, but because lust destroys. On the other hand I also have an addiction to food. It is humiliating and unhealthy and also makes me do crazy things. But it bothers me far less because eating is not an eveira punishable by mita biydei shomayim.

Though I must take exception as well that goyim don't care about their families or that having an affair is acceptable behavior. I thing that is typical religious jewish elitism. While I believe there is an extra mailah for jewish neshamos, that does not make goyim animals.

MBJ,

I totally agree. In fact I hate when my kids say goyim this goyim that. There are lots of fine and upstanding goyim too. I work with many fine upstanding goyim. But 1) Its more accepted and Ok to get divorced. 2) open marriages by some make that acceptable. 3) I probaly wouldn't of married and had kids if I was secular. I'd "live it up" as many do at my work. Yes I suppose once married with kids its time to settle down. (even on a goysha standard) But I probably wouldn't be where I am if not for being a frum yid.
So life is unmanagable partly becuase I am frum.
I'll add one more personal story. I have flirted on-line with goyim. But when I bumped into an OTD jewish married lady and flirted with her it somehow hit a raw nerve. Why? Its the same flirting. But no something about breaching on one of the worse issurim in the torah somehow shook me up. It made my life much more unmanageble. My concious didn't let me eat or sleep normally. (People commented on my wieght loss). That was one of my tipping points. Something about religon did make it more unmanageable.

so your religion makes your life unmanageable? that kinda sux

Yes my religon adds to my unmanigable life. But it doesn't really suck. Becuase my religon tells me whats morally correct. if I wouldn't be religious I wouldn't be so moral. And ultimately a moral life is true happiness.

Shlomo24 wrote:


On my phone....
Catching up.....
I like a lot of this post

waydown wrote:


This one I really like, and he wrote a short one!

waydown wrote:

I don't want to quibble over words and that is not my intent. But I think it isnot religion that makes your life unmanagable, it just makes you more sensitive to the problems with lust. Ithink that is a good thing. Living a life that is frei would not make you happier, just mask the discontent better. When I said before that I was more sensetive to lust because it is an issur, I was not complaining. I wish I was as determined to fix my food problems as I was to fix my lust ones.

The end result is that I see my lust as a burden to carry, but one that gets me closer to Hashem by forcing me to rely on Him on levels I never imagined. It is the sensitivity that my religion provides that forces me to do that. So both my addiction and my religion are huge blessings.

MBJ wrote:


That is an excellent quote. I have seen far too many non-frum, non-jewish people in program to know that as the truth. Life is hard for an addict in his active addiction (and sometimes also non-active addiction). The party, the glamour, the glitz, it fades after a while. I know that if i was a non-jew, i would definitely not be where i am, i would be living an openly gay lifestyle, but my life would suck. even without the aveiros. it is not a fulfilling lifestyle, constantly pursuing the objects of our pleasure and never being able to settle.

You may be interested to learn that non-Jews care about those issues as well.

Also chaver, pls think about this. My experience was that I had to let go of the idea that I needed sobriety for religion. I don't just mean in that in the usual way it sometimes is talked about here. I mean that even if I wasn't religious, I want to live a clean sober life. Maybe friend, the thing you need to surrender is the idea that if you were not a frum Yid, you could have all that lust.