...and were back
Link to old post
https://guardyoureyes.com/forum/4-On-the-Way-to-90-Days/218771-The-test-begins-after-you-fall(Sorry ahead of time for the megillah)
(Sorry if this is the wrong forum section, I'm kinda rusty )
Howdy guys. long time no see, right?
So to be perfectly honest, i don't remember when i left exactly, it was some time between may and august of 2014- so we're talking going on 2 and a half years now since i have been an active member. that's a long time in my book. a lot can happen in 2 and a half years...
(ill try to figure out how to link my previous post thread so y'all can get some context)
so what's new? like everything. i got myself a wife and a kid (uber cutie). I got myself a job and started grad school. I also, with the endless and timeless love and help from daddy upstairs, have not masturbated since some time around the last time i was on this sight, making it about 2 and a half years.. i know you'd think i would remember the last time i did it but honestly it was some time before i met my wife, which was October of 2014.
" So.. how do you feel?" well to tell you the truth, -i feel good, i feel great!- but not what I expected. and hopefully i will explain this more throughout my post(s) and it will become clear, to you and me.
So ya, wind the clock back to july of 2014. Still dating, still miserable. after having been dumped by a girl and being told to go see a therapist in the same breath. i kinda hit my "rock bottom". now again, the debate as to whether i am an addict or not is still not resolved, and frankly i don't care what the answer is , but for all intensive purposes, i will refer to myself as a person recovering from severe emotional and attachment issues.
where was I... right, girl telling me to get help. so what did i do the second i landed on the plane home? after flying to a city i knew no one in and having been stranded in some stranger's house for a day after the date not knowing anything or what she's thinking, and then being told it's over and having a long plane ride to fester on that? i got on the phone with my rav and asked for a therapist number.
now to this day i have no idea why i did this. I have been running and avoiding therapist, even going to school to become one just so i could hide in plane site from them ( wow that was silly looking back). and here i am pulling a harry potter and walking right up to Voldemort in the forbidden forest..
and to tell you the truth it was the best decision of my life… well definitely one of them
Again, to the credit of my holy loving father up stairs, i was given the perfect therapist for me. he truly helped me deal with my anxiety and depression, come to terms with the death of my father, and work on healthy relationship skills ie stop getting sucked into being the superman of an unhealthy woman, ie my widowed mother. at first it was dreadful, removing myself from here. but after a while of emotional separation, i found an inner strength and understanding that let me be there for her without having my soul siphoned out by a ghost busters vacuum.
I came to accept the fact that i can't change/save/control people…...all i can do is help my self.
I was finally able to stop hating my brother for being a loser alcoholic bipolar paranoid vegetable of a person.
And i was able to stop hating myself
and then, just like in a movie.....almost,....kinda...well not really, movie are stupid, my wife comes into my life.
now i know the whole "marriage does not help lust and all that jazz, and after two years of marriage i agree with it 95% of the time, truly. but to be honest getting married was the best thing that ever happened to me. it gave me some one outside of myself that i become subservient to. it gave my life full of isolation, distraction, self absorption a purpose, a function. no longer was i waking up just because i can't sleep till 2 pm again, i had to go to work to buy food. i have to take the garbage out not because of dirty looks from my mom, but because i am in the service of my wife. ok you get the point
Another thing marriage has done for me is realize the effect of watching porn for some 12 years has on a person. boy o boy was this a hard one. sex really makes things weird and confusing when your entire sexualty is based on porn and movies. this topic think i'll make a post in the married guys section, sorry :/
but to get back it my shpiel, marriage has taught me that i am at my core a very very very very very selfish person. and that despite my desire to get married for so long while i was single and all of my lofty goals of being selfless and the perfect husband, at the end of the day i am and probably will always be in my core a selfish being.
and the point of marriage is to break that little punk of a person and turn him into a man. a man who is secure enough in his own self to take the rebuke, to take the poignant comments, to take the crying and freak outs that our wonderful wives all do on a regular basis, and they should continue to- and grow from them.
I learned to live with my short comings knowing full well i am working on making them disappear
I learned that i was just a normal person, who is just like everyone else. and that's AOK.
And then i had a beautiful, quite large, smiling baby boy. and that was CRAZY. like i was driving home from the hospital with my wife and the little tyke, and i freaking out how the hell am i going to pay for tuition? where the heck is he going to go to school? how do i stop pedophiles from molesting him? u know the usual questions a father asks on the way home from the hospital.
so now i have a real family to take care of. real kewl, tiring, exhausting, wonderful stuff.
and now here i am, almost two years married, and while yes, i am doing worlds better, the battle is far from over. i have had my slip ups over these two years. twice while home alone i peeked at a porn site. i have had some close call where i almost masturbated, but never did they drag me out of it. I just continued to… what do people here call it? Keep on busing? Caring? O well...
The big struggle that until recently i have been agonizing over to just stop staring and looking at woman. recently i have come to use the surrender attitude to work on that aspect, telling myself " nu that's not for you, you can't afford that anymore." more on that in later post
And of course, sex in general was and still is a big issue, but I'm making progress and will get into that over in the married section.
So now that we are all caught up for the most part. why did i come back?!?
well is kind of started when i told my wife about my problem. yes i did tell her about it. and while is caused a lot of pain, it really was the only way.
So my wife has the the typical female view of " omg porn is so gross how can someone do this"? So suffice it is to say that while at first she was understanding, incidents came up and it became more of an issue.
so after a lot of long talks, i decided to show her this web site, and show her some i my old post, etc. this was helpful but also did not solve the problem. for her it is a big insecurity that if i look at other woman, it must mean i don't love her or think she is special. and it took me a long time to stop blaming myself for this and realise that this is something she needs to be mechazeke and all i can do is stay on the my own path of recovery and hope she will come to trust me. now mind you i am not acting out in our marriage, and still the effects of my past creep in. i shudder in horror in thinking about how i would deal if i was still doing porn and masturbation. i doubt i would still be married. but BH all works out as planned. but having said all of that, it got me coming back to the site. at first just to find a good filter and get webchaver ( ten times better than a filter imnsho). and then to read a post or two. but now i'm back full time. i have a early morning job and when i'm not schmoozing with heroin addicts i'm sitting in front of a computer, and i can only look at my Facebook feed for so many hours at a time
so as the millennials (wait that's me...https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/tNF0wYZm-WtyGhUBcevhbM1jhVq7UoqZkjZECmUIehfL4jp3M2d-IZ8u_pFn3-MZzbiOxWvkuritO5FFfCy4angTfnkywRz0wVHu_xmwDiipN1QnbXzqFMWW3UCXmqWJexKY4cFq) say
TL:DR i've been gone for two and a half year,s but BH i'm back and with a new tude.
So why am i back?
Well, I'm back for two reasons. one is because frankly I don't have many friends and y'all will have to do :-P. and two because i am trying to fight against the side of me that left in the first place. the side of me that was two scared to let another person opinion entire my small mind and cause havoc on my small mind. the part of me that was so nervous about what other people think about me, about what people think about me. in therapy when dealing with depression, the rule of thumb is that if your brain is telling you to do one thing, do the exact opposite of it. well mine is saying " don't post, don't get involved. just lurk in the corner and grab a bag of popcorn and make snide remarks to yourself" so guess what buddy? ITS OPPOSITE DAY!!!
so ya. i'm back. i'm gonna elaborate a lot more in future post about all the stuff i just blabbered about. so if you're confused or lost , fear not. more to come. and of course ask Qs.
I will leave off with a thought of hope.
For 12 years of my life, i thought i would forever be under the cloud of doom known as emotional turmoil. this manifested itself for me in many ways. one of them being playing way too much world of Warcraft, but mostly doing porn and masturbation.
now i stand before you a guy who is free from acting out for over two years, and i didn't do any tricks, magic incantations, never attended a meeting (not saying not to), i just prayed to hashem and began working on myself; working on becoming a better person all around. Working on what is wrong with you, looking deep into yourself and having an honest conversation with yourself and god about what is broken with you and how to fix it
One of the most profound and electrifying strives that helped me was that i made a commitment to stop living life in fear and to bring hashem with me wherever i went, in everything i do.
See, one of my big emotional breakthroughs was that fear is an illusion. things that scare us are not real. the truth is we are always with hashem, and even death is not something to fear because all it is is a one way ticket to him.
dealing with these issues that we face is VERY SCARY, more scary than the boogeyman and the swamp thing combined!! (now that's scary)
but it's just an illusion. and don't ever forget it. and the way to fight fear is to gain an insatiable desire for truth, emes. Because fear is sheker. Fear is garbage.
one has to search truth out at all cost. and that means being honest with oneself . but not just in the ways you might think.
the truth is that no one on this site has the answers for you. only you do. and the only way to find them is to look within yourself and find them. and if you do that and find they are different that those being told to you. then that's GREAT. do it. you will know when you have found the truth. and when you find it, run with it. and don't ever let go
Warning: Spoiler!
