How about a link to the thread silentbattle...

TrYiNg wrote on 29 Dec 2009 14:40:
No you wont. Because youll marry the guy who will marry you for you just being you. Alot of things that are being written here are being written by addicts. People who sufer from lust addiction. So this isnt really for you. iyh youll find your right zivug and hell LOVE you and not lust you so you wont have to deal with these problems. But honestly trYiNg i dont think its healthy for you to read this thread. Not because im afraid of you seeing the truth, but rather because youll walk away with the wrong outlook. Not all men are like us. And hopefully we could all come to the day that we will really love our wives for who they are. This in truth is what we are striving for. Does that sound good?? if you read threads here and there youll see that gys are much happier because they are starting to appreciate their wives more. And their wives a re happier too. So in truth our goal is not to think about all the outside factors but rather the true inner beauty.

ark321 wrote on 26 Dec 2009 17:45:

_{Dear TrYiNg, please read this message...}

TrYiNg wrote on 29 Dec 2009 14:40:


I think that's pretty unfair.

We are guys. We're addicts as well. We struggle. We know that you struggle as well, we respect that. But realize that you are wired differently. Those phrases that offended are sort of locker room addict speech - we're speaking and trying to understand our worst sides in order to control them. I afraid to get into to this - mods, you have my carte blanche - but attraction as part of a total picture is both healthy and necessary. We've taken it far too far - all Guard meant was from an addict perspective - but does love mean you'll many Danny Devito if you're hung up on a tall guy? The looks are a tofal, anymore then showering on alternate weekends. That lets the love develop - and continue through seven pregancies. Chazal teach us - It is forbidden for a man to marry a woman (via an agent) without seeing - perhaps he will ultimately be disgusted by her. And chazal also teach us - A woman eternally has beauty in the eyes of her husband - and Rashi adds - even if she is ugly.

We're addicts. We need to go into the deep closets of our souls and do housekeeping. We're trying to learn not to objectify women. We're trying to learn to be better.

But this also has to be a safe for us, as it does for you. Frankly, of course a frank discussion of sex addiction is going to make a girl nauseous. We've got to deal with it anyway. Or we can just keep it in the closet and keep ruining our lives and the lives of our families and eventually end up int he mainsteam jewish media....

If you're disgusted that we're addicts - we'll, you are kind of in the wrong place.

Imagine if a bunch of girls were discussing anorexia, and some guy wandered in and said "you girls make me sick! Don't you know how awful that is!".

Of course it's about love. But chitzonis always comes into the equation and we're trying to learn on to balance it. I mean no disrespect here, but this is guy talk. And what we say is meant in guy language. You're not going to get it how it's not a contradiction to still having the goal of being kind and loving husbands.

And IY"H you will marry a fine ben-torah whom you will totally trust. Let's all grow together, and not condemn each other. 

PS: Love comes in different forms. The posuk says that Michal loved Dovid, and then asked to marry him.

Beautiful K-Nesh. And so true. Kinda of what i was trying to say, but of course you said it much better and learer.

Men are all the same, like Chinese people

ha, except that, to a certain extent, it's true. For both (chinese people share a culture that's very different from our own). And the link to the new thread is here: rehab-my-site.com/guardureyes/forum/index.php?topic=1444.0

The way I look at it it's like asking if a body building guy has less of a problem lifting 500 pounds than a puny, scrawny guy? And the answer is they both have a problem. But the body building guy has more tools to do something about it. If he is having a problem then certainly the other guy is having a problem.

On the other hand, if they both can't do it then what's the point of having muscles?
On the other hand, maybe it only seems like a 500 pound weight but it is really 100 pounds.
Or maybe the scrawny guy has the right attitude and to him it is only a 10 pound weight.

I think the bottom line is, though, that in this day and age being attracted to your wife is very important. The typical guy needs it, shouldn't deny it and should even be uncompromising in attaining it.

None of which is to say we all need to work on shmiras eynayim and all that. But if you have an attractive wife you have more potential to deal with these issues than someone who does not. On the other hand, sometimes Hashems matches the guy with the pretty wife with a shallow mind or other chesoron. In the end, zeh l'umas zeh. Things equal out.

"I got a great idea" -read in a exited childish voice
"how about we post what the answer our rebbe told us when we asked HIM this question" -continue in childish voice
"I mean we asked about all her other flaws, quirks, and annoyances.... why did we pasken this one from in internet thread"  ?? hello??

tzafon wrote on 15 Jan 2010 04:50:
Even though logically what your saying is true, in actuality, for someone with a distortion of perception - due to addiction or the like, there is very little difference between the two.
It's more like 100 lbs vs 105 lbs.
Very little difference in potential even to start with - even before things "equal out".

Dear Bochrim. I am married and my wife looks like a million dollars. I have just started a clean streak last week while my wife was overseas. Today she returned home and today was my most difficult so far. The Gemora teaches that the yetzer should be brought to the beis hamedrash not to the chupa. Sorry guys but the only solution is Torah.

Well, I for one agree with this fellow, that true love beats the heck out of looks w/o true love. Mutual love also seems to naturally grow out of living together with my wife while I am free of the bonds of lust. The prettiest thing I can ever see in my wife is that she truly loves me (not necessarily approves, but loves me) totally and unconditionally.
But by the same token, while the answer to living free of the tyranny of lust must be in the Torah, saying that "Torah is the answer" is ikkar chosair min hasefer, just as saying that "seeing the beauty in my wife is the answer to a better marriage" misses the point. The beauty can be there - and so can her love and devotion - but as long as lust is in me I cannot see it. I could neither see, nor use the answer that is in the Torah, either.
Thank G-d I am sober today!!

And I gotta be honest with you, I have tried the Torah tavlin and sometimes its not enough... Maybe it is just because I'm an addict or maybe because I'm so farshmutzed... but either way, I can learn for 3 hours straight and then fall 20 mins later...

habaletaher wrote on 18 Jan 2010 19:13:
You know, I really can say I have had the same experience. So the next step would be to say "It refers to a general lifestyle of Torah, which will gradually cause those things to fall away", but I have not seen that either.
I guess I don't know what the real pshat is. But I believe B'emunah sheleimah, that the best way to solve the Y"H problem is to learn a blatt. Even if I can almost be meid that I haven't noticed it to date.
Interestingly, some of the worst tekufos in my learning had little or no falls/slips, whereas some of my best tekufos in learning were full of uchy things.
I just don't know what to say.

With Hashem's help, I do know what to say. I hope...

Chazal tell us that "derech eretz kodmo laTorah". Though this statement means many things at a historical perspective (referring to the years before mattan Torah) as well as a personal one (middos of a person), as is explained in sforim, it has special meaning for me, an addict.

On a simple and personal level, it draws a true and useful separation between serving Hashem by knowing His Will (Torah), and being a healthy human being - also presumably His Will. "Choviv odom sh'nivre'u b'Tzelem" is for the human being as he was intended to be, not just for the jew. That is called "M'daber". A Jew is a higher madreigo than M'daber and is who the tanna is talking about in the next piece when he tells us "chavivin Yisrael sh'nikre'u bonim laMokom!"
Let me back up a bit. Many have been shocked about and damaged by the horrible behavior of some frum yidden. If Torah is matzil umeigin and machzir lemutav, then why doesn't their learning/teaching torah and davening to Hashem keep them kosher? The answer of "well, there are always bad apples" was always fine for me - until I saw my own horrible behavior in addiction. Soon that answer just didn't 'cut it' any more...I was vexed: "why isn't it working?"
The s'forim (Nefesh Hachayim and others) tell us that before learning Torah we need to remember yir'as Shomayim, Ahavas Yisroel, the mitzvoh of Talmud Torah, that we intend to bring what we learn into action, and to do t'shuva for our aveiros as best we can.

Many have answered the embarrassing and upsetting problem by figuring that in one way or another, those people just didn't have these hakdomos to their learning. In other words, that they did not have Fear of Heaven and love for their fellow jew, did not intend to actually do what they were learning, and carried their aveiros with them into the beis hamidrash. Nu. Sounds possible...but it is a tall order, no? How many people do all that before learning? Why aren't we all so screwed up? ...maybe we are? But I digress.

It seems to me that the issue of "what's missing?" is much more basic and is underscored most clearly the frum addict!

It seems to me that the hakdomos to learning Torah for any yid have a common denominator: reality check. Hashem is the Master, so we ought to (OK, "must") do His Will. We (all) have strayed from His Will and we need to admit that fact to ourselves. People do not generally excel at following orders - and here we are opening the rulebook right in His face again, and reading from it! (You'd think the malochim would be saying, "Oh, boy. : There they go again!") Who are we individuals? We are each another piece of this  corporation called K'nesses Yisroel, whether we like it or not (see ch 32 of Tanya if you are so inclined), so all we do is in that context. Fear of Heaven should be a milsa zutresi: for crying out loud, HE'S RIGHT HERE!!. One would think it is just natural for a yid to be aware of that and more acutely so when preparing to face His Will (learning Torah).
How can we not at least try to do a little t'shuvah and then say "we want to keep this stuff, so here we go!" before learning? OK so far?
What does it say about us that/if we don't?
Something is missing in our accurate perception of reality.
It's a bit like psychosis on a very small scale. For jews, this is a lack in our basic soundness of mind. In other words: Our sanity.

For whatever it's worth, I think that on a personal level Derech Eretz is basically sanity, or "soundness of mind". What the RMB"M might refer to as basic "cholo'ei hanefesh", and deals with in his Shmoneh P'rakim.

An addict is basically nuts. How can we risk so much, ignore so much, live so duplicitously, cause (and tolerate) so much pain - and for so long? And we act lust as though everything is just peachy in shul, at home, in the b'smedrish, etc. Our priorities and thinking obviously need some major adjustments, to say the least.
We need some manner of recovery.

And the second step aptly reads: "...to restore us to Sanity." For that, in my opinion, is our real problem.
Our problem is not in our "Torah", per se, but rather in how we approach our "Torah". Our problem is the Derech Eretz - the sanity -  that sets the table for Torah to actually work in us.

So consider quitting banging your head against the Torah and look into yourself for the answer, instead. The most basic problem with the myself and the addicts who I know best isn't a specifically jewish nor a Torah problem, at all. We are a bit cracked. And the Torah doesn't even begin, for a shoteh.
We need His help, and we need it now.

Make any sense at all to anyone?