I'm brand new here. Married 20+ years. Was never attracted to my wife from literally day one. I married her because she was easy to talk to, intelligent and kind-hearted. I was also a BT, and frankly felt pressured to get married. I'm still shocked that it was all over and done in eight dates. Especially since I never felt sure.

Hard to make this long story short, but the lack of attraction has never gone away. The running question in my life is if I could do it over again would I marry her? In retrospect, I think the answer to that is, No I would not marry her or into a situation like this again.

Hashkafically, that is the wrong answer, of course. Hashem guides our steps and gives us who we are meant to have. Especially if she is good-hearted and certainly helped you grow in ruchnius. Yes, but emotionally the issue remains.

And it's not just theoretical. Every time she goes to the mikvah I have this struggle again. I'm a recovering masturbator, maybe 20 years. I've been in and out of online porn browsing for about 10 years. Sometimes -- most of the time -- it is the only thing that gets me to be with her in bed. The times I've gone cold turkey (for as much as 6 months to a year) have been some of the most tense in our marriage, because a woman does not want to feel rejected like that. That's the short of it. I welcome comments and questions.

Welcome to the forum, tzafon.  Thankyou for posting.

Stick around!

I think as you work on this ma*** addiction, things with your wife will immensely improve.

And, it's not just about whether or not we mas***.  IF we have this addiction, no doubt we have some MAJOR underlying issues to work out.

This is likely to be doubly so for a BT--if everything was fine in life, why did you have to change?  (I am also a BT).

BUT, the fact that you could make such a change shows that you really are sensitive to deeper issues.  JUST, the REAL issues maybe haven't been pointed out to you.

I, and many others on this forum, have struggled with this addiction for years and for decades.

We are seeing it now in a new light.  We are LUST ADDICTS.

A correct diagnosis is the first step for a recovery.  And so many of us have had a speedy recovery now that we're on the right road to recovery.

Lurking behind the lust is most probably SELFISHNESS and IMMATURITY.

And, these traits are probably hindering you from giving your wife the proper attention she deserves.  They are hindering you from finding her attractive.  If you view her as an obstacle, and a list of responsibilities and demands, you're not going to look at her as a person.  You're not going to be attracted to her.

If you would marry any one of those ladies in those p*rn pictures, you'd be disgusted with them, too, the first time they ask you to take out the garbage or wash a dish.

Please stick around.  You'll recover here.

  --Eye.

this is a slightly more complex question . its clear you  need to work to build a bond w/ your wife that will help you physically  to accept her as well . it's also clear that can't be porn. any connection to that will only widen the gap between you and undermine your efforts.  let's think of kosher positive ways to amke your time together more enjoyable for you. i don't know your story , but a lot of us have had problems w/ our wives b/c of comparison and not getting into who they were as  people and partners. porn will only make that worse . it medicates for a while.................. until it wears off.

Welcome Tzafon, I am the admin of this forum.

This kind of question has come up many times in the past on our forum, and people who suffer from lust addiction are often struggling in this area. Our addiction warps the way we perceive the intimacy we have with our wives, and we often tell ourselves that if only she was more beautiful, we wouldn't have to "act-out".

See this page for the fallacy of this attitude.

Also, please read through this page, "Do I Like My Wife?" - and the links at the bottom, especially the link called "Currency of Marriage" from Dov.

Also, you can also learn some important things about the issue of "relations" with your wife from the following 5 links:

"The girls I see in the street are so much s-xier than my wife. When will I feel real love for my own wife?"

"My husband blames me for his porn habit. He blames me for being overweight and unattractive."

"Is it halachically permitted to look at porn if you're going to have relations that night anyway?"

"What if one's wife doesn't give herself over enough, won't a man search for it elsewhere?"  

"My wife doesn't enjoy marital relations, what do i do?"

This may be a lot of reading, but I guarantee that if you read through all these links you will have a very different perspective on your wife - and on your intimate life with her.

There's also a thread on our forum here that deals with this issue, so you can see what so many other guys have to say about this...

I also suggest buying the book called "The Garden of Peace" By Rav Shalom Arush. It has transformed many marriages.

Also, dive into our handbooks and learn the nature of this addiction and how to break free of it (see links below)...

Phew!! ... Ok, and now for the usual welcoming letter that we post to all newcomers:  :D

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

Eye.nonymous wrote on 15 Jan 2010 07:23:


Perhaps I wasn't clear. I've not succumbed to this in about 20 years, bli ayin hara. But like a recovering alcoholic who has not taken a swig in 20 years I consider myself a recovering ma--

Eye.nonymous wrote on 15 Jan 2010 07:23:


Everything was not fine. It was a mixture. There was good and bad in my life and in the world I saw. I saw Torah as a chance to get more involved with the good, which has not disappointed even though I've had my rose-colored glasses removed and am quite aware of the negative things in our world.

lamed vavnik wrote on 15 Jan 2010 09:44:


I'm open to suggestions.

guardureyes wrote on 15 Jan 2010 12:01:


This is wonderful. Thanks. I hope to read it all.

A technical question. How did you fit so much in a post. I seem to be only able to fit a few paragraphs and no more.

Just wanted to say welcome!

I don't have any easy answers, but I did want to let you know how much respect I have for you, for facing this painful issue, and working on it!

guardureyes wrote on 15 Jan 2010 12:01:


What if it is not an addiction or at least not one any longer. I suggest that because I never revert to it when she is not a niddah, I usually do not do it when she is (although we are rarely intimate then). I'm not proud of that and I'm certainly not happy about it but it does not have the trappings of an addiction in the sense that I feel compelled to do it all the time or even the vast majority of the time. I don't really feel compelled to do it at all. I only do it when, for instance, I think she expects us to be intimate and I feel nothing or am feeling repulsed by her or I think our overall relationship needs us to be intimate.

If this is not an addiction is my sense of intimacy warped? We actually talk, share many things and relate fairly well.

Is there anything about her that you do find attractive? Even if it's just her eyes, or her cheekbones?

silentbattle wrote on 15 Jan 2010 19:23:


No, not really. I mean I think she's good person. But physically, no. There may be two emotional blocks that even though they are old they may still be playing a role. I did and still do feel resentment that I allowed myself to be pressured into marrying before I believe I was ready to a woman I was really not attracted to. That's an anger issue. Then, many years later I found out that she had had -- I hate to say it but she was in an unhealthy relationship all the way until a few days before our marriage. When I found out many years later I was very angry at her. Therapy and time has helped but obviously the anger is still there underneath. There's a question if my first child is really mine. It feels a little cathartic just saying it here. But it certainly interfered with my feelings for her 10 years ago when I found out. It does not really explain my lack of feeling for her beforehand.

Oh, wow...for the first issue, that can be tough to get over - the anger isn't directed at her, but it's still real.

The second issue..."wow" doesn't even cover it. There's no doubt in my mind that that would change the way you see her, and it probably colors everything about your thoughts about her. It might even color the way you think about your feelings for her beforehand - memory is funny like that; we don't remember what happened, we remember what we remember, which can be slightly different, or completely different.

But either way...that sounds like an issue that still needs to be dealt with, one way or another. And that's hard, because it must hurt on SO many levels...especially if, like you said, there's always that question about your son, so there's a constant reminder.

I'm incredibly impressed by your willpower, and desire to work on things and improve things.

Have a good shabbos, and remember that we're all here for you!

tzafon wrote on 15 Jan 2010 20:35:


Wow, THAT'S difficult!!!

tzafon wrote on 15 Jan 2010 19:19:


But, as you said, you may be like a recovering alcoholic.

It's not a matter of whether you act out anymore or not.  It's a matter of whether your attitude has changed.

That's the test.

Dear Reb. Tzfon:

  We (myself included), tend  to look at our problems, in such a way that we actually make them much more complex than they really are. So, in the end of the day, we simply can't find our way out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.

Instead of writing 50 pages of psychological analysis, and you starting to invest in the such, I woud like to share something with you...to try to make it as easy as possible.

I saw in a sefer by R. Shalom Arush, (I think you were perhaps recommended to buy his sefer on Shalom Bayis)....a good idea.

He says something like this: "Before you marry your wife, you can make all of the calculations, take as much time as you want...think about it etc, but, once you have married her........she is YOURS!

This "she is yours", is not meant to be a punishment. NO, this is meant to give you the proper M'halech in your married life, and the new/proper perspective.  Stop killing yourself, by thinking over, and over again, "what did I do", Why did I do this", I should have not married her, or, "if I would have.........

We don't/can't live in the past. What ever happened...now, since it is AFTER the fact....you married her, so this means it WAS Min Hashamyim!!!  Yes, now that it is AFTER the fact, you must believe that she was meant for you, and therefore you must now change your thinking around, and start to work on this new M'halech, that she is YOUR wife!!!!    You share the same neshoma...period. Please, stop killing, and torturing yourself, with the,"If I would of known....I woud have.....why did I do this when I should have"......

  This type of thinking will completely destroy you, and your family.

Now, that you are AFTER the fact, and this was Min HaShamyim, look at what you have, in your own words......a wife you can speak to easily, she is intelligent, AND.....she has a GOOD HEART!!!!!!!  Do you know what this means????  There are guys that would pull their hair out to get a women with a good heart!  There are thousands of men with the most attractive wives, and their wives are just that, outwardly attractive, but inwardly...they are beasts who talk, and treat their husbands like garbage.  You remember the stroy in the gemora about the Tanna, who's wife would do just the 'opposite" of what he would ask for....just to cause him anguish. This is not an isolated story. And, in Rav, Shalom's book,he has many stories just like this...true stories.
  And...these men who have vicious wives in very --xy bodies, what will they have when their wives get old? Vicious wives in wrinkled,and maybe fat bodies etc.
    There is only one more thing that you need to do:  "Please Hashem, please help me that my wife will become attractive to me"...help me to see what is really important...her neshoma. Help me, that by seeing her beautiful neshoma, her warm heart, that then the rest of her will also become attractive to me.
  If you ask hashem for the above...not just once but to really do it, and mean it....you will be surprised. But, first buy the book.