dov wrote on 06 Jun 2011 17:07:


When I was young, I was amused to realize that I could pull on and off personas like clothing.  I admitted this to my therapist, who seemed to find this interesting, but I don't remember his analysis.

As I got older, these just seemed to drop away.  Sometimes with work, and sometimes I just outgrew them.

I then made a conscious decision to maintain only one.  To share this one with my wife.  To keep secrets small and inconsequential, or with permission.  I no longer even think about those old ones.

In your experience, is this an unrealistic view of things?  Am I likely to be kidding myself?

Yes still unclear.

If I've been living sober for several months utilizing the tools of the 12 steps as best as I could and have seen progress, not that it's been a walk in the park I've struggled at times (like today).

What is the purpose of announcing to my wife that as  far as I know I used to have a lust problem or still do but havent acted on it recently.  I used to look at porn, or whatever.  What do I gain other then hurting her? I'm terribly embarrassed about this (As I should be) so why do I need to put myself through this?

Now it could be that I will fall in the future and come back to you with my tail between my legs, but maybe not?

As I read here once, in many cases, telling your spouse is selfish.

You're doing it because you want support and someone to unload on. Not because you think she really wants/needs to know for her own sake. Most people can't relate to the problem, and would be better off not knowing.

Sometimes, we want to tell our spouses because we feel it's the "right" thing to do. We shouldn't be keeping secrets, etc. While valiant, it's still selfish, because only you gain anything from that conversation. When your wife looks fat in a dress, do you tell her? NO (some of us learned that the hard way...). It may be honest, and there's value to honesty, but there's also value in not hurting someone where it counts.

Only you know your spouse, and whether pr not she is able to handle that kind of confession (even if it's in the past), but just know that many people consider P and M tantamount to adultery. If your wife can handle you cheating on her, and move forward, you have either a true eishes chayil for a wife, or someone who is in naive denial.

Me3 - I dont think Dov's point was NOT to tell your wife about it but rather "talk to someone safe about it". Until we get it out of our system in the open our struggles are still our own and the same thought that brought us to recovery can bring us back out back with our two personalities. However once we actually  admit it to a real person and we talk about our struggles its not a secret battle anymore and recovery becomes more real then a thought.

I hear, but i also believe that recovery is real to me. To illustrate, recently I spoke with an attractive woman.  I did not do anything remotely inappropriate. Yet, my mind raced to places that it should not have gone.  Afterwards I reviewed it in my head and tried to remove the thoughts from my mind.  Mentally I thought that in such a scenario an SA group member would call their sponsor to admit their struggle, so I admitted it to myself and went on.  What more would the sponsor have done for me?

As long as its working for you then i cannot say you need anything more. However, for myself i realize that as long as its between me myself and I then i have not changed much other then my way of thinking at this time. As soon as the going gets tough then its still me myself and I and i am still living with my secret.

As far as how verbalizing an talking to someone real can help? have you ever thought of a s'vara in learning and it seemed right but when you talk it over and you are verbalizing it you realize it may be off... Our mined are as crazy as our secrets so we need to get it out of our own mind.

I dont know if that is the reason behind it- but to me it makes a lot of sense. ( and I think in my own case I believe i am not moving forward as much as i can because i am not doing it in person)

Dear Jester,

I don't know. But I bet you do. I guess it sounds beautiful, actually....if it's working for you, then why change it or doubt in it?


Dear Me3,

I never meant to apply the opening of secrets to just anyone. Certainly not to people that our behavior would hurt. So I agree with you, that it might do you personally no good at all to tell your wife. On the other hand, when the time is right and the relationship has grown to the point where the sometimes ugly truth about each other is no longer frightening or hurtful to either of you - telling her then would still not help you - but it would mean a tremendous amount to the quality of your marriage. It would help the marriage, not your sobriety.

So your scenario thing is great, and as David712 put it, I'd not change a thing if it's working for you. And I am not sharing the moshol/nimshal here to try and influence anyone to let the cat out of the bag just 'lishmah'. No way. Contrary to what some gung-ho folks seem to believe, the program is not a religion. There is also no mitzvah to believe that you are powerless, etc. Unless you are.

Instead, I am talking to those for whom the work they are doing is not yet successful. If they are doing it all alone, then I am suggesting to them that they are fooling themselves by keeping the fox (their twisted hearts and minds) in charge of the hen-house (their recovery, lives, etc.), - and then complaining about it? If such people do not admit that we are twisted on the inside in ways that we cannot control with our beautiful minds...then we are in real serious trouble.

But to ask "what more would the sponsor have done for me?" means a lot to me. It says to me that you may not have discovered the huge difference between deciding to do something and doing it. Between naaseh, and nishma. Rebbi Akivah was surely on a much lower madreigah while he was saying Kriyas Sh'ma and giving up his life to Hashem than he was when he was getting killed for Hashem. Avraham avinu was tested all the way until he took the knife and tried to slaughter his son precisely because Hashem knows that what people decide to do - even if Hashem knows they really mean to do it - is not nearly as life-changing an experience as actually doing it.

I can't be any more clear without getting silly and posting too much. If you have another opinion, I accept that 100% and admit I really am just thinking my own way, but this seems to be working for me so far, so why switch?

dov wrote on 06 Jun 2011 21:34:


Thank you, Dov.  I don't know.  I don't know, because I don't know what recovery really looks like.  I question whether I will ever be truly recovered.  I do know I am not there yet, but I believe that each day I get a little bit closer.  I am very scared of my negative potential, and I want to lose that fear.  Does it ever go away?

But you might be right - perhaps I just need to dig deeper, and with more honesty, and either stop spooking myself, or actually change something.

Sometimes people don't realize what their options are.

I know both options.

Think of it in terms of ultimate good toward your wife.

One option is not to tell her and she will have a husband who is a shell of himself.not really alive.most people here know what im talking about.

The other option is to break her in slowly,explain how most guys are different. Show how many level headed people with everything to lose,lose.
eventually tell her and then you have a real live sponsor who has a husband who is gonna be very arguably on his way to recovery.

You're worrying about hurting her while you're suffocating her of her real husband.

Disclaimer.

Not all people fit this description.

I don't but for a different reason.

My wife was really happy when I told her. She has major issues too.it was like a realization that you're best friend also has cancer.it was a scary world before I told her.lonely.that's what got, me to tell her, seeing her miserable when I found out about her.

Believe me when I tell you we both made fun and looked down at  the couples meals in israel. Made the machal twister jokes. Talked high and mighty about this stuff.as if they were all ovrei aveirah every night.while we were clean as the wind driven snow.

The same way you think your wife dosent have a clue about you......

Me3

I haven't really gone through all your posts. Just the ones on this thread.
I find it strange you don't believe in sponsors or outside live help,and also vigorously oppose telling your wife. as if its somehow makes sense to you that she could help but you don't want to hurt her.


Dov,

Like I just mentioned I have opened to someone live,my dear wife, but she dosent really help much. I don't report to her daily or weekly,just she has a general knowledge. She sort of dosent get that it destroys me she just thinks I want to stop. I still live a double life in that sense. 

I would love to have everything clearly spelled out in chart form.where people could sort of diagnose themselves.

I dont know if some of the things on the site have already helped me, and its confusing figuring out what needs to be done. It could be after a couple months of new technique and knowledge things would be different.

If you know of a live sponsor for me id love it. Ny nj area please.

I m really tired, long day and I will probably be looking at this post tommorow and laugh at how it dosent make sense.

Btw dov

We wrote about glorifying women and messed up perspectives of them.
Tell me more.please.
I think I have this problem.

I just realized that its very possible that there are people(me) who can have more than one base issue.

Jester,

I also have lots of different personalities. Currently I am a rabbi,an intellectual, a hippie surfer dude,partying college kid,and gourmet foodie.to different people I am different things.

I don't identify with any of these people.or at least not completely

I don't know this is at all related to an addiction problem.I just have an insane need to impress people.

In general I wonder if its really necessary to psychoanalyze why we do what we do.

OK I'm weighing in here.
I have a wonderful relationship with my wife.  I have been clean for over 2 years and have not told her or anyone else.  I did tell her I'm working on being less lustful.  Now I don't feel I have so much to confess.  My crimes have been of the eyes, mind, and hand  (nothing live online or otherwise).  (I know, I know, that's unfaithful too.)  But I did pester her for a lot more sex than I really needed (or she wanted) because I was so charged up by the end of the day, and she was usually very accommodating "to keep me from aveira."  (After 120, she's going straight to Gan Eden).

Sometimes I want to tell her just because it might bring us closer and give us something new to talk about.  But I am fearful it would upset her and make her angry about all the years she didn't know, and thought maybe she wasn't libidinous enough for me.

But I don't feel my sobriety is at risk because no one else knows.  Hashem has been my sobriety partner, and so far He hasn't let me down.  I go straight to Him when I start lusting and he always helps.

Someday my wife and I will be out and I will have had one beer too many and who knows . . . .

Wadduwanna tell her?

Dear Jester,

By being truly recovered, I am not sure what you really mean. What would that look like not to need G-d any more? I came to see that I really need Hashem through my addiction, not through anything else. Sure I gues my bladder only workd because G-d says it should...but that does not go to my heart in any way at all. This does, for I cannot succeed at all without a clear miracle. It is a miracle that a guy who knew what it was like to eat and sleep porn and sex-planning for 20 years has not had to masturbate or act our with women in any way in almost 15 years, has not had a wet dream in almost 14 years, and actually thinks in a reasonably sane fashion much of the time, now. That I have a stable and growing marriage. That I, a person who used to listen to Rabbi Twerski's sobriety hotline in my bed because I liked the sweet voice of his secretary's announcments for forthcoming books of the Rabbi....who used to cruise at nbight to red light districts as a married man until once I fell asleep and plowed into a parked car and almost died - then was back out acting out the same way a week later...yet I am free 90% of the time. For me, the frumer I got, the more obsessed I got in the struggle with "the YH" - and the sicker I got, the more powerless I became. As a married man, isolation was my saving grace - and now I am together with my wife and kids and have friends and relationships with all kinds of people that mean something to me. I was able to be there for my dying father and lonely mother - only because I had years of sobriety behind me. By my own nature, I would have acted out like crazy on my way back and forth to their house - no problems this time.

How? Because I was smarter? When did that happen? More yir'as Shomayim? What brought all that yir'ah, the porn? I gave up and have been learning how to give up more and more ever since, so I do not fall back in. To remember G-d more and more and see my limitations and abilities clearer. To know what's my business and what is not. Slowly learning. I am not done yet.

Is that what a recovered person looks like? No. Because I am still powerless to use and control and enjoy lust as I may like to sometimes. I just can't. So I guess I am not recovered yet.

The only way for an alkie to know if he is "recovered " is to see if he can use alcohol safely and control and enjoy it. No?

But I have come to believe in my years acting out, that it is cunning, baffling, and powerful and will always suck me into it and I will lose myself in it, my relationships in it, my G-d in it, my life in it. It will kill me. So I cannot try it, can I?

I am happy to be powerless over lust till the day I die. All the things I am 'missing out on' will have to stay that way. That is what recovery means. You gotta feel you are giving up something, no? Otherwise what is the big deal.

Torah says this. Rebbi Akivah had to give up his life - his students had a hard time with that, he explained what I am saying but in a religious way. If we are supposed to innately want to do only what Hashem wants and not desire the destructive stupid stuff at all, then what are we giving up for Hashem in b'chol levov'cho?! So having the desires and knowint that they are still alive in me is no ma'yloh, at all. It is unnatural and not the avodah that Hashem wants from me. Sort of how the Tanya explains "Halevai I should be a beinoni" - that's not good enough?

Have a great Shabbos!

wannabehappy wrote on 07 Jun 2011 02:18:


Will try to comment after Shabbos!

people

i fell today.

but im not too down about it.

i feel a big difference in how my mind functioned over the past week or so.

i felt that i was a lot more in control. it felt amazing to feel that control.

even when i fell it wasnt a whole drawn out ordeal. more like a 10 minute slip.

it was weird also that it wasnt usually an area that i have a problem with.live human interaction.

usually it all lives in my head, i wont flirt or even talk unnecessarily with women.

it was of those situations where you and your wife were talking with a girl and then somebody else comes and takes your wifes attention away and youre left talking and dont want to make anything or anybody feel awkward. 

i wonder if what im going through is progress or the same cruel game my yetzer (me) is playing on myself.