don't we say that the whole problem was "shelo barchu batorah tequila?"

;D

I thought I was the only one with the tequilla fetish. :o
Maybe I should have been drinking tequilla, 'cause the whisky I was on, while not doing a good job of intoxicating me, led me to bad place after sobering up.
................................
and now back to our regular programme........

1st 'free' moment since yom tov.. (Not really) .. But WOW!! After 120 I'll read that dov.. We're all sayin' the same thing, but yeps, sitting to discuss these things, even w/goyim, doesn't seem to have been advocated by many (not all, BH) gedoley yisroel... BH, times are a'changin. A good year for all!

....

I commented that I am an architect and need a lot of the cell with the internet to keep sending emails ... but once in a while when myleaves Leaves the house ... and uncontrolled yezer ... then I go to sites with TUMA ....

One of the major problems which still people do not understand is that if our great rabbis have banned the use of these types of phones (I had an Iphone) .... then it is mandatory to follow their instructions .... it is quite difficult ....

I think it was very difficult for me for my tipe of work ..... but Hashem saved my marriage ........ no more internet in the house or cell ............. it is Gan Eden.....
Albert

To all
I have a shayla for the oilam.when i was in yeshiva (many eons ago)i allowed a friend to fool around with me. This went on for a couple of years until we got caught.it then took a while for us to just develop a clean friendship. We never spoke about what happened. Even b'shaas maase we never discussed what we were doing(only touching).to this day we consider ourselves close friends without ever dealing with our past. A couple of questions come to me.i would like to approach him about it, is that a bad idea? Is it most likely that he is struggling with the same issues today? Maybe he's on the forum! I think that aside from removing this weight from between our friendship, if he is struggling we can work together. Looking to hearing from the oilam. I havent been here in ages and i'm glad to be back. I still never posted my story but i gotta dig up so much history and its pretty painful.

Best
Maalin bakodesh

Dear Maalin,

Your friendship with this guy is obviously important to you, even there is this pain and shame in it. That's interesting. I do not know what it means, but it is interesting.

You wrote that digging up your past is too painful, so far. But I ask you: Why dig it up at all? What problem do you currently have? How bad are things that you are doing - is it making your life unmanageable in any way? If not, then why fix what is not broken?

I'd guess that if you say that "Is it most likely that he is struggling with the same issues today?" - so apparently you have some kind of issue. But is it just that you have some temptations?

If so - though I can understand why one might find that unacceptable - for clarity I ask you 100% seriously: What's so bad about that? It's not an aveirah at all to have temptations. You have hormones, a penis, and there are temptations in this world. So? Avraham Avinu, Rav Moshe Feinstein, and the Rebbe (pick your favorite Rebbe) ALL had all those things. So what? "Lo sasuru" means "do not turn after them" - in other words, do not act on them. Do not actively feed and cultivate them....it does not mean "thou shalt not desire sex or porn!". Hashem is the farthest from being a fool! He knows it's natural for his people to desire things - even silly, assur things. So what? He forbids that? No way. Not in the Torah anywhere.

Sure sforim talk of being free of lusts - but that is a derech, and eitza tovah and a goal. It's good sense, especially for a yid. It's not the basic obligation upon us.

This is all plain and simple.

It is the obsession with "kedusha" that poisons so many of us. Sure, acting out lusts is a pathetic thing for us to do...but the more we obsess about fighting and doing everything we can not to have any desires - the more we obsess on them!

So, in other words...are you masturbating (having sex with yourself) or having sex with other people you shouldn't be having sex with, or not? Are you spending hours drooling - or fighting against drooling in front of a computer watching naked people, or not?

1- Forget (for now) dredging up your 'long and painful history': What exactly is the real problem behavior that you are trying to solve right now?

2- Set the issue of contacting your friend to the side - as it says in AA, "But obviously you cannot transmit something you do not have. See to it that your side of the street is clean - and great things will come to pass for you and countless others."

And hey...if I came on strong, forgive me. But I gotta say what I need others to say to me.

Shalom to you and all the best for a good night, chaver.

- Dov

Dov,
Thank you for the quick reply. Let me clarify a couple of things
1)I currently do not masturbate.
I only looked at porn twice in my life. However i went once to a mp which obviously sickened me and then i realized that lust has taken control of me.i still feel like i'm a lustaholic even though i dont do m and porn. If i let myself go i would be in sheol tachtis. I followed women in stores and streets, things which clearly make no sense.
2) My second point is that i imagined that if my friend from high school had no problem fooling around with me then there was/is some underlying issue. And i'm wondering if i should reach out (a)to just open up that parsha and (b) to possibly work together with him.do you get my drift?

Thanks,
Maalin

Sorry for hogging someone elses thread.i didnt realize i was posting here. How do i access my thread? I havent accessed it in a long time.how would i move these posts over to there?

Thank you,
Maalin

More hijacking...."Hi, Jack!" (move it all wherever you want, chabibi!)

I get your drift, Maalin - your answer was very clear, thanks. The shayloh you ask is way over my head to address. No matter how far I get in ruchiyus, I am an addict. Being lifted up from out of the ashpoh of my own depravity and insanity is my only direct, real and trustworthy experience of Hashem. What happens on the way and after, is exclusive - I cannot presume to relate my own experience to you or others.

Now, if you truly consider yourself on the inside of this thing, and see yourself as being lifted up by G-d one day at a time though you surely do not deserve it...then we are on the same page - regardless of the chitzoniyus things like whether you masturbate or use schmutz now. So in that case, maybe I can say something.

If that were the case, I'd suggest dropping it. I believe that there is a blurred line between injecting my will into things too much - and leaving matters to G-d's better judgement. Generally, people in successful recovery have found that leaving things alone is usually the better course - Hashem will take care of things just fine without my help.

True, that is sometimes a treif attitude for non-addicts. They will say, Kol Yisrael areivim, and many other very true ideas of mussar and ahavas Yosrolel, etc. But addicts - we who have had to admit that righteous indignation is best left to those more well-suited to handle it - cannot usually be kano'im. We usually cannot be activists. We too easily become like the cat rather than the ba'al habbos (see the story of Rav Yoel zt"l of Satmar), and end up pushing Hashem completely out of our inner lives...all the while doing everything l'Shem Shomayim. Really.

It seems to me that most of us addicts do better being feerzach like Rav Aryeh Levin or Rav Kook (accepting and more like "live and let live" letting ahavah and respect outweigh many disagreements), rather than in the fiery derech of Rav Yosef-Chayim Sonnenfeld or the Munkatcher (zechusam yagen aleinu!).

That attitude is not pacifism, but part of a healthy diet of ego-busting and letting go of my will for an acceptance of Hashem's Will. Gam zu leTovah is the byword of recovery (see the AA member story "Acceptance Was the Answer" - http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_theystoppedintime16.pdf ).

OK, so enough out of me. Hope you can take my barr from my teven!

- Dov

Dov,
Thanks for the clarity. I will leave it alone.have a great shabbos.
Maalin

MAALIN wrote on 10 May 2012 03:34:

There is more than one story that began this way and did NOT have a happy ending. I would beware of the Yetzer Tov to try and help someone else. It's often the Yetzer Hora in disguise. If you have been reading the forum for a while, you have probably seen this.