Hi. I never started a thread before...did I? Anyhow, this is from my latest adventures with scared, hurting, newbies. Guys I can relate to so deeply, who are actually ready to call on the phone and talk with a person and use their real first names, for a change.

Hey, nothing changes as long as everything stays the same, right? What's comfy is certainly not the best guide for us. In fact, for me, whatever is the opposite of 'emotionally comfy' is a far better guide! Funny how that works.

Spoke with five new frummies in the past three days. Broken guys. Good men. Each broken enough to actually pick up a phone and use their real first name and real voice - a real chidush for them! - to get better. Pouring out their hearts - and I get the privilege to pour out mine with them. Guys who are frum, and yet steal away hours and a lifetime to look at our sweet porn and have sex with themselves (masturbate) as all of us here do, when we live in our problem.

Daven for them and us, please.

"How to get out?," they ask. Well, actually, few ask that. Most are pretty sure they know exactly how to 'quit'...they are convinced that their only real problem is staying out of it forever.

So most of us talk religion, talk self-control, talk gimmicks or escaping with a 'filter'. Escape from ourselves? We say we are Guarding Our Eyes...but are we really just Guarding Our Lies?

Anybody else want to elaborate on some of the safety lies we tell to ourselves, to our spouses and to the good and frum people around us? A newbie on GYE just posted the revelation that the reason his wife was about to leave him and dissolve their family was not because of 'kedusha' issues - but because he lies to her. Finally, someone who sees it like it is...

I like staying sober today, so here goes:

One whopper I tell myself is that my wife must see me being good, to love me. So I am motivated to fake and hide whatever questionable thing I may be doing right now from her. It risks me getting 'bad press' w/her!

That's a lie. We have learned that when I do right by me, my wife sees that, my kids see that, everyone relevant sees that. And things fall into place.

So I commit to doing the next right thing...and that is gettting dressed now and going to shacharis.

Adios amigos!

sorry Dov, can I ask you to expound on your whopper and what exactly you learned?

thanks

Dov wrote:

We'll get our research department on it right away . I think you may have started one once, but it was very short. You prefer to hijack.

Pidaini wrote:


Well, the day is not over yet and every day has a new lesson. But here are two ideas from Chaza"l for you first, then ask me again if you still feel you need to/want to (if u get where I am going w these Gemaras):

1- "Even if he is a robber, she will carry his weapons and have faith in her husband."

Is the Chaza"l telling us that wifes are idiots? I mean, this guy is a rosho! So Chaza"l are teaching us that women are fickle, follow their husbands blindly, and have no morals?

Can't be.

They are saying that by nature a wife wants to show her husband true loyalty and love - and wants to see herself as an extension of him (and vice versa).


2- The pasuk reads, "rabim mach'ovim lorosho - v'laboteyach baShem, Chessed y'sovevenhu", and Chaza"l ask why it compares a rosho with a boteyach baShem and not simply with a tzaddik? It answers:

If he puts his trust in Hashem only Chessed will surround him even if he is a [b]rosho[/b].

Get me?

My mind - which is broken and immature - tells me that for my wife to truly love me, she'd better not see any of my blemishes. I am thus tempted to lie to her, to be desperate for damage control and to sacrifice intimacy for her approval. And all those years that I masturbated myself and did far more sick things for the lust god I truly trusted, I was hiding from my wife and manipulating her and our relationship to make it as I wished it to be. I was giving her tremendous power that she really didn't have! It is not in her power to make me feel OK. That's up to me today and always.

'To thine own self be true' is huge. And my dependence (in my own mind) on her opinion is sick for me, sick for our marriage, and twists my avodas Hashem. For it sets her in a throne she does not fit into.

Ayyy....recovery is so very important for me.

Someone asked me on the chat thingy below, if I meant that I tell my wife all about my lusting challenges, or something like that.

When I wrote about not being afraid of my wife seeing the real me, I was not primarily referring to lust issues, falls, or whatever GYE folks like to call it. Rather, I see the greatest area of brokeness in our relationship being in every area of my real life - not mainly in my perverting-sexual stuff.

Regular daily life stuff is surely where the relationship is sickest, actually. Some guys on GYE seem to be saying that since wasting sperm or lusting is soooo evil and bad for us, it behooves to focus on the problem as much as possible - as though all reality revolves around it...they call it 'dilligence'. But life does not revolve around it and the Kotzker said "if we wrestle with mud, we get dirty - even if we 'win' the fight!"

So life does not revolve around lusting - or staying away from lusting. Lusting - and the struggle with it - is a distraction from reality. Ok...so:

Only after being sober a while, does the real subtle twistedness in the rest of our lives start to become clear. And that realization is exactly what will make continued living clean and sober possible!

Just as Chuck C. told us, "You can't think your way into right-living. You can only live your way into right-thinking."

In a very sublte way and over many years and many relationships, I close out the very people who are my very closest relations from my inner life. Until I got sober, I was convinced that I was the best husband and father, and that no Rebbi 'discovered' me and my 'gadlus'. I was a bit of a star-crossed, tragic figure. Nu. But in the porn and with my masturbation adventures, I was always the superstar of the show and it was just fantastic (hence the word, 'fantasy', I guess!).

I may naturally get very, very close to near strangers - new friends in camp, people I meet here and there, a chavrusa once in a while...people with fake names on the other side of a computer on GYE... - and I can really pour my heart and soul to them, all the dirt and beauty, everything. Wow, how close people get here on GYE! But are they really? Close? To a man (is it a man for sure?) who does not even know your name? But is it a coincidence that my parents and siblings and wife and children are kept in the dark about my reality? How could it be a coincidence that the closest are kept out?!

In recovery, the light went on. Long term relations, ARE REAL. So we avoid them with little walls. But the power of fake names and virtual relationships (and porn) is BECAUSE they have some fakeness built in.

Real is not comfortable. It's too consistent, too tog-teglich, too prying, too vulnerable, gets too in the way of my poor self-esteem, and my freedom to be imperfect. My freedom to be ME! So we hide from our closest.

Hmm...think it over.

Can't believe you admitted getting close to a guy through a fake name...

The more I think about the more I'm realizing you're right.The closeness through a fake name is because it isn't real.If anyone wants to, then he can just get a new name or even better, stop coming here and the relationship is totally over, no possibility of having to ever continue the relationship if he gets sick of it.The whole relationship is on your own terms.

In a real relationship, we're stuck, no way to leave without getting some real kickback.While I still don't think everyone should be going around giving the whole internet knowledge of their first names I do see how important it is to have a real relationship with someone you can be honest with.That's what being real is, having someone you can't get away from ask you "so how was your day?" and having to answer honestly. It isn't fun but s you pointed out elsewhere, that's probably the biggest proof that it's necessary.

I'm not so clear in the other parts of your post, I think you're trying to say that even though being honest would seem to make your wife think less of you, there's a high probability that it won't due to their loyal nature, and even if it does then it's still worth it since being honest is so vital.

Did I get it? What did I miss?

Oh and gibbor, why the bloop is this not in Dov quotes???????

Dov wrote:

Yeah, for me a great lie is/was the heilige guilty feelings I have after acting out. I was sure that that was the real thing.
I am thankful that today I am aware that feeling “clean” or guilty is all part of the sickness. Feeling guilty is my way of dealing with the uncomfortable feelings I have, a way to numb myself to reality and to let the storm inside me pass and then to be able to act out again when it has passed.
Thanks Dov

Thanks chezky,

I think that's dov's write up "pressing the nuclear button" or something like that, the first time I saw it I was like "wow, I am really really sick"!!

רשעים מלאים חרטות - we do things we shouldn't, become filled with remorse, and say to the imaginary audience in our heads, "But see? I clearly don't like what I'm doing. I am a big oived Hashem. Just look at all these tears. Look at how depressed I am. I can't even get out of bed anymore I feel so bad about what I did." And that feeling sustains us in our next conquest, giving us the strength and security to hobble through another bout of acting out.

Definitely one of my big lies. (Hopefully, of the distant past.) Took a while for it to sink in when it did, but things only got better once I realized that.

inastruggle wrote:

cuz I just read it now. payshintz, payshintz. I'm not on GYE 24/7 you know....


It just seems like it sometimes .

chesky wrote:

If you have not yet, please read my post about the "Nuclear Reset Button" (a search should turn it up). You will enjoy it!

Dov wrote:

Here it is guardyoureyes.com/forum/19-Introduce-Yourself/203733-introduction?limit=15&start=15#203913

Thank you, Dov, for this great thread! And your "Nuclear Reset Button" post is a classic!

Nice of you to re-enter the atmosphere kedusha. Nice to "see" you again.

Hey - why in "my replies" does this thread read blank? it just says, "Re: "

Oh...hi Kedusha!