Hi, i am married and young I'm in my low 20's with a child. B'h i found GYE, and in the short time that i am here i am finding that the GYE community are amazing, honest and non judgmental. Here goes my story and then i have a couple of questions for the amazing GYE community ,its my first time since I'm 15 being as open as this. I started masturbating when i was 15 years old almost 3 times a day without even realizing what was going on (e.g-Zera Levatala) when i was 16 i discovered what sex was and discovered that masturbating was against Halacha, My rebbeim in High school never spoke about this topic, all they spoke about was that you are going to burn in hell for eternity if you are motzi sera levatala, you can properly guess that i felt pretty uncomftorable talking to my Rebbeim about my masturbation problem, i thought that i was literally the only one doing it. This went on thru Beis Medresh where i discovered porn , it started from watching dirty movies in high school and then it turned in to porn, i got married when i was pretty young and for a while things were going well with my masturbation and porn drive, but as you can imagine my wanting to watch porn- drive came back with full force, the funny thing is that my intimate relationship with my wife was very and is still very healthy, I b"h have an amazing and supportive wife in everything i do weather its work, college or just about anything, and therefore the guilt is a thousen times bigger because i feel that i'm not being loyal(by watching porn). A few months ago the porn and masturbation problem was getting pretty bad and it had nothing to do with my wife it just had to do with my lust problem. A few weeks ago reality hit me that i can't live this fake fraudulent life, i consider myself a decent from yid and i can't live with this filth.
B'h i heard about GYE and for hours i went thru a lot of the material and find it fascinating and helpful. I am on day four and feel great!
my questions for my fellow GYE chevra 1).I have a good relationship with my wife, does one watching porn reflect on his exclusive sexual drive and lust or could it be a negative reflection on ones marriage?
2)-I wanted to know what the GYE chevra think regarding ones wife helping and encouraging on this journey, or should it be between a man and himself? (personally i don't think i would tell my wife, but i just want to hear your important opinions)
thank you!
I apologize if i made any grammatical mistakes, I'm new to this and I'm not really a writer.

Kudos on opening up!! It's not easy, but it is certainly worth it!!

One thing you can be certain of is that you're not the only one with the problem, and I'm guessing that even the 10,000 members of GYE are only a drop in the bucket of the people in our communities who have a problem.

As for the questions, I didn't entirely understand the first question so I'm not going to answer it.

The second question is interesting, but I think that for the most part, even when one's wife is aware of the ongoings, it is certainly not her obligation to be supportive and encouraging, as she will most likely have her own feelings to deal with. I personally made the mistake of expecting support and validation from wife and BH quickly realized that it wasn't fair of me.

What's your plan on staying clean?

Part of it should certainly be to KOP!! and, farshteit zich, KOMT!!!!!!

Welcome again,

don't delve too deeply into decidin' that there's somethin' wrong with your marriage - if there isn't. You had the issue before marriage; you say your marriage is fine...leave it at that.

regardin' tellin' your wife - this is a very large issue, and there has been much discussion about it. It is a machlokes, but also, it very much depends on the exact situation.

b'hatzlachah to you

Welcome and Mazal Tov on joining. I agree, as usual, with Cordnoy (wise man). You're going to encounter a lot of opinions here, some diametrically conflicting. That's okay; there's no one right answer, just data about what's worked for different people. So my advice, stay connected and, believe it or not, try to relax. There's a kind of freshman intensity I've noticed new-comers have here (I had it too) that sometimes leads to feeling overly-negative about oneself. That's one of the worst ways to feel for the recovery process, and will absolutely contribute to falling.

fightingyid wrote:


I can relate to the part of having a good marriage and still watching porn and acting out.
There is a lot loaded in your question. I can only talk from my own experience
Lust and marriage are not necessarily connected. One of the things I learned was that lust for me was coming from a different place. It was coming from a desire (or need) to escape other issues that were going on in my life. Yes sometimes I was able to satiate (temporarily) my lust with my wife, but I came to realize that wasn't about marriage. It was about taking pleasure for me and about me. It happened to be that my wife was going along sometimes but it still was not about her or us. It was about me. That is the nature of lust.
When my wife wasn't available, I managed on my own, through porn.
Since joining GYE and especially since sharing my experience with my wife, my marriage has grown to a level I never before imagined possible. Intimacy is now about togetherness, about relationship. It happens when my wife wants or when the mutual feelings of love lead to it.
My advice is don't worry too much about whether it does or not reflect on your marriage. Do what you have to do to bring things under control and see where that leads you.
Things will become clearer to you as you go along.

As far as your second question, there are alot of discussions on the issue.
I can just add that for me, I didn't tell my wife until I was clean for almost 10 months, and after I went through some of the situations that had been the hardest for me in the past, and came out still holding strong. At that point my wife summed up her feelings about your question in one sentence "I am so glad that you shared this with me and I am so glad that you didn't share with me before you were clean for so long." It was one thing for her to deal with knowing what I had been doing. She didn't feel that she could've managed knowing while I was still fighting.

As an echo to those who have already responded... welcome aboard and thank you for such a good first post!

As wise men have already said here, I can only speak from my experience... and while I'm not sure if my lust problem "reflects" on my marriage, as you asked (or if it matters)... I would like to relay from my own history that, when I first met with a professional (licensed psychotherapist) about my problem, one of the things he asked me was if it was *affecting* my married life... and I said that I didn't think so. Boy was I wrong... only after a number of years of very slowly working on myself did I come realize how much it really was affecting my married life... and not just specifically in the area of intimacy. B"H, now I really think that my marriage is quite a bit better than it was then... and that I think we can improve even more, be"H. Anyway - I just wanted to share that in the hopes that it will help either you or someone else in some way.

To close for now... while there are numerous great resources here on GYE, if I had to boil it all down to a couple of lines (al regal achas), I'd say (1) Be honest with yourself, and (2) Stay positive!

Hope everyone has a good, clean day... and a great Shabbos.

-- Larry

thank you! since i'm new what does "komt" or "kot" stand for

Welcome FY!

Great way to start your road to sobriety by joining us here at gye. And amazing first post.

Looking forward to hearing more from you.

Keep On Monster Trucking KOMT and Keep On Trucking KOT or Keep On Posting KOP!!!

GYE chevra 1).I have a good relationship with my wife, does one watching porn reflect on his exclusive sexual drive and lust or could it be a negative reflection on ones marriage?

For me it had nothing to do with the health of my marriage.



2)-I wanted to know what the GYE chevra think regarding ones wife helping and encouraging on this journey, or should it be between a man and himself?

Just to add what the others said, to tell you wife is a difficult decision that should only be made after much thought is put into it and after seeking the advice of a trusted and competent person.

I read your message and totally could have thought that I wrote because the details are almost Identical to yours. my personal opinion to your first question is that it can most definitely affect your relationship, and I always had an amazing relationship but the last year when being a porn addict was worse than ever it took a toll. and fot the second question I think that it should be between you and hashem (and gye of course) I personaly think that sharing this with your wife can have a negative affect. (and in my case this is the only thing I keep a secret)

WELCOME! A lot of great comments have already been made. I look forward to hearing more from you.

Thank you! Glad to know that I'm not the only one going through and battling the same thing.
Keep your streak going #54! wow!

Wow! thank you to the GYE chevrah for your amazing and informative answers to my two questions.

Question #3 (I have a lot of them, because I'm new to the life altering journey)
I find that when things in life e.g Marriage, College, Work, Children, Parnasah ETC.
are going for the most part "well" i find that although lust and a desire to watch porn do enter my mind i find that i DO slip but NOT as much-as when problems arise with e.g Marriage, College, Work, Children, Parnasah ETC. When things get stressful the desire magnifies and the burning of lust and desire is even more, and I am more likely to slip much, much more……so my question for my fellow GYE Chevrah is the following-B'h i found GYE a couple of weeks ago and i am soaking in all of GYE info…e.g the 12 steps, the Chizuk newsletters, etc. I am b'h Completely clean for 5 days now, and things in life right now are not that stressful, my question for you guys are what happens when things in life do get stressful,?(because its going to happen sooner or later because thats the nature of life) what should my approach be when the stressful situation do arise?

In general some of us have found it best to focus on today. Your concern is one shared by many of us though, but it shouldn't be something we think about to much. The main thing is that we have a program or a plan of recovery and work that. Part of that program for me is understanding why I react to certain situations in certain ways and I try to find another solution to help me other than lust. on thing I'm thoroughly convinced of is that lust offers me no relief and only makes me worse off.

You find this article helpful: guardyoureyes.com/12-step-articles/item/sick-of-the-nuclear-reset-button?category_id=31

Hatzlacha!

Hi,I was reading thru one of JACK'S Articles titles "9 Tips"

His 6th tip was-

"Throw out all Hollywood movies in the house - they are poison to an addict."

I asked JACK and I want to ask all of you your opinions as well. I am new to this, and new to this journey-on day 8.
By not having Hollywood movies in your home does it mean all movies and Tv shows? or just the more rated R movies and TV shows? Although I understand the "poison" of Movies/TV shows, I still find that for me to completely (cold turkey) stop watching Movies or TV shows is really tough, do you guys have a Method, Approach or Advice how I can slowly ween myself off from watching Movies and TV shows completely.
Thank you!