Hi everyone, I am supposed to introduce myself. I started masturbating when I was little, and have been doing it pretty regularly for a few decades now. I'm a BT. I did a lot of porn when I was younger and I guess it has to do with that.

I've been trying to be on my best behavior. When I'm being good I go several weeks without masturbating.

I have a filter so usually these days when I masturbate it's because of some abusive fantasy regarding my wife.

Several weeks? Great! What is it that inevitably causes you to masturbate following that? Do the fantasies act up on their own, ir is it usually triggered by something?

Typically it's some abusive fantasy about my wife. She'll do or say something innocently and I freely interpret it as meaning that she wants to be sexually abused, but I'm ambivalent about it (I don't go around abusing people, it just turns me on to think about it) so it goes in the back of my mind, and pretty soon I'm looking for sex right on and left.

I wouldn't focus on the exact nature of your fantasy so much, but rather, what can you do to avoid the lustful thinkin'.

I am not sure about this, for if it is an abusive fantasy, there might be somethin' else there, but from your history, my initial gut tells me that it's a manifestation of lust.

don't trust me, however, for i am a lust addict.

b'hatzlachah

cordnoy wrote:


I think you are right in the sense that understanding it doesn't help me avoid it.

I'm nervous to offer a view about something which may be worth seeing a therapist for. I will however speak about myself, and if you feel it speaks to you then good.
I reached a stage on the depths of my porn addiction where I got frightened of the depravity of my thinking and desires. I became obsessed with the fear of what I was capable of. With great fear (I was scared I'd lose my kids) I went to see a respected psychiatrist. To my great surprise and enormous relief, he told me "you've got mild OCD".

To cut to the chase, Gd healed me from everything.
What part did I play? I went for a year or more to a good therapist after the psychiatrist visit. I was concurrently practicing mindfulness programme, working the 12 steps, surrendering, and praying at length in my own words to Gd from where I was.
In my case 'dealing' with it never meant trying to understand its causes. This is very much the approach of the 12 steps if i understand them correctly.
If these fantasies/obsessions are disturbing you, know that these fantasies/obsessions are not you, and can be addressed and you can see much success.
I hope this helps.

I think I'm depressed again. Being depressed sucks. Staying clean when I am depressed is a tall order. It's like kryptonite for superman. But in the end if I start masturbating again I'm just going to get more depressed.

I was walking in my backyard earlier and I had a lull and I was desperate to find something to do that would seem stimulating. I feel like all I want to do is lie down.

Welcome to GYE and thank you for sharing ! You can find links to suggested GYE tools for recovery in my signature below.

Hatzlacha!

Cool.

It's been a struggle to go daven with a minyan regularly. When I became frum I was concerned with "doing everything right." I'd get up early and think "so cool, I'm getting up early to learn," and I would make sure I davened with a minyan. I was stroking myself right and left for being a good Jew. And I masturbated regularly, then I beat myself up afterwards, to make sure I was still a good Jew. If I couldn't do what the Torah said, at least I could hold that the Torah was right and I was wrong. Ha ha.

Today I'm no longer compartmentalized, I want to think about sex, any of a number of thoughts that puts me on a pedestal, but I try not to because I have too much going for me as an orthodox Jew. My wife did not turn out to be my sex slave (darn) as I had originally hoped, but I like doing things for her. Somebody reminded me that my marriage is not a big love story. But I think one of the reasons may be that I don't believe in love stories any more. My wife uses me when she wants to snuggle, and sometimes when she is in the mood. But I don't feel bad about it. Her happiness is at work, where she has more control and gets a lot less frustrated. I can't say that I'm happy in the sense that I have what I want (which is to be the great emperor of north america and have sex with two different girls every day) but I am content and I'm well off because of several soberly fun things in my life, holding my wife and telling her she's the best girl, tickling my kids, making fun of them, watching them grow up, showing my parents their grandkids, seeing my rav in shul and feeling sorry because he is too harsh and people don't go to his classes, learning to taitsch Chumash with Rashi on the way to work, making jokes at work, ...

I don't think my davening is in the list though. It's still a chore. And it's hard to arrange. If I try to go bed early to get up early my wife tells me I'm avoiding her. Recently I decided to leave bedtime to her and just go to shul. Just GO there, get out of the house. But I think what has happened now is that I am making a calculation in my mind that there's too much forced davening going on for me, so now I'm davening with a minyan in the evening but struggling in the morning.

This is Odyssey, over.

hwhap@gmx.com wrote:

I don't know if having trouble getting to minyan is common among sex addicts (or non-addicts), but I do know that other people here have this issue as well. I would imagine that most frum Jews do unfortunately view davening as a chore. It's hard. The same words three times a day. Getting out of bed in the morning, out of the office in the afternoon, out of the house at night. Not simple tasks.
Personally, I try to have a seder before shacharis and maariv, so this way, I'm there already anyway. A guy was just recently commending me on going to a shiur before davening, and one of the benefits I told him was being able to get to davening on time. He said "but how do you get the shiur on time?" I said "I don't!"
Bottom line: Try your best and be honest with yourself.
It's great that you accept your role as a mere serf in the sexual world, something we can all learn from.
And by the way, the odyssey is far from over...
Hatzlocha

Welcome! Have you read the handbook? Did any of it speak to you? keep posting. We are "listening".

I skimmed it for now
because it's so big. Impressive though, you can almost feel all the pain of the people that contributed to writing it, directly or not.

Mazal tov on your six years.

I read part of the handbook and I'm feeling uncomfortable now. I'm feeling the mussar thing, "you have to watch your eyes or you're a sh*t," I'm going to have to shake this off or I'm going to jack off as a matter of principle.

Check out the Dr. Sorotzkin link in my signature.