MARKZ

I am not recommending that people somehow grab a random woman, run off to Vegas and get hitched!
But it truly troubles me that someone like Chaim woudl be in his 20's and avoid contact with women.
I know there is Talmudic advice to talk to women as little as possible.
But at the same time a lack of female contact can lead to stunted social skills, lack of confidence and inability to share emotions with a future wife.
I went to an all boy's school had very little contact with females outside of immediate family, and I really feel it dented my confidence and lessened my chances of a normal healthy marriage. The effects of this are still felt by me well decades later.
I hate to see others suffer how I did, viewing women from afar, regarding them as inaccessible and therefore having negative connotations...the end result of which has been for me to seek solace in acting out and at times visiting prostitutes.
I do not proscribe marriage as the antidote to lust, but I believe the distancing from women which some men do leads us to objectify them as sexual objects rather than people with feelings.

There is a school of thought which believes the 12 Step Programme not useful for Sex Addiction, because the drive for sex is natural, whereas the drive for alcohol is learned.
So instead the remedy is to focus on building a healthy romantic relationship leading to marriage.
Of course, some sex addicts will have been helped by the 12 Step programme...so different things work for different people at different times.

HASHEM HELP ME

Thank you for your kind words. They give me encouragement.

This latest fall has been the hardest because I really thought I had conquered my problem once and for all.
That no triggers could make me fall.
The fall proves this was not correct, and I need to accept my emotional triggers and reasons for acting out, and instead of denying they can harm me, instead respond to them with immediate prevention techniques and positive actions.

YIRASHAMAIM

Yes, we must love ourselves. No partner can provide the magic answer.
But in my case I truly believe being in a healthy relationship lessens my chances of acting out, through building emotional fulfillment.

Which leads me to 

GETTHERE

So true.
Prevention is everything with me.
Tackling the flame whilst it is small.
Avoiding getting to that low place where I act out from emotional weakness.

Thank you for replying.

ColinColin wrote on 11 Jul 2017 18:08:

If the Talmud advises us to limit contact with women, we should adhere to that. If you have a particular concern due to your personal history, it would be wise to discuss that with a competent rav. I humbly take issue with your advising someone else to not follow Chazal's advice due to your history. Brocho v'hatzlocha.

Many from a modern orthodox background where talking to girls/women did not have the same stigma are sex addicts.

HASHEMHELPME

Fair enough, for me to say that Chazal are wrong would be arrogant at least.

In my case, I am not from a Torah background or a Yeshiva upbringing, I am sort of Baal Teshuva though not as observant in all aspects of a Torah lifestyle at present.

I cannot advise the poster Chaim whom I mention above to follow my path, but I do have to express my feelings on how certain aspects of my youth have harmed me as an adult.

Honestly, I am well aware that I am not typical of this Forum and that many are cut from a quite different cloth.
My views will inevitably annoy and alarm some.
It may be that my place is not on this Forum.

I am going to post now on Chaim's thread to advise him to speak to a Rav.

ColinColin wrote on 11 Jul 2017 18:08:

The 12 step programme is a method for dealing with addictions.
in SA the problem isnt sex, we may be 'sexaholics' but the problem is lust and dependency.
The drive for sex has gone wild. it has gone out of control. It left the realm of natural.
I would hazard a guess that a majority of SA members in the states joined SA AFTER dealing with their alcohol / drug problems using the 12 step program... If not the majority, a large number of them.
If i cant fix my sex addiction by working on the romance with my wife in the marriage, how is someone going to fix it outside of a marriage.
The problem is me, my addictions, my dependencies, due to my character defects and childhood traumas..
No relationship is going to fix that, other than the one i have with my Higher Power/aka the Creator of the Universe...
The school of thought you are talking about is one that gets paid by the hour... they put the 12 steps there as an afterthought because their livelihood relies on it.
Nothing against therapy, I owe my therapist a lot... but as Dov told me once, if my therapist and my sponsor tell me conflicting things to do, i have to go with my sponsor..
Lucky for me I picked a therapist wisely, who gets the importance of the twelve steps.
He knows that the tools of surrender and acceptance are something i can only gain by actively working on my dependence on God, through the twelve steps, due to the fact that I am an addict and need a simple step by step program of action to fix my life....

Colin wrote:


I hear your concern, but...

Of those that went to mixed gender school, there are none that don't have confidence issues?

Markz wrote on 11 Jul 2017 22:41:

I was in co-ed growing up.
It really fed my sexaholism

GROWSTRONG

If the 12 Step programme has worked positively for your lust addiction, then great!

The person who told me it was not suitable for lust addiction was not charging me any money at all.
Merely stating their point of view that the programme did not work for everyone because they felt sex/lust addiction was fundamentally different from other addictions.

MARKZ and GROWSTRONG

There will be those who have self confidence issues and lust addiction who went to mixed gender schools.

But in my case, my issues are in part connected to going to a single gender school and having minimal contact with females in my teen years.

I am saying with confidence that whoever said that the 12 steps don't work for lust/sex addiction doesn't know what he's talking about. Is it the only solution? Absolutely not. But does it work? Hell yes.

ColinColin wrote on 12 Jul 2017 00:22:

Maybe you are just a plain old vanilla lustaholic and coming up with all these reasonings and explanations is stopping you from actually dealing with the problem that you are a sexaholic.
Or maybe you just need to get married and learn more Torah on shabbos.
How often are you falling currently and are you white knuckling the interim or do you have a program of action?

SHLOMO24

The 12 Step Programme has not worked for all people dealing with sex addiction issues.
There are those who have not achieved positive results from it.
They instead used other methods which have worked for them.
But if it works for you, great! 
I would never tell someone to avoid it, but people have to know it is not the only option.

GROWSTRONG


I am on this Forum because I recognise my compulsion for pornography and acting out, being on here is part of me dealing with my problem.
My explanations might strike a chord with someone else.

On average I fall every two months.

I have been white knuckling it too much, and am putting place a self-help program which I intended to use a while ago.
I thought I didn't need it, but I was wrong.

ColinColin wrote on 12 Jul 2017 15:21:

I agree. It doesn't work for all. But it works. It's very effective for some people. I'm biased because I'm in that community, but I've seen it work for thousands of people. Someone dismissing a program that works for thousands of people is incompetent.

Last few days have been hell.

Somehow avoided a fall but came very close.

My fall 10 days ago has left me feeling rock bottom emotionally, even though intellectually I know this is normal and a trick of the Yetzer Hara.

ColinColin wrote on 20 Jul 2017 04:12:

I understand how you are feeling and I have been there many times. I also want to challenge the notion that this is a trick. This sounds like basic human emotions to me. The reason why I'm challenging this is because for me it didn't work to pathologize my recovery process. When I feel withdrawal or crappy, it's totally valid and ok. How I react to it is where the program is, but the feelings are completely normal and ok. To call those feelings a "trick from the yetzer hara" invalidates the feelings and my right to feel them.

ColinColin wrote on 20 Jul 2017 04:12:

bb0212 wrote on 19 Jul 2017 04:19: