Hi,
i dont really know how to go about this.
its hard for me to open up like this on a public forum.
im a yeshiva guy who has been struggling w ssa my whole life-
ive had ups and downs in my levels and intensity and acting out of my attractions and online life.
b"h im in a much better place now than where i was a few years ago but im still struggling on both fronts
im ready to start taking action on making my life even better.
lets see where gye takes me...

It's great that you're reaching out for help even though it's hard for you. Don't worry, it will get easier with time!
GYE won't "take you" anywhere! If you are serious about recovery and you can't stand your life the way how it is now, GYE (or SA) can offer guidence how to change, but the main change has to come from you.
Keep on posting and explore the suggestions on your personal homepage (I would recommend the phone conferences as a good place to start, they even have one on SSA guardyoureyes.com/component/zoo/item/ssa-conference).

Make it a great life!

ok- first off, thanks proudchabadnik for catching that last line;)

the truth is that ive been around "this" block, badly so, a couple yrs back-
i paid very strong consequences for my actions and eventually managed to pull through (time rly does help all, but there was work involved too)
i proudly (yes, i was very proud of myself, just sayin...) stayed clean for a few yrs
until about a yr ago i got hit by something personal and felt like all my work was being thrown back in my face...
i slowly fell back into my old online life (it is so scary how it felt like i was never clean...)
very lightly at first bc i was angry (at who exactly?) and then deeper and deeper until i was just doing it to numb myself from my day to day life and bc i was so upset w where i was.
its true that all change rly has to come from myself but im too numb to care now.
im deeper in now then last time but honestly i think im in a better place than then bc at least this time i cud talk about it and try to make things work (ex. worse bc im up full nights online, watching, chatting and other stuff etc...(the first time i looked out the window and saw it was light outside made me realize- that wow- i have u problem!) but better bc im not m*ing etc.)
but one of the reasons why i posted was bc i did want others to come and sort of hold my hand, to help me up and give me a kickstart bc the sad truth is that right now im prob not gonna b able to do it on my own.

another reason i decide to post was bc of my ssa.
its something ive struggled all my life even b4 i knew what anything was and to see myself that there are other reg frum ppl (even though i was told that they exist...) was an eye opener. i figured that instead of chatting w gd knows who (as i was doing)  i might as well try to connect w frum others like me and try to help ourselves.

no, i dont have any answers for why hashem made me this way (and believe me it did not make my life any easier) - 
but i do know what i want my endgame to be-
happily married to a good frum girl and raising a frum toirahdike family.
i hope i can find ppl here who will be able to help me become the "man" i want to be.
and if i could help anybody else feel less lonely in this struggle, or if this thread causes help for others - b"h!

Welcome Chaver!

Personally, I'm 99% straight but I have something to say anyway.
I don't know if you will ever get completely past your SSA.
It would be interesting to look at whether you really want to.

But the thing that strikes me here, and this is where it's the same for all of us, is the addictive behavior.  The staying up for hours looking at stuff, chatting.
Getting stimulated. Being in that numbing state of arousal.
Being far from real life.

This is the place where your efforts can have the most impact.
You may not be able to help what you're attracted to.
I'm attracted to females, I certainly can't help that.  Don't really want to.
But I don't have to check them out, clothed or otherwise.
I don't have to talk to them without tachlis.  I certainly don't have to chat or flirt with them.  I don't have to fantasize about them.

Or maybe I do?
Maybe I need all that stimulation.   To escape or whatever.
At this point the reason doesn't really matter.
What matters is that I'm out of control.  The behaviors are destructive on many levels.

I can't change who I am or what I like.
But by starving this little monster inside of me of his food, I can weaken him.
I can awaken me from my numb trance.
I can start to live again.

that hurts;( sorry to be so blunt.

i agree totally to everything else u said- yes i am in a mind numbing situation and i was clean for 2 weeks b4 i fell again and thats when i decided to "check in" to  gye, and i see how much clearer my mind was during those 2 weeks and yes im too scared to deal w real life at the moment and im hiding out by turning off my mind. i realize all that and am trying to make the jump back on track, posting on gye itself has caused me to be better well behaved bc once i wrote about it publicly it made my mind clearer.

however to be honest, that line... ouch. i dont want to call u judgemental but had that come from someone who suffered from ssa i would b able to take it...
i grew up in a reg frum home. nice typical well adjusted boy who didnt know ANYTHING (i was a rly good and sheltered kid) until the end of high school. i was ALWAYS attracted to boys, not within my life, but models and the like. i used to b so happy during shemiras einayim shmuzen that i didnt have that problem. i never thought there was anything assur w looking at provocative men pics. i didnt even know what m*ing was (i was doing it but didnt know what i was doing) and that it was wrong. eventually i realized that there was something "wrong" w me and have had a very hard time understanding what on earth hashem wants from me and how im supposed to deal w this. i fell very badly and caused myself alot of emotional damage, all while not even understanding what was going on and how wrong it rly was...

you want to know if i were to sit down and work on myself to overcome this i would realize that subconsciously im not letting myself for reason xyz - that could be. but this nisayon came to me, caused me tons of anxiety growing up, fear for the future, doubted my yiddishkeit, thinking i was the only frum kid who felt that way, made me carry this package that at times felt like it would literally drown me bc there was no way out (bc u cant live w a guy and u have no feelings for girls)...

and part of why im numbing myself from real life is because those feelings and fears of are still there.

(sorry if i sound strong but u pushed a very sore button)

You don't sound too strong; you sound like a person with a lot of pain and strong feelings. If someone pushed a button and it made you feel a certain way, it's fine to speak up and clarify. Most people in he board are trying to help, and sometimes people might inadvertently hurt you, and when you clarify it gives them an idea of how to help you. 

I concur with working guy. You are not speaking too strongly.

Alex might have hit a sore point. Chalk it up to the brevity of his post.

You have to take his post, blunt as it sounds, at face value. Meaning, that in a non-judgmental way, he is suggesting that it might help you to focus on the fact that your SSA may not go away, ever. The question is then, do you let the SSA drive you into sexually acting out (even if that means lusting after men, porn, and masturbation without ever involving a live partner) which is crippling? Does combating the SSA itself have inherent worth or is it the way it makes your life unmanageable because of the way it expresses itself through lust and acting out?

That, IMHO, is also what he meant when he wrote that it would be interesting to explore whether you really want to get rid of it.

The main part of his post was all that came after the first two lines, which pointed out the commonality of what lust does to us, whether we are attracted to males, females, or opossums. (And it was a beautiful post.)

Alex did not intend to pick on your having SSA. He meant to point out that it is irrelevant, and that all of us struggling with lust, porn, masturbation, etc. are in the same boat and can identify with each other very deeply and meaningfully.

Best of luck,

Eli

Hi WIP26, welcome aboard!! I'm probably a lot older than you but my story is similar in many ways. I'm a yeshivish guy, married with kids B"H, but been primarily SSA since I was too young to understand what it meant.

I totally concur with what Alex wrote, and Bendy's explanation. It took me a while to come around, but I finally understand that the problem is not so much the SSA as the obsession over it. 2 obsessions actually. The first is the lust obsession, which is really no different from anyone else's. We use it as an escape from the difficulties of life, and maybe even as an escape from our own bad feelings about our lust (and SSA), which makes it a vicious circle. And the tools to work on that are the same tools you can find here on GYE, whether it's just posting on the forum, or phone conferences, SA meetings, therapy, whatever will work for you.

The second is the obsession with the SSA itself. I also thought when I came here that if i'm just super careful not to lust after men for a few months it will go away. Not so fast. I have come to realize that however we got this way (I'm not getting into the nature/nurture debate, it's really not relevant) we didn't have a choice. Hashem wants us to have this particular challenge and therefore there's no need to feel guilty over the fact that I have these attractions. And I think Alex is right. There are things you can do to learn to cope and not to get overwhelmed by the feelings, and to learn how to develop more of an OSA attraction, and healthy non-sexual relationships with men. But the instinctive (to us) attraction we feel to males likely cannot be fully "cured". Our job is to work with it and just make the right choices and do the right thing, today.

I'm not a 12-stepper, but I will close with the words of the Serenity Prayer, which really resonates for me...
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference."

Hatzlacha!!
 

Hi WIP!
Sorry I hurt your feelings.
I certainly didn't mean to suggest that there was only one answer to the question, just that it was something worth looking at honestly.  Either way you're a good guy.
Sometimes our "thing" becomes very precious to us.
It becomes a part of us.  Or maybe it's even born right there with us.
The chevra has done a great job clarifying, especially BD and the G-man.
The SSA is one issue, but lusting is a separate, if not intertwined issue.

As a side note, my wife heard Rabbi Z Wallerstein say that perhaps people with SSA were nichshol in these issurim in a previous gilgul and are here to correct it.

Others have done this, so can you.

Much Hatzlocha,
Alex

Welcome!  Glad to have you with us!

hi,
i keep on pushing off my next post bc i want to be able to say that today was day #1.
didnt happen yet...
b'ezras hashem hopefully tomorrow;)

regarding the ssa hock- im not gonna get into the born w it or not debate (and trust me i already came across that zohar u quoted from r wallerstien) 
but yes i do feel like this is a very personal (precious?) part of me and opening up about it, for me takes strength- to admit that i have it and that its ok.
i try not to obsess about it but whenever i think about shidduchim it scares me.

thank you everybody for showing support - i hope i have good news tomorrow!

Hey WIP!
Welcome aboard!
Would be great to hear you say that you're starting day 1 and a lot greater to hear that you've woken up to another day and are still with us continuing on this journey; day one shmay one, you'll get there plus.

I struggle with similar issues, ssa, and I was very reluctant to share that info when I first joined this forum, so as hard as it is, and it is, I honor your courage, honesty and strength. As was mentioned there is specific part of the forum for guys with ssa and at the same time as many have said, we're basically all in the same boat with a little bit of nuances here and there. The underlying issues of ssa are things that I find many other men deal with as well even if ssa isn't one of their struggles.

That being said, Yes! It is very personal! and Yes! It is precious! Because it's You! And we are all here trying to figure out how to re-channel these parts of ourselves to be the people we want to be. We are all looking for connection and love and we need it and we deserve it. Hopefully here we're learning about and practicing healthier ways to get it.

Looking forward to your next post.

last night i spent hours trying to keep myself busy so i shouldn't have to act out but my body didn't want to go to sleep. i forced myself to only watch clean stuff, when it was too much i went out for walk, chapped a smoke, even listened to music (i know its the 3 weeks, sorry) and did the cycle all over again for about 4 hours.

eventually i got myself into bed, exhausted but happy that i didn't fall.

about 10 minutes later i got this crazy insane urge to check out my chat room. like a man possessed i got out of bed flipped on the computer already visualizing myself entering the chat room and the calm it would bring. in the back of my mind i was telling myself that it was such a waste of a night bc if i ws gonna act out i might as well have done it earlier, and now also i wouldn't be able to post on my first day for gye, but i didn't care. b4 doing that though i decided to first log in to gye remembering that they had an emergency shut off button and to see if it would work.
i pressed it and it sent me an image of a brain- telling me how could i let a piece of mush control and ruin my life. it didnt work.
under that was a "shot of inspiration". i figured i would click on it b4 going on my way.

it was a picture of a bird w his head bowed, sitting on a fence in middle of a storm.
caption- sometimes, you have to bow your head, say a prayer, and weather the storm.

for some reason it hit me. i literally bowed my head, said "hashem please help me"  i shut everything off and crawled back into bed.

i didn't fall asleep right away, and while i was thinking about it made me realize that that was me.
i was in middle of a storm. it was raining all around me. there was thunder. there was lightning. i just wanted out of it. i wanted my security blanket. but rly what i should be doing is waiting out the storm bc i know that after it passes there will be sunshine and green grass and when that time comes i want to be able to enjoy it without any guilty feelings.

last night was a long night but BARUCH HASHEM i weathered the storm
and bezras hashem i should be able to weather through many more!

ODAAT!

Good to have you with us friend!!!

I don't know what it is like to have SSA, but I do know that there are different challenges Hashem has given to different people.

I read a story to my children to night before putting them to bed, and the basic story was about not letting feelings lead us into our actions (though they are not necessarily bad). If indeed we believe the Tanakh is Hashem's words, and one believes that the Oral Torah is handed down from Moshe, then we intellectually know what things are forbidden for His people. Learning to control our passions (feelings) that are opposed to His instructions and precepts is a life long struggle, yet it is for the purpose of drawing us closer to Hashem. Our passions can delude our moral compass, for the yetzer hara is very sly, yet we must recognize this, and the fact that it is actually a necessary part of our becoming like, in the image and likeness, of our Father. Do not look at your struggle as with evil (though the act itself is), for the yetzer is not evil in and of itself (Hashem said at the end of creation "it is very good") but rather as an opportunity to draw closer to Hashem.

You can do this with His help. And don't under estimate the fact that He has brought you into our family. We are here to stand with you.

May Hashem here your cry in this Mitzrayim, strengthen you and supply all your needs through the desert, and bring you into what He promised His people. Victory over all of our enemies!!!!

Hey WiP, that was an amazing post!
What about some filters on your computer, and maybe accountability software.
Until then, how about locking it in your car at night?