This post is long in coming, but better late than never.

I am in my early 30's, happily married for several years, and have a few beautiful children. The perfect life, isn't it? Unfortunately, like many of you here, I seem to have a insane urge to ruin my perfect life, by pursuing activities that I have no business in.

I have struggled with masturbation for as long as I can remember. I didn't always have access to porn, but I always found something to arouse myself with. On and off over the past several years, I have chatted online with random people, sometimes developing relationships, but never anything serious or anything in person.

In years past I used to get very down on myself because of these struggles. Unfortunately, instead of improving, it would just make me depressed and end up dragging me down in all areas of ruchniyos. As a coping mechanism, I sort of just came to terms with it and convinced myself, that I am a good growing person in most areas, and this is just something that I can't win, at least not now. This was part of the reason that i have been avoiding GYE the past few years; I just felt that I wasn't strong enough or ready to deal with this issue, why make myself depressed.

I don't know what the turning point was, but about two weeks ago I decided that it was time, and if not now then when. I browsed GYE for a day or two, then deleted all my online accounts that I used for the wrong things and signed up for GYE, and decided that that day would be the first day of the rest of my life.

I have now been clean for 13 days. I am pretty sure that this is the longest I have ever been clean my entire life! For the first time since I have been married, I feel like I can come home from work, without the niggling feeling of did I cover all my tracks and can look my family in the eye without feeling guilty about myself.

I know that this is only the beginning, and I have a long way to go, but I am really excited about where I am, where I am going and with my new GYE family that has opened itself up to me for the journey ahead.Thank you for indulging me.

BH

A great beginning!!!!

Keep it up on this thread
One post at a time One day at a time

Keep it up, thank you for sharing.

Welcome

Welcome.



Hatzlacha Rabah.

Welcome! Thanks for sharing!  You are certainly in the right place.  Read the handbook.  Keep posting.

Welcome
 thatI was some first post.
You wrote all the right things.
Good for you.

B'hatzlachah

Welcome to life
never to late
keep posting

TFLMS 

Thank you everyone for the open arms and warm welcome. I look forward to continued posts and updates. I am not really sure how I want to use this thread, as I have very little experience writing about my personal life for others to read. I am thinking of using it as some combination of a diary and blog, which will hopefully allow me to express myself and better understand my own feelings. I apologize if this will lead to some lengthy posts on occasion. In addition, although I may be writing to myself at times, I really do look forward to feedback and comments from you all. This too will help me understand myself, and continue my journey of growth, day by day.  

Another couple of clean days to add to the resume, b'h. Who ever thought that two or three days could feel so long? I am guessing everyone that everyone already on board already knows how slow time can go on occasion. 

Over the past several days I have been struggling with some emotional confusion. On one hand I am really proud of myself, and thankful to Hashem for the strength to stay clean this long. On the other hand, however, I have been extremely irritable and moody with overall blah feeling at times.

I have tried to pinpoint my negative feelings, but have not been able to put a finger on it. After some thought, however, I realized that I feel very similar to how I felt when I quite smoking cold turkey, almost 10 years ago. Am i just having symptoms of withdrawal? Has anybody else had this experience? 

Yes, and yes. It seems to be a pretty common thing. Your body is reacting to losing its "drug". Internet addiction has been shown to produce the same chemical reactions in the brain as substance abuse. 

The good news is that with time it will get easier. You just need to get through that first period of intense withdrawal. Just take it a day at a time. We are here to support you. Hang in there and KOMT!

Chazak V'ematz! you've got this! you know where to find me if you need me ;-)

Hey, always good to take the first step. I'm at the first step too. Hang in there.

Thank you everyone for the support!

I have been clean for 4 weeks now and am feeling great. Being able to walk into my house and just play with my kids and chat with my wife without guilty feelings is a tremendous sensation. I am feeling, b'h, much less irritable than I was in the first couple of weeks. 

My biggest bump in the road, was one day a few days ago when me and my wife were both not feeling well and were pretty stressed out and were not communicating well. I saw myself going to the computer to try to distract myself, but quickly realized that I was heading in a direction that I didn't want to go. Instead, I just went to bed really early to lay down and relax. As an added bonus, this helped me de-stress a great deal, so that when my wife came to bed later, we were able to talk things over and really come together after a hard day.

In my past life, I would have spent the evening on the computer till late at night after my wife already went to bed. I would be even more frustrated with myself, and would end up going to bed really late; angry at myself, my wife and the world at large.   

Thanks for listening and supporting. I have some additional thoughts and questions to share as well, but I think I better leave them to a follow up post.

I have a couple of random thoughts and observations that I thought I would share. 

1) The best way to win the war, is to not fight any battles.

2) When we support each other and help shoulder the burden together, it does not reduce the weight of the burden, but it does distribute the wright making it easier to carry.

3) This struggle is like the script of almost every fantasy book/movie. The hero of the story (that's us) has to fight a terrible evil villain that is extremely strong and powerful. At the beginning, the hero has little strength and skills, and has virtually no chance of defeating the villain. However, the with the support of his friends and mentors (GYE), the hero growths in strength and knowledge, finding latent powers and abilities he never even realized he had. Eventually, he is strong enough, using his powers along with a little cunning and ingenuity he is able to defeat the villain.

I liked #1 the best.  as for #3, fantasy is a bad word in my book, even fantasy of "vanquishing the evil Y"H".  What I needed was a huge dose of REALITY.  To learn to live in the real world and with real challenges, and not to escape into fantasy.  (I know that is not what you meant, but they are more closely related than you think.  Read some of the dov quotes).