I was a mere 7 years old, a little naïve chasidish boy, when I was first introduced to anything sexual, by a first cousin of the same age – who, as I much later found out, has previously been molested by an adult – I was very hesitant and uncomfortable at first, but ended up getting used to it, and spreading my knowledge to other friends in school.
I had no idea how bad what I was doing was, all I knew is that it’s a fun game and a secret game.
A couple of weeks later, I was caught by school staff, I was punished, I didn’t really understand the severity of it, but I just knew that I had to keep my secret game even more secret.
2 years later at the age of 9, one Shabbos afternoon I was caught by my father red-handed with a neighbor of my age, my father beat me black and blue. (footnote: I currently have a very close relationship with my father). I had no idea that I had black and blue marks on my face, until my rebbi in yeshiva asked me the next day what happened to me, when I answered that nothing happened, he asked ‘so what are all these marks’ then it struck me that I need a better answer so I said, ‘oh, I just fell down a flight of stairs’.
Until I got home from Yeshiva, I had no clue why everyone was staring at me. When I got home I looked in the mirror, and I was so traumatized of how I looked, that it took me weeks to loo in the mirror again.
At that point I went underground, I knew that this secret is of the highest level, and I started desiring it even more and more. I was still a young kid, but I always managed to keep sexual relationships with friends and cousins.
When I went on to Yeshiva Ketana it only worsened. At age 16 I was introduced to porn magazines, and then videos, and for the following 21 years it has been a constant roller-coaster, of downs and ups and again downs, Determinations that “That’s It!” and then downfalls, over and over again.
In between I got married and it didn’t help a bit. I’ve had times that I’ve been clean for months, then I dropped back into the shmutz for months. And so it went on for many years.
I’m going to leave out a lot of the drama that went on throughout the years, and I’ll jump to where we are now.
Hashem pulled the slingshot all the way down in order to catapult me out of this sewage plant.
One morning I received an unsolicited text message from an unknown sender, a message that was intended for someone else, with a pornographic picture and asking me to meet up with her after a failed prior attempt to meet up.
Instead of replying “wrong number” and deleting the message, I replied: "I’m not your intended recipient, however I still enjoyed the picture."
She replied with even more pictures, we then chatted a little more and then she asked me to enter an online chat at which point I stopped communicating with her.
The next night I flew out of the country for business, and meanwhile my dear wife somehow found the text messages, I’m not going to go in to the details of that, but before I came home my wonderful wife had already contacted GYE she had the whole thing set up for me. AND HERE I AM.
For the first time since I was 7 years old I finally feel liberated. I hope to ride out this journey with all of you, and help each other out on the way, and conquer this Yetzer Hora.
