I am a young married guy and I am desperate for help. I have been married almost 3 years and all this time I have had a problem with pornography, masturbation, and infidelity. My wife wants to leave me.... We tried therapy but just can't come down to the reason why I have done the things I did.

This is my last resort. I am turn here to GYE for help and guidance with this. I don't want to lose her, I want to start a family and my selfishness and problems are just pushing everything away.

Please, please help me

Hebjew414 wrote on 01 Sep 2010 17:03:



Did you sit down with her and tell her the quote above?  (with tears in your eyes obviously)

Welcome to GYE.

This is a pretty good place TO START for a last resort.  (read without sarcasm, meant seriously)

expect more posts.

We're with you.  Good luck.

Hi Hebjew 414.  I will leave it to far more experienced members of the site to give you some practical eiytzos, although it would probably be useful to know whether you have tried SA (particularly if your "infidelty" has involved live people then you should be going to live meetings), and see if your wife would join the "spouses of addicts" forum where she can get some real advice from similalrly situated people.  For now, I just wanted to welcome you and tell you that in GYE you will find an outpouring of support, practical advice and the tools for real change.  Good luck we will all be davening for you.

Hebjew,

Welcome!  I joined SA about 10 months ago and your story is one I have heard MANY times since that point.  If you are really serious about getting help I would not delay.  Get online, find a meeting and go to one tonight.

Feel free to email me for any information about how to find out about the meetings.  If you live in NY I can give you some info on a great meeting tonight and take you if you would like.

Hatzlacha

Thank you... And I am Still in the process of telling her everything. But she doesn't want to believe me, she only thinks I am lying to her. And I don't blame her for not trusting and believing me. This isn't the first time I have told her and I keep falling back to my old ways. As much as I try I can't break out of this addiction, at least not on my own. I need guidance, I need someone to help pull me out and move on to a better life with the amazing woman that I married

Please don't try to solve this by telling her more about your addiction.  When our lips our moving, we addicts tend to be either lying or manipulating.  Experience of people in sexual recovery is that we can only improve our situations by changing OUR behavior not convincing someone else (especially a spouse that we have harmed greviously) that they should stay, change, forgive......

If you chat me or email me I would be happy to give you some resources to get some help quick.

First of all, welcome! joining here, and wanting to grow, are excellent first steps forward - hopefully, the first of many!

Good point, Jooboy.

I would also mention something else - ultimately, no matter what your support system is (therapy, SA, friends, rabbeim, a sponsor, etc.), they cannot pull you up. They can guide you, they can help you. They can encourage you, they can give you insight. They can help you see through your own rationalizations, if you allow them. My support system did all of the above, and more. But ultimately, it is up to you to change.

You can change. You have the ability to reach a point where you breathe a sigh of relief, when you can look in the mirror proudly. When you can finally be free of the behaviors that you really don't want, even though they promise so much pleasure.

You can be you. The real you. Welcome.

Aaaand...here's your welcome package!


Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

Before the handbook people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, someone with a low level addiction wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences", putting in "filters" etc... For the first time ever, this handbook details all the techniques and tools dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now, anyone can read it through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook to the next tools, as the suggestions become progressively more "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

i am just writing to echo the advise already suggested.
B.H. i have been going to live S.A. meetings and checking in with a sponsor regularly. B.H. bli eyan harh,i have remained sober one day at a time.
if u r in NYC ,there is even a SA meeting tonight which other frum guys attend. pm me for the details.

Buddy, this is classic addiction otherwise called compulsive behavior.
u r already admitting ur powerlessness over lust! This is the first step of recovery.
Yasher Koach for reaching out for help.
remember,u may be powerless,but u r not helpless. Besisides The Ribono Shel Olom,we your fellow sex addicts are here to help u. Please keep us posted. Looking forward to meeting u at a live meeting.

Dear friend - my life was also a mess and I saw no way out. I have been sober for 13.5 years and our marriage is better than it ever was. So is my life. Have you found resources?

As far as counseling goes, I went to a psychotherapist when my wife found me out. We were getting divorced, it seemed. He convinced us that beyond a marriage problem, I had a big problem, so we agreed that I'd work on that for a while, then we'd tackle the marriage issue and decide if we should divorce, or not.

The shrink was flabbergasted every time I'd act out with lust! he just couldn't figure it out, and neither could I. I just knew that I needed it more than I needed my marriage. Period.

When I finally got desperate enough to get into serious recovery (and after switching shrinks), I got sober and got the help I needed. The dust started to clear over the next 1-2 years, and things slowly got better at the same time. And by the way, I never needed to figure out why I did the crazy lust stuff and why I can't stop. For all I know I still can't stop! I got help because I can't do it. I tried for a long time. How long have you tried for? How's it working?

I still need help because I still can't do it - but am sober one day at a time so far and without any 'pressure building up'...and every single aspect of life is better this year than it was last year, no shayloh.

It was not easy, but what's that got to do with it? To me, the only question is: "Am I worth it?"

Are you?

JtheMedic wrote on 01 Sep 2010 17:03:


Welcome J.  Yep, me too.  Therapy and more therapy.  And after thirty years of it I still didn't know why I did "it", and still couldn't stop.  If you want to check out my thread you'll see that we all have been through/are going through gehinom.  But with  Hashem's help and the support and encouragement and guidance of the guys here I'm a little over three months, stopped all at once, clean.  You can do this.

Daven for relief, for success, post, read.  Do your personal work in your way at your pace.  Keep us posted.  You matter to me, to us.

You can definitely do this.

[ftp][/ftp]
The thing is, I try telling her I have a problem and after reading some of your replys, I try to be vague and not give details but that's all she wants. And she wants answers and reasons as to why I did what I did. I don't have an answer for that, but it's not good enough for her, I don't know what else to tel her

What do you think about the following approach?

Just keep saying to her:


I love you so so much.

I know that I am hurting you, and that hurts me.

I'm really really working on it.  This is the most important thing to me right now.

I'm not saying I'll be better overnight, but I'm working step by step, striving for small improvements one at a time.

You have every right to be upset/burning mad at me.

I want you to help me with this.

I need your help.

I really really really DOOOOOOOOOO care about you...  more than I care about myself...

J,

It seems your real issue is not "what else to tell her", but what are you going to do about your problem.  If you get help for yourself everything else will fall into place.  If you don't get help for your problem nothing you tell her will make any difference at all. 

I relate very much to your situation.  When my wife discovered my porn issue she was devastated and so was I (that she found out).  I spent a few years trying to control the damage and maker her be OK with me.  It didn't work so great.  Now I'm spending my time trying to fix me and trying to let go of what she thinks and overall the 2nd method is working much better.

Hatzlacha