WL welcome and a Gmar Chasima Tova.  Regarding your marriage issues check out Garden of Peace. I think you'll find it eye opening. Hatzlacha.

Please dont blame yourself for all your problems. Hashem controls the world including your sons marriage.
Gmar chasima tova

Thank you all for responding ,Thanks especially to Dov it gives me real chizuk to have heard from him directly.I am not going to give up I will keep trying.I sent the form in for a sponsor .I need a phone group to get involved in. I am not sure if I should go to the sa  group which is live-it will be embarassing,and all nonjews,and the gye program seems so good.Can't I just work this?I want to get on the therapy session.I think mostly I need a sponsor becasue I need to focus my thoughts and energies.I tend to get ideas but they can stay in theair if no one helps me bring them down.

One idea  I have been thinking aboutis the rlationship to self pleasuring, and anger to frustration.It seems to me my anger comes frpm frustration and I self pleasure when frustrated. I think I have to internalize that it all comes from hashem and it is the way he wants it
If that is so then all is good and right with my world even if I wanted it differently.If all is right then I have no reason to be frustrated or upset no matter what happened and  I have to be calm and good with itand not act out cause everything is good. Do I make sense?
One if the tools I think I need to adopt is to be calm and go slow when I am rushed and things don't go the way I want  or a child asks me a question I am not ready for I get irritated and do not respond well.
thx for listening you guys are amzing.I have had 27 yrs of living in isolation,guilt and sadness over my actiong out.I believe with your help and this prgram I can be cured.thank you all and thank you gye

I can relate to the anger issue.  Many times in the past I would act out after losing my temper.  I have worked on my anger, by working on strengthening my Emunah.  In other words, everything is from Hashem, and is for the best.  Getting angry means that you don't believe what is happening is from Hashem and for the best.  This has helped reduce anger, which also helps reduce the triggers for acting out.

Keep on reading the forums and keep coming back.  Try to commit to reading if not posting to the forum every day.  Go on the forum even if you don't feel like it.  You will get so involved that you will forget about your little friend, and you won't miss him!!

worthless wrote on 19 Sep 2010 03:27:


I am super impressed with this!

Also, R' Zelig Pliskin has a great book by the title ANGER: THE INNER TEACHER, published by Artscroll.

It helped me a lot.

worthless wrote on 19 Sep 2010 03:27:


Do you expect me to blast you and say, "No, you can't get better w/o live meetings"? Well, I won't!

If you get 'better' with the virtual friendships (and using your virtual name), then that means that it works. I believe that also depends on how you define 'getting better', too.

For me, the fake name and my hidden presence would conspire against me - for that is the very way I protected my acting out in the first place. So it's not my cup of tea when it comes to recovery. But like I said, if it works for you, then it works!

All you can do is try, and the truth will reveal itself for you.

Of course, if you define 'success' as 'participating in the valiant fight', then your definition is something I cannot relate to. For me, my actions, lifestyle and attitude had become such an irritant, that all I wanted to do was to stop. I couldn't stop, but I had to. So to me, success means one thing: not having to masturbate today. I learned that the reason I ended up having to 'mess up' was not that I went too far with the porn. (That's what I had always truly believed, so I made an art out of searching and looking - but stopping in time. I presume you know firsthand exactly what I mean.) Rather, my problem was the first drink. I discovered that I do not even possess the power to consistently avoid the very first drink! So I started to learn how to trust G-d.

SA - a bunch of goyim - taught me how to do that. And now I am here with you. Am I goyish? I don't think so. So maybe the meetings wouldn't be that bad.

Furthermore, even though I am not - repeat NOT recommending SA to you (for I do not know you at all) - the act of a bekovodikeh ben-Torah/talmid chochom having to go and be machniyah himself to a bunch of 'farmboys' to learn how to keep his marriage and stop behaving like a rosho, is quite a humbling experience. I like that for myself. I'd like to wish it on anybody with a porn/masturbation/whatever problem, especially if he is a talmid chochom. Because when we act out our lust, somehow we learn to maintain the kovod of a respectable talmid chochom, don't we? And that is a lie. Would the masses watch a video of us doing what we do and thinking what we think before, during, and after we do it, we would not be 'respectable' any more. Period.

So I am happy I am friends with a bunch of otherwise prusteh goyim - who taught me how to be not prust, one day at a time.

Just for the opportunity for a grain of precious anivus, this experience is priceless to me.

So try whatever you want, and may Hashem help you and all of us take action accordingly. If what we choose to do works for us, great. If not....better try something else or we just get worse.

Love,

Dov

Thank you "World " for your kind words I am like a lap dog and just love to be petted.I did read that sefer many years ago and it is very good.Lately I have been reading sefarim by R shalo arush-garden of Peace,In Forest Fields-It is breslev but I haven't got into the hisbodus part yet but I find he has alot of wisdome
love worthless(I almost signed my name)

Dear Dov

Thank you for your wonderful words.You have a way of telling it like it really is .As I am typing this I can't believe that I am rea;;y ta"talking to someones about this major prblesm.It has been my dark,dirty secret for somany years.I thank gye and all of yu for allowing me to relly become a whole human again.

On anther note You should know  that I came here because of O.A. where I went to weekly meetings and have lost over 100 pounds in 7 months.O.A. started my recovery and I ate humble pie every week and loved it.I just am unsure if it would be a real chilul Hashem, But your right the only thing that matters is to get whole,to stop acting out.For now I will try the phone and emails,If it doe ;Doesn't work I'll go live.
thx worthless

worthwhile, your a good guy. obviously capable of big stuff- 100 pounds, wow.

in terms of chillul H, i think the standards we abide by are a lot more severe then what's the norm in the outside world. if you think SA would help you, why not go? H puts tools in this world for us to use them.
personally, i've always wondered if  those AA and OA and SLAA meetings worked. i actually looked into SA meetings once but the ones in my cities are all in church. i guess now that you....but i'm curious- was OA really all that effective?

Just for the record, most of the SA meetings I have been going to for the past 13 years have been in churches. We have at least None are in the actual church "sanctuary", of course, but in rooms at the other end of the building.

I have met rabbonim in recovery who regularly go to meetings in churches - why not ask a Rov the shayla? If you can't bear to tell your Rov, I sympathize (a little). If the Rov does not know what addiction really is, then don't bother. It's like asking a gadol about electricity - the poskim studied electricity a good deal, before issuing p'sakim. Same here - it takes more than hearsay to know what recovery is really about. If your Rov wants info from a frum addict in recovery, ask me for my # and I'll be glad to talk with him.

Rav Twerski has what to say about it and you can ask him - or ask Guard to ask him for you.

In the end, though, how can anyone tell you to do something you are really not comfortable with?

...but then I'd say, "how comfortable are you watching porn, fantasizing, and using it to do whatever you end up doing?" I think that's a good question and goes beyond what's nice, to the sometimes uncomfortable facts about ourselves. BTW, Guard has a great email from Rav T that goes something like this:
A guy calls me today, whether I endorse guardureyes, and I said Yes. Then he asked if their derech was "Daas Torah." I said, "How come you didn't call me to ask whether watching pornography was Daas Torah?
Meschugena world
- Twerski

Not the same issue, but I thought you'd enjoy!
I mean no harm, just feel like it needs to be said here, that's all. If you feel otherwise, disagree completely, or whatever, I respect that 100%. Really.

Besides, are you talking about addiction here, or just a bad habit doing stuff that feels really good? If your habit is really something that you have a pathetic track record controlling successfully over time and if it is negatively affecting your life, then "addiction" might be what it is. Only you can decide that, I believe. If neither of those are the case, perhaps the term "addiction" is being overused, kind of like Ritalin :o. In that case, why go anywhere near a church?

Be well and a happy, mehudar Succos!! And after 27 years of being sure you'd take this secret to the grave you are moving in the right direction - that is the only point. It's never too late to do right for yourself and the other people in your life.

dear everyone thank you for you caring answers.I have no doubt that I am addicted to soft core  porn,I also know that there is no problem going to a meeting in a church as long as it is not in the "sancturary.This was told as a psak by a dayan in my home city to my good friend that accompanied me to some meetingsd.But I must confess I kind of poskined for my self that i was ok as i started to go to the meetings befor I was sure what the rav said and even worse I proably would have still kept going even had he said know becacause I was drowning in obeisity and I need a lifeline and I had to trry this approach as a last ditch effort.( i  would have believed i would have been able to find a rabbi who undrewtood  the dangers of my obeisity and would find a wway to give me a heter .

Secondly you should know oa really does work and works phenomonly.If you want me to tell you more about it send me an email.I fyou need it  do it .As Dov always says these problem come from the same area.By working on one you should grow in others
thanks alll of you  worthless