Hey guys! 

I’m back in Yeshiva now, Baruch Hashem the z’man is going well.  But I realize now that, while being in yeshiva is definitely a luxury to learn and  be shielded from a lot of the nisyonos of home, I can’t just glide anymore and hope my problems will somehow disappear when next time I am forced to face them. 

It’s so helpful to me that while I was gone for a few days, several new and really amazing and thoughtful posts appeared.  I’ve seen in these forums people that have “less” problems than I do and also the opposite, but it is especially helpful to me when you guys tell me that you fought and struggled for many years and are better people today for have facing the problem and opening up to others.  It gives me strength to not forget how important it is for me to work at it and to search and find the right words and the inner strength to open myself up and, yes to SHARE with others. 

Honestly, I’m not sure whether asking all these questions about being married is what I really should be doing right now, although maybe it is okay if it’s something that weighs so heavily on me right now. Someone once told me that “The difference between a Rebbi and a wife is that you can’t tell your wife some things, but you have to tell a Rebbi everything”. I’m not sure that they were referring to the same types of things that we are discussing, but so far the consensus here seems to be that they were wrong, at least about keeping things from your wife.  That’s an interesting thought for me.

For now,  I have begun learning “Dear Brother”, and I am trying to learn a few pages every day.  It’s not so long and I hope to finish it shortly.  I got up the guts to print it out and bring it to yeshiva with me – although It wasn’t really so hard because I knew a way that I would be able to keep it private without anyone knowing I have it.  Even though the author writes that he wrote it for everyone, not just those who have had problems in the past, I still fear other people will form their own conclusions about why I’m learning it. I’m trying to take someone’s advice from one of the other forms and make this Limud a “Chok V’lo Ya’avor” every day and I still have to do it tonight ( Yikes, it’s almost 2 AM!)  I won’t be able to post this until later b/c being in Yeshiva I have limited access to the internet, but I still wanted to take the effort of keeping up!! 

Thanks for the support -

Shtark keep it up

  CHAZAK VEEMATZ

Hey guys,

I wanted to check in and say hello. I've been reading "Dear Bachur" and the GYE Handbook over the past few weeks.  Dear Bachur was a little interesting because it was pretty frank about discussing the Torah's perspective on lust related aveiros.  I don't know though whether or not is is exactly catered for someone who has "fallen in" and is trying to get themselves out.  One thing for me that I really feel is a problem is that when it comes to issues of seeing pritzus, either on computer screens, magazines, billboards, in the streets or malls, and also in interacting with women in real life - whether store clerks, people in my community, etc. - I have a hard time doing it in a normal healthy way. People I know have daughters that are maybe 10 or 11 or something, and I feel like such a fiend talking to them, even if I wont have bad thoughts from it, but just knowing the kind of stuff that I have seen and done when nobody was looking makes it hard for me to feel normal and have a normal healthy view on these kinds of things. I also glossed through the handbook and between that and some of the suggestions that people have offered on the page I think the best thing for me will be to get some kind of accountability partner eventually. the computer that I'm using now has I believe K9 protection and also some kind of monitoring software, but my computer at home doesnt have anything and that's where my problems have always been.

Anyways I plan to start with the GYE Attitude handbook soon, which is what I really think will help me besides for finding somebody to speak to about these things. Actually opening up and telling someone about this is so hard for me. I have no idea what words to use even. anyone in my life who I think I should open up to I'm afraid that they have an impression of me as a pretty sincere person, and while they know obviously about some things that I really need alot of work on, I doubt that they would ever expect me to tell them that I am struggling in this area.

anyways, gotta go.  thanks for being there

Hey bro! I'm glad u r back with us, plz do urself a favor & install a K9 on ur house pc too, it won't work otherwise, regarding finding the right person, if ur rav, rosh yeshiva is smart enuff they have heard it all, and if that's still hard for u, confide in someone here on the forum , search for an older experienced member and see if u feel comfortable with them
Hatzlucha with ur journey

I know exactly the feeling you are experiencing. When i was a bochur i felt uncomfortable around girls even Seven if they were dressed up. I used to comfort myself that reb chatzkel said that young girls made him uncomfortable. I felt good then that at least that feeling didnt mean that iwas a future child molester.
I would go to pieces over anything related to women. In yeshiva we would use the womens bathroom during the week and the pink tiles would drive me crazy.
My heart really goes out to you.
Daven to hashem. Exercise helps alot. Make alot of friends. Have a active social life. When the urge hits take a cold shower.
HatzLacha

Taka,  I would hate link tiles 

Thanks alot Frumfeind. 

Welcome back, "Thanks613"! What's with the poll? (I loved answering it! Can you try to guess what I voted?)...bye!

Thanks,

I'm really glad to see you on this forum. I can relate to many aspects of your struggle and I want you to feel comfortable PM-ing me with your questions. Not that I will be able to answer them but I have thought about many of them myself and would love to have those discussions with you.

Hatzlacha brother. We are both in the initial stages of this journey. let's do it together... and succeed!

Hello, thanks613,

How are you doing?

For me, I figured if the 12-steps were effective enough to get millions of goyishe drunks out of the gutter and back to being upstanding members of society, then it ought to be able to work for me, too.  I have been on Duvid Chaim's calls (information about it here on GYE) for 2 cycles already, and it has made a huge difference.

Even if the 12-steps isn't the only way to recover, for one, it's probably the cheapest.  Secondly, going it alone definitely doesn't work.

I started off just being involved in the forum, hoping that would be enough (the more you post, the better you feel...).  It helped, but then I met Duvid Chaim personally.  I saw that he wasn't just able to stop acting out; he was living in a whole different world!  I wanted that, so I joined his 12-step phone conferences.

I wish you luck,

  --Eye.

Hey guys,
I just had a tough morning  .  I had a disappointing fall last night and was unable to shake it off for most of the day.

I’m not trying to be too hard on myself – I don’t have right now a dangerous internet connection, but there are other areas like HZ”L mainly that I am so used to falling in, especially at nights. Sometimes I’ve gotten so used to it that  I’m only half conscious what I’m doing.  But When I am on guard and I don’t give in to a temptation or anything I have been able to be successful many times -

To catch you up a bit, I guess I was generally feeling pretty good with my efforts lately. I had been reading some of the GYE material, trying to work on improving my davening and learning, trying to bring more meaningful things into my life, open up more to friends (although not anything too secret), and also trying to be on guard not to fall into my lusting problems. 

Anyways, not that things were perfect, but I felt that I was improving, and working hard, and a few times I fell in an area that I had not been on guard for I just tried to pick myself up the next day and sort of start over.  I tried to ask Hashem right away to forgive me and put the fall behind me and try to move forward in developing the new me, and twice I thought I made some sort of adjustment even that would help me not to fall into that same problem again in the future, and I thought it seemed to be helping.

Mainly why this time was a hard fall is because I just felt like I took a step backwards and just completely let my guard down to go back to the same old behaviours without even putting  up a fight about it. The whole morning I was so stuck in this mode and kept feeling like I was just going to continue with it and give in because this time I couldn’t just say it was a fluke and start over. B”H in a desperate moment I opened my computer and read some of the GYE attitude stuff and it really helped, then I found that I had  unexpected access to the website and decided to post here.

Actually this is not really the first time this kind of problem happened. Sometimes when I get caught in a rut and it seems like it’s impossible to get back up and start over I usually kind of just give in and give up so that I feed the lust excessively and constantly until it seems like I’ve totally exhausted it and there can’t possibly be any more to do. Then sometimes I could “bottom out’ and find of restart. Or sometimes I had  help from above and something happened in my life which gave me a boost of inspiration or some other jumpstart for a new beginning.  But the main thing is I have to find a way of getting myself to just start over new.

I’d love to hear about similar experiences you guys have had or advice you can give about starting over if anyone has something to share.

Just to reply to some of your posts -  Sorry about the poll Dov – It was something I was interested in,  but the main reason it’s there is because I couldn’t figure out how to start a new thread but there was a button that said “start poll” so I just did that instead.  I wouldn’t even mind taking it down now if someone wants to tell me how. 

Speaking of being computer illiterate, I’d love to talk with you DavekBashem, but what is PM-ing?  Does that just mean sending a message?

Also, I read the post about using the 12 step group, Parts of it sound really good, like taking serious steps to really change the way I live my entire life instead of the “baby steps” that I seem to be working with now, especially because I basically work alone aside from the help that I get from you guys and from above,  but I’m still kind of scared to actually really throw myself into that.  I know that so many people on this forum have  had amazing results from it, and maybe I should find out more about some of their stories, but I feel like what I really need is partly t totally “repropram” the way I live and think, and I’m not sure I want to do that through the ideas of the 12 step groups or not.  I know that it worked for lots of others and I do want to use some of the 12 step ideas as chizuk and guidance, but I’m still not sure that it’s really for me

Keep in touch guys, and thanks a million 

A PM is a "personal message". Just click the little "quotation" symbol next to my name. That allows you to send me a message.

I look forward to our talks.

thanks613 wrote on 09 Nov 2010 21:09:
You know, it's extraordinarily funny. I posted above, "Guess what I voted in your poll?", but no one did (cuz really, who in their right mind would care what I voted?) - so I'll tell you: I voted "no, there are many ways" because even though I love what Hashem is doing for me since I started using the 12 steps to allow Him to do it, I sincerely believe there are many ways that Hashem can do that for his kids. Some folks clearly need a different way than the 12 steps in order to reach what the 12 steps are about (as the 12th step declares) "a spiritual awakening" and sobriety. Clearly, 'learning how to stop masturbating' is not the answer, and neither is 'learning how to stop lusting'...'not' is just...well, 'not'! Eventually, when things change enough that we want "it" more than we want to be close to Hashem, our wives, our kids, reality, sanity, or whatever - then we pick up where we left off and get busy with lust fantasy. Relief. Precious as living with Hashem, our wife/families, etc. are, they often lose their panache. They eventually just get too boring, too fraught with 'issues', too scary, or just too...'too'. Life as I knew it was rarely enough to stop me from acting out my hopes and dreams of lust for long. 

So the answer for most addicts I have met is a new attitude toward living that is inside us. A change in our very motivations for living. Amazing. Impossible, really...and that makes it really amazing, to me!

Most of the guys who are sincerely interested in just 'not', eventually 'do' again, and find they need to stop 'stopping' and instead, start letting go of burdens, and live. Look, eventually we will all be forced to surrender all our burdens.....by getting old, maybe sick, and surely, by dying. So why not start letting go right now while we can still live and enjoy the reduced 'weight'?

And a life without burdens is a sober life. Cuz lust is always a drag and always makes us miserable, no matter how much we feel we need it to live. And many of us do think just that, in truth, which is why we do it so much.  :-[

But the steps cannot be the only way, I figure.

Now, I just figured, why reinvent the wheel? So I went to 12 steps meetings (I chose SA) and chose a sponsor and the rest was history for me and my family. See, my humiliation (leiv nishbar) eventually led me to enough humility that I could tolerate just follow in the footsteps of people who have already been successful getting and staying free. I was ready to accept cheirus - even if it meant learning it from a bunch of sexaholic goyim perverts. (Though I will say that it's been great fun so far, and that I just spent a Shabbos with over 160 very frum yidden in SA recovery....so there are plenty frum yidden to learn recovery from, nowadays!)

Others need to grow up another way, and I am sure that many have and many will - kein yirbu!


I hope that you can get comfortable enough at least with a few people, to get specific about exactly what your challenges are, without withholding a single detail. Transparency is amazingly powerful and is the only way I could really start to let go of my 'precious cargo'.


I agree, with a big caveat:

If by 'start over' you mean start learning how to live life differently - in a way that you will not need to use porn, fantasy, masturbation, and/or whatever else you have been using, then fine.

But if 'starting over fresh' really just means 'with a clean slate', then I see no value in it, at all. Fresh and clean so it can just be messed all up again? What's that about? To me, that was what I did to hang onto my sheretz while going into the mikvah.  When I came out I'd dry off, feel like I went to a mikvah (all spiritually squeaky clean) and then jump in a mud pile (of dirty books ). Eventually I had enough pain - and that's how I got here!

Woops! that's what you meant here:

OK. So whatever method, steps, program, principles you choose to use - GO FOR IT, BROTHER!! And do not give up till you get what you know you deserve: Freedom and 'The Good Life'!


Woo! Now you are talking! It sounds to me that you want to actually talk on the phone, that 'usernames' can only get us to a point - you need real speaking with real people either in person or on the phone! Good for you! (can you tell I am getting a bit silly - haven't eaten dinner yet )

With love and respect,

Dov

quote from dov Some folks clearly need a different way than the 12 steps in order to reach what the 12 steps are about (as the 12th step declares) "a spiritual awakening" and sobriety. Clearly, 'learning how to stop masturbating' is not the answer, and neither is 'learning how to stop lusting'...'not' is just...well, 'not'! Eventually, when things change enough that we want "it" more than we want to be close to Hashem, our wives, our kids, reality, sanity, or whatever - then we pick up where we left off and get busy with lust fantasy. Relief. Precious as living with Hashem, our wife/families, etc. are, they often lose their panache. They eventually just get too boring, too fraught with 'issues', too scary, or just too...'too'. Life as I knew it was rarely enough to stop me from acting out my hopes and dreams of lust for long. 

So the answer for most addicts I have met is a new attitude toward living that is inside us. A change in our very motivations for living. Amazing. Impossible, really...and that makes it really amazing, to me!

Most of the guys who are sincerely interested in just 'not', eventually 'do' again, and find they need to stop 'stopping' and instead, start letting go of burdens, and live. Look, eventually we will all be forced to surrender all our burdens.....by getting old, maybe sick, and surely, by dying. So why not start letting go right now while we can still live and enjoy the reduced 'weight'?

And a life without burdens is a sober life. Cuz lust is always a drag and always makes us miserable, no matter how much we feel we need it to live. And many of us do think just that, in truth, which is why we do it so much. End quote I don't understand I thout this program was about leaarning how to live with gd.

Ummm, yeah. That's what I mean. But it happens slowly and in stages, at least for me.