I wanted to share with you a strategy that works very well for me in overcoming urges of all types, in the hope that it may help others. In the Alter Rebbe's Sefer Tanya he says:

" בעצת חכמינו ז״ל: אשה חמת מלאה צואה, וכהאי גוונא"
" [Following] the advice of our Sages on overcoming a lust for women, let one reflect on their words, 'Woman is a vessel full of filth,' and the like."

So based on what the Alter Rebbe advises I have developed a strategy:

1.When I get up in the morning I breath into my hands or spit into my hand (or a tissue) so that I can smell my own breath- the smell of course is putrid.

2. I tell myself..."this smell that I am smelling of my own breath and saliva is the same smell of a woman's breath and saliva. She may disquise the smell by using a breath mint or toothpaste, but her real smell is what I am smelling now..I will not be a fool who imagines that a women's breath is naturally sweet and pleasant....why do you think that women always keep mints or breath freshner in their car or purse...they don't want to publisize the true smell of their breath..."

3. Then I ask myself "Is this smell that I smell now, what I want to run after on the internet or on the street...something that has this inner smell?"
4. When I notice myself being drawn after forbidden images during the day, I think back to the morning smell and the repulisive nature of it...and I find the desire that I have to look at forbidden images etc. -vanishes. Another approach I use is that during the day I once again breath into my hands or spit into my hand so that I can smell my own breath and remind myself about the advice of the Alter Rebbe.

Original. It sounds like Rabi Akiva who tried to see women as geese. It's auto-suggestion. It's nothing like the cognitive approach because that one is based on objective thoughts. I would love to hear more about it as you vet it out.

Watch out that if you do this really assiduously you may lose the ability to get aroused. Just like regular women stink your wife will stink too.

This is really Chazal and not the Alter Rebbe.
How do Chazal deal with the problem of using this aitzoh and still being attracted to your wife?

If you can put in your mind that women something disgusting, then you can put all women except your wife... I guess

yosefhatzadik wrote:


From the specific things he is telling himself it sounds as if they would apply to his wife as well.