unanumun wrote:
Dov, despite my short time on the forum, I expected such a response from you at some point as I was writing the initial post.
I understand what you are trying to say. However, you may be right, but as you said it took you 15 years to make that realization. Yes, it is true that it is good to learn from others' mistakes, however may I suggest that the realization came from a progression from thinking about things and coming to a clarity....
Oy, no. That's not accurate...and it is not even what I meant.
First, I see this expressed here frequently, so let me just say that just because a thing is known by a guy with 2, 5, 10 or 20 years of sobriety time, does not mean that what they are saying is something they just figured out after all those years! But that's just an aside.
Second, 90% of whatever conscious gifts (insight) I have been given
I never figured out at all. They just occurred to me in the natural course of working real recovery when G-d decided it was time for me to get them. They were recognized after the fact. And that's also an aside.
Third, the
insights themselves are not so precious to me. Rather, it is the growth that
enabled me to be a k'li (so far) for the insights is what is so precious to me. This is a major point that few seem to grasp. When you wrote that my insights were the product of fifteen years of thinking, you demonstrate that you are coming from an entirely different perspective on that. One that just is not the way life really is, at least for me and many sober guys I know. If I have insights they were not the product of thinking, but the product of getting beaten to a pulp by my own behavior again and again. But please, if you can think your way put of this habit and it really works, kol hakavod! I just doubt many here will actually do that. Instead, many just condemn themselves to a longer, more insidious descent into stupidity and ugliness, like in the 15 years I was referring to above.
So let me take a step back now, and explain
but as you said it took you 15 years to make that realization.
that those 15 years
were the 15 years before I became sober, not the first 15 years of my recovery, at all. They were ages 20-35...when I tried yiddishkeit, mussar, chassidus, psychologists, lots more masturbation, more psychologists (3), working on sholom bayis, rabbonim (4 or 5), saying lots of p'sukim, visitng Rebbes, more mikvah with and without tikkun klali, more mussar, going away to EY for two years, marriage (with lots of sex of course), kiruv rechokim, and therapy
with and without medication - all to try and finally control this thing...and all to no avail. And let me be clear: even our
masturbation was often just to try and control it - because sometimes we were weary of fighting, and sincerely felt that the only way to finally feel truly free of the bitter struggle and obsession even just for a while - was to get it over and give into it (please see the Nuclear Reset Button).
During the latter 11 of those 15 years, I was married. I was then an active sexaholic not yet even
close to recovery. The most important issue on my mind was not getting caught...and the second most important issue on my mind was how to quit and stay clean (of course, impossible). Naturally, marriage just made my problem sicker and worse. I was terrified when it became evident that sex with a real woman (my wife) was never going to solve my hunger...in fact
no one woman could. But I did not see
that yet...
And as I said before, it was not understanding that brought me to me knees and to being ready to do whatever it would take to never act out my lust again - rather, it was just plain suffering. I had to get beaten down, there was no other way for me. My ego was just too big to admit defeat.
Finally I got sober out of shear fear, and within a week was directed to SA in order to
stay sober (sober in SA means never having sex with myself [masturbating] or with anyone other than my wife). Somewhere during the first 5 years of
sober time, I saw most of the things I share here. Maybe it was in the first year, maybe later on. But more and more basic recovery concepts jelled for me as the years
sober went on and they still continue be"H. I still understand very little - but I am sober and life is great nonetheless. For
understanding does not bring sobriety. It is sobriety that brings understanding.
And I would gladly trade all the understanding I have and will ever have of recovery, for today's plain sobriety.
This is the main thing I am here to report, and it is the opposite of what you keep writing. Instead of
thinking ourselves out of this problem and into right living - the experience of addicts on 12 step recovery is that we can only
live ourselves into right thinking. And by 'live', we mean taking actions of sobriety and recovery. Those actions are attending regular meetings, getting and using a sponsor, and honestly working the steps one day at a time.
But that takes a bit of humility...or enough humiliation. Otherwise the brain keeps on trying to 'master' the lust and our sexuality in order to 'make us get sober'. It seems to be insulting to our intellect to make it follow our sobriety. Nu. But it's a living...
Sobriety and honesty with other real people that brings sanity and honesty with ourselves. The other way around just does not work for us.
And I submit that it has not worked for you, either - rather, I suggest that your path of thinking is precisely what made you the frum sexual compulsive guy who sits in that chair posting for help on GYE, in the first place. In AA they say, "Our very
best thinking is what
got us here." No shame, there. It's just the way it is.
A very hard thing to accept. Especially for frum guys, who have a ready excuse that can 'separate' the problem from ourselves: blaming it on G-d by saying it was not me and my thinking, but this external force called the 'YH'.
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/blink.png)
But after a while passes in sobriety, maybe six months to a year, we begin to see that the problem was never in our penises, but in our minds. A whole new world...very far from the old temptation/sin/good-bad thing. And it works.
Is this making any sense at all, chaver?
- Dov