I think I am at 106 days, not 100% sure.

Anyway, I am over 100 days and today was a very big day for me.
Three digits, has some heft to it.
Anyway, I am rambling.
So I told my wife tonight. The physical part of our marriage has for all intents and purposes been nonexistent for a long time now. I attribute that to my bad behavior, mostly.
She has always know I have a MB issue. The porn less so, although she did catch me once.

I told her tonight that I have been clean for over 3 months. I told her that I attribute it to acceptance that I don't have to have sex. (Which by the way I learned because of our prolonged abstinence) I apologized for my bad behavior in the past in the bedroom. I told her that I hope to never again pressure her for sex. I know that my past attitude has caused the physical part of our marriage to disappear.

I then told her she doesn't have to say anything.
Her reaction was the best I could have hoped for.
She said I don't know what to say, but I will think about it.

Lets hope this is a small step in the right direction.

I am happy for you

Eli

Of course it's a step in the right direction. It's Hashem's goodness that you used then and may we see it always, one day at a time - no expectations and no demands...today. Have a nice day today.

157 days.

I haven't posted for a while and my thread is almost off the front page. I had better post, once you get off the front page all is lost.

Things have been sailing along smoothly, for the most part. Some ripple in the water from time to time, but nothing to knock me off the boat.

There is a Rashi in בראשית ה:כד that goes like this


unfortunately I have been feeling like that as well, with my desire for mb. My yetzer Hara is telling me things like, "I deserve it, it has been so long", "after all I have built, one time won't tear the whole thing down" etc,.

I guess the question is, will one time pull the whole thing down, I think the answer is maybe.

My kids like playing with Jenga blocks. (Actually my daughters like to, my son likes to throw them) You start with a strong tower and slowly build it up and build it up, by tearing down old parts and using them to go further and higher, but everytime you do, the tower becomes more and more unsteady. Eventually you pull the wrong one and the whole thing comes crashing down.

I hate to think that my tower is so unsteady that one block pulled will crash the whole thing down. I think the issue is that lets say I did let myself fall, it is possible I will pick myself right back up and keep going, no one the wiser. But maybe I won't, and maybe I can't and maybe I will pull the wrong block and the whole thing falls down.

So the question I have to ask myself, is do I feel lucky. Is is worth putting everything I have built for the last 157 days, mostly surrounding my relationship with my wife, at risk for one instant of very fleeting gratification?

Put that way it seems rather obvious, right?
I hope I can keep it that obvious.
KOT

one other thing
I just had to edit my post to right בראשית in Hebrew
because it did this to the English:
BereiBAD WORD REMOVED

lol

I was at 189 days clean. Now I am back to 2.

I fell, and once I fell I decided to continue falling for a few more days. (3 days, 4 times.) Old habits may die hard, but they sure come back easily.

This fall has made me realize a few things. First off by way of preface, this was not a sudden event where I was overcome by taiva and succumbed to my yetzer hara. This was a drawn out slowly getting worse and worse over at least a month. Circling the drain getting closer and closer until I fell in.

So Now I have come to realize that my 189 days, although a success in its own right, is not the point. I realized this at some point, but I lost my way and forgot. This is not about trading water hoping I don't drown, it is about addressing the issues that are driving me to this is the first place.

My pattern in the past had been, make an overture to my wife, put myself out there, be rejected and then act out in frustration, retaliation, what have you.

I stopped putting myself out there, I stopped being rejected, I stopped masturbating.

As some of you know, my wife hasn't gone to mikvah for a while and we weren't being shomer nigah. So I mentioned it to her that we should be zahir in that again, and she agreed. I tacitly assumed that she would resume the mikvah, but I was wrong. She still has not gone, even though we are now shomer. I think I viewed that she has still not gone to mikvah as a rejection, and I have had growing frustration from it and that led to my fall.

Sorry to hear about your fall. I recently fell from a "long" streak though it wasn't even close to 189 days. One thing which I found was that it takes a few days clean again to really get a clear head. When you reach that point it will be easier to come up with a battle plan.

Also, I certainly like the circling the drain mashal. I have felt that way many a time about a fall.

May we all have the strength to pick ourselves up, try again and beat our records.

Dear MBJ,

Your story over the past long while has been inspiring and thanks for sharing the lows as well as the higher parts.

I mean nothing personal regarding needtoquit, but Boruch Hashem there is no need for you treading water, 'coming up with battle plans', and 'beating your record' any more, MBJ. If you had somehow been more open with the safe people you use, then things would have been better for you. This I believe from personal experience and from seeing success and failure for many people over the years.

Luckily, posting here is a great tool for just that. But can you get (or do you already have) friends with whom you can share openly and regularly what is really going on with you and your life - so that these pains remain in the smaller category? Once they become bigger, we tend to reach for medication. That is how my mentors on the program explained the purpose of the steps - to reduce the pain of life so that I will not have to drink again, by Hashem's good grace (Chessed).

Whatever. You are geshmak, period!

Your wife will come around and the two of you will eventually join on the good path together - as long as you stay on it, the other will see and join. I have that experience myself.

Hi Dov and needtoquit, thank you for your well wishes. I just hope I take the lessons I learned from this fall and it will help me avoid future ones.

Your advise is good Dov, unfortunately there are no "real" people in my life that I can confide in at this point. Besides the forum that is a huge help, there are some from the forum that I have developed a more personal relationship with, but even that is all still virtual.

Unfortunately, when I am on the ledge only I can talk myself down, I just naturaly shut out all other influences. Almost nothing anyone else says really helps for more than a short time. Change can only come from within.

One thing that is interesting to me, is how when I am in a bad place, it is not just the taiva for masturbation that hits me, it is all of them. I eat too much, I have a shorter temper, less patience, I am lazier. Naturally, all these things then tend to feed on themselves.

The funny thing, is the thing that really seemed to snap me out of it this time, (I hope it stays snapped) was when I had a fight with my wife. I was impatience, lazy and quick to temper with my son and he was crying. She said to me, "I thought that the problems we were having were my fault, but you are a part of it also, you have a giant chip on youtr shoulder." At which point I said something stupid and then she said something stupid yadda yadda yadda.

A minute after we cooled down, I thought about what she said, and just the fact that she acknowledged that we had a problem, something that she had not brought up in a while, and that she had some part of that problem, something that she has never done before, gave me a bit of hope.

That was in the morning, in the evening, I said to her that it doesn't have to be now, in fact it is probably better it is not now, but at some point soon, we have to sit and talk and have a conversation about our problems, she sort of agreed.

Now for me is the challenge will be to temper my expectations, and be patient. There really has been alot of progress made in the last half a year, but I am always impatient and I want it faster. That is part of the reason for my last fall. I need to let her come back to me at her own pace, I may need to give a gentle nudge now and then like last night, but I can't expect her to make a leap in one week over a chasm that has been growing for 7 years.

The old chasm is shrinking, as long as our egos and impatience keep shrinking. Wow, it's hard to wait. Somtetimes it's even more difficult to wait once we start seeing the progress starting! That's important for me to recognize. I have cut open lots of geese to get that golden egg, killed many geese. Probably a gaggle of them. (....ok, I just wantd to use the word 'gaggle' )

Hey. One day at a time, for real.

Ciao

I relate to a lot of what you wrote MBJ. the "drain" thing has happened to me many many times.

MBJ wrote:

One step at a time. Step 1 - forum. Step 2 - PM. Step 3 - Phone call to friend. Step 4 - Meet in real life. It's scary, but it works!

MBJ wrote:

Yes, but it's talking to someone else that helps. What they reply isn't nearly as important.

MBJ wrote:

You have highlighed the fact that the problem is "life". The "solution" is indulging in all sorts of gashmiyus. That's why the 12 steps work for alcohol, overeating, whatever. the problem is a living problem, not a lust problem. Lust is just the particular drug we choose to ease the pain.

MBJ wrote:

Great! KUTGW and KOT!

Again so true Dov.
A little patience and restraint goes a very long way.
Since I rediscovered this basic fact, I have been feeling a lot better, a lot more in control.

Next time I start to lose myself, I need someone to bludgeon me over the head with it.

I have been in and out. Have not returned to any kind of continuity with being clean. If you head is not in the game, nothing will help. I need to get my head back into it.

Ok so I am up to 5 days clean again.

The way I see it I have two seperate problems and they have two seperate solutions. The problem is, I only know what one of those solutions is, I have no clue what the other is.

My first problem the "easy" one, is that masturbation is a very strongly engrained habbit and crutch that I have. 20 years of porning and masturbating will do that to a guy. So while 6 months free was great, once I fell, it all came rushing back, now I am back at the point of having to break the habbit again. The solution to this is obvious though. If I persist in not masturbating and looking at porn and checking out women in the street, even though we in a Sharav and it is like 99 degrees (37 C) here and some women have no shame whatsoever, I will break the habbit. Phew that was easy.

My bigger problem is this, I have with several falls recently as well as looking back at my history have realized (I have mentioned this before) that intimacy disappointments with my wife strengthen my desire to mb and give in. While on some level it might make sense that sexual frustrations will seek some other sexual outlet, that is not the problem. My problem is that when I have a disappointment that I know rationally has no possibility to lead to sex, I still feel that disappointment pulling me to a sexual outlet.

The latest fall was this. As those who have been reading my story know, my wife has not gone to mikvah for over a year now. 2 weeks ago we were talking and she mentioned she was supposed to go to mikvah in a few days. Naturally, despite trying to temper my expectations, I built up my hopes to great heights. So then when she got sick and did not go again, I crashed down. I know that sex is far on the horizon, so going to the mikvah will not mean that anything will happen soon. I look foward to it as a huge step in the right direction that shows that she wants to be with me in more than a platonic way, even if it is not sex.

What scares me is that I turn this intimacy, but not sexual, disappointment, into a sexual desire. Life is full of disappointments, marriages are full of disappointments, big or little. If I have this link between them and mb, I will never be able to be completely clean. I will stay clean until the mext time I feel that disappointment and then I will fall again. Furthermore it shows to me that my seemingly pure intentions of wanting my wife to go mikvah is really just a sexual desire.

Granted sexual desires are not bad, but only in the right time and place. Clearly I still have a bad relationship with these desires because it keeps coming back in the wrong time and place.

Any advice, do I give it time, to I read the GYE manual again, do I do a full frontal lobotomy?

MBJ wrote:
You are describing very well the "emotional trigger", and using masturbation as a way to self-medicate. The only way I know of to deal with that is the 3rd step which I call "the gam zu letovah" step. Where we realize that Hashem is running the world and we "let go" or "give up" our wants and desires.

Frustrations are a result of things not going the way "I" want. If I give that up and say "Hashem - you run the show, I'll do my best to deal with whatever you (in your infnite wisdom) have in store for me", I am then able to "let go" of those frustrations and negative feelings. Then, those "emotional triggers" don't affect me. As long as I focus on what I want, and feel that "it's not fair" - I am in DANGER.