zvi wrote:


Zvi--Dont be sorry. We are in this together. You haven't let anyone down--not us, not God, not yourself. It is a process of recovery. Ive been battling it in earnest for a few months now, and I think ive made real progress, but I'm not out of the woods yet. We have all made tremendous progress so far!

Truth is, I fell this morning after a triggering dream. Mistake one: going to bed late so that I decided to sleep in and miss davening. mistake two: leaving opossum in bedroom (I did not renew taphsic). Mistake 3: I did not take care of a loophole in my filter, which cost me.

Nu. I bees to be honest with myself, and work on letting go of lust (I will provide the megillah from Dov on that after I finish). I also have to be clear and brutally honest with everyone, which should help in recovery.

I am Jewish. I will not have sex until I am married. I used to think that its "oh, I'm attractive, and I COULD get girls, but I just choose not to."

the point: I will never "get a girl". Why not? NONE ARE SHAYICH!!" So I really need to let go of these fantasies that I still have in my head: NOTBING WILL EVER HAPPEN BETWEEN ME AND ANY GIRL FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS AT LEAST. PERIOD. END OF DISCUSSION. FANTASIZING ONLY HURTS ME, AND THE GIRLS GO ABOUT THEIR DAYS OBLIVIOUSLY.

I feel very deflated right now, because that was the first time I watched porn in almost two months. You know--some of the stuff on that website is SO ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING--NOT ONLY IS THE NORMAL STUFF REVOLTING ANYWAY, AS TBEY ARE JUST PAID ACTORS BEING DIRECTED, BUT SOME OF THR STUFF INVOLVES ABUSE, WHICH IS HORREBDOUS AND MAKES ME VERY SAD WHEN I SEE IT, as if when I'm about to fall thar "oh, this stuff is great, I just have to avoid the bad stuff."

when I fell, I realized that I was plain BORED. It gets the same after a while, its not even interesting, and it is a terrible activity to do. So why am I hooked to it?

The andwer-/its lust that I'm hooked to. I'm hooked to modern society's ideas about sex that they shove in your face everywhere you go.

You know what? I'm tired of that. I am a yid. I am not bound by any societal moral code that lust even has to be a part of my life.



pidiani recently had a fall after 152 days, same with Avrom after like 45 days. Wow! I think their are two main ikkarim (I will post them on the forum under "n'um hagever sh'sum ha'ayin", in honor of this weeks parsha, when I get the chance (hopefully before I leave Tuesday).):

Don't think about it or frame life as fall v no fall. give up lust--dov, how do you do that? do you just say that "I relinquish my RIGHT to have these thoughts?

Remember that this activity is so stupid, its stupider than avodah zara, so in a few weeks clean when you have a memory of this being so great, it isn't. It is legitimately stupid.

I feel like the wind has bren let out of my sails. oh well. nothings changed from yesterdsy--ill keep up my current progress!!!


btw, I'm in favor of cancelling the tehillim idea--i think I'm up to like 100 or so that I haven't said.


Read Dov's latest post to "guy" and "george", I forgot where that thread was. (Gibbor, that belongs in Dov Quotes, best of). It's located on this thread guardyoureyes.com/forum/19-Introduce-Yourself/208841-whats-the-point?limit=15&start=30, and here's what Dov wrote:

Dear Georgenuevenuevenueve (and maybe Guy, too),

Working on the cause of your pain. Isn't that a thing you (and Guy) have been doing for quite some time already? I believe with my whole heart that what you describe is a valiant search for the Holy Grail...and it goes on forever, taking on a life of it's own. A run towards finding myself that never ends, for it is really AWAY from ourselves, in disguise.

And why should that be so? Maybe because:

The searcher has not yet accepted the 'sudden', inconvenient fact that using his drug has been screwing up his mind, his relations with others, and his relationship with his own G-d, for years and years...and that he will not stop using his drug no matter how much 'blessed insight' he compiles. I suggest this is true based on my own experience and from what I keep seeing and hearing from guys again and again: people have an all-consuming desire to figure this thing out while still holding onto the option of using their drug. "I will only really let go of (surrender up) my right or option to have sex with myself once you fix this," we all say. And we are not evil. We are sincere. We are good people.

Toveil v'sheretz beyado, I call it. The 'tevilah' is: figuring it out so I can free myself, and the 'holding [of] the sheretz' is the fantasy that: no real surrender is necessary - that there is no absolute need for me to to give up my drug beforehand. So many of us go that way simply because we are deathly ashamed and afraid of letting go of our secret - so we need to fix it ourselves, quietly. We assume that is our 'avodas Hashem'.

But my calling for surrender first, taking real actions of opening up and doing whatever it takes to keep to it for today - seems silly to many folks. And as Guy puts it so well: it's basically insulting my intelligence! It recalls our old words: "Na'aseh v'nishma", no?

But there you may say, na'aseh v'nishma makes sense when talking to G-d! But here who are we talking to?! A bunch of addicts sharing their recovery and promising riches?

I will tell you who I think we are usually talking to and bargaining with, here:

Our god. Sweet orgasm. Sweet porn. All the sweet faces and figures we want and so deeply believe in our guts that we can't survive without..."you mean never again!? What? Are you insane? I can't possibly live without this stuff. It's what's beautiful and sweet about life. Life-giving. Sha'ashu'ai!" Do we not believe this at least as much as any of the Ani Ma'amins?

I am dead serious. We follow the sweetness of the image of the hot lady we see on the computer, at the supermarket, at shul, in the bed, wherever...because we are tied to it like dogs. We worship it and love it. Yep, it's love. It's the real deveikus - for us, no matter how frum we are nor how much we sincerely also cry at L'cho Dodi every Friday night. They co-exist. Ah, the miracle of the frum porn addict.

How could we ever seriously give it up even just for today? So we do not...even if we stop for a while.

Yes, sure - we can hold back for today, or for 10 days or whatever...but to honestly give it up even just for today? That's an entirely new ball-game. Guys here generally do not do that. Rather, they dig in, take a deep breath, misread "one day at a time", and think that holding their breath for a while is 'sobriety'. It isn't. Anyone can hold his or her breath for a while. But it's not much use cuz eventually you gotta breathe, no? It's just a matter of time. Anyone here interested in seeing how long we can hold our breath for and making a contest of it and call it 'chizzuk'? Not me.

I'll take giving it up for just today over that, anyday!

Do you understand me here, George (and Guy)? Or is this just gibberish? I'm pouring out my heart here.

Therapy and doing some real work to get free of some of the deep things that you are in real pain about will definitely help you a lot! Most of us probably need that, regardless. But if you are like many of us, the gift of therapy or pf figuring it out will not do us much good, if any, unless you and I surrender the right to lusting and are abstinent from it (our drug of choice) during that process.

Not a convenient suggestion, I know.

The self-honesty that Guy and George are sharing here with us is so rare, so precious!

I respectfully suggest that Guy is just too angry at the G-d he calls Hashem and demands Hashem to answer for His sins first . And I just as respectfully suggest that George just needs to remain in religious or intellectual control of the situation and understand it and know that he has gotten past the real pains he has before he takes what feels like an abysmal leap. These things may be a problem.

I am suggesting that neither approach has hachno'oh. And the 1st step of the 12 steps - the only one that has anything directly to do with not drinking/lusting+masturbating ourselves, is only one thing: hachno'oh to the truth about ourselves and agreeing to the implications of it. Hachno'oh is a different way of living for most of us...OK, for all of us.

"What are you talking about Hachno'oh for?," one may ask. "we have Hachno'oh aplenty, that's not our real problem at all."

Maybe...but Hachno'oh to whom? Well, when was the last time we were machniyah ourselves to the god we really worship (with our zippers down or our eyes peeled to follow the best naked people on the screen, again)? It has not been very long ago, maybe.

That god, I know very, very well, and could still serve it again with the hachno'oh I discovered as a wide-eyed 12 year old. I am an addict. That's what we do: switch gods at need. But I need a miracle today cuz I am willing to do anything to stay sober today and keep this great life and keep this G-d I found - and not all my own power nor all my own seichel will give it to me. Kinda sad, but true - still true. It's humility or humiliation. Perhaps that is what Rebbe Nachman meant when he used to say, "ader a nisayon, ader a bizayon."

Is this acceptance a bit insulting to myself? Maybe - but so is idiotically and desperately masturbating myself to orgasm again! A man in a suit and a beard, driven beyond all recall to faithfully and desperately do what he learned as a 12 year old. I find my drooling and masturbation very demeaning and insulting to myself...not much release of anger or much gaining respectability , there! I figure it is all about which kind of bozo do I want to be. A bozo on the sober bus, or a bozo on the same 'sexually enlightened' bus I have been riding since I was 12?

OK, how far has all that gotten us, so far?

I suggest to Guy and George (sounds like a rock band of the late 80's) that none of these issues you describe are new. They are probably your old buddies. So I think that going about it the 'angry' (Guy) or 'respectable' (George) way is just retrying the same tools you have been using till now. I am stubborn, too! You will surely get the same results you have been getting until now. GYE will not save you there, and neither will G-d (and not even the play-god will, apparently, or you would not be here searching for help in the first place! ). Both of you have been 'there and back again' so many times before already! So have I. Where does that get us? Same place it gets most of us: back on our knees masturbating and then having that old 'clarity' again, that painful 'clarity' of "Oooh, this time I really have to stop!", and pretending we have it all figured out, or need to. No?

Those feelings and that old game are just a crock.

Hatzlocha!!

I think I am going to quit the group. I fell everyday for the past week. I have to say over 100 tehillim. I have not posted in about 10 days. I am just holding everyone else back.

Guys: I move to quit the tehillim idea.

In fact, I am withdrawing myself from saying 10 tehillim per fall from now on (because I never really made a vow to do so).

Some_guy: stay with us.

I fell this morning.

We are all falling. We're in this together.

After talking with skeptical, we came up with two things:

First:

Everything that happens to us is hashgacha protis. So if something doesn't go exactly as we want it, it's really ok, because that's how Hashem wants it and He knows better. Consider the nekudas habechira; don't get down on yourself after a fall.

Second:

The point of having Tehillim is not about punishing yourself after the fact--"oh, I'm so terrible, now I am going to punish myself". It is meant to be a means of encouragement. If it's going to discourage, it's best to remove it. So we have to evaluate whether the tehillim are a motivator and used in a positive sense, or if they're just becoming a burden with no point.

If you're going to have some kind of preventative measure, it needs to be something that could be done quick and finished
But this isn't really a preventative measure, even
It's an after-the-fact guilt trip

Third:

I think we should define the nature of this group. It is supposed to be a tool in our recovery. What should it's function be?

-For guys staying strong and another vehicle of taphsic/prevention?
-For Chizuk?
-For accountability?

I think it's something we need to decide. I've been using it as my own thread, but I notice that of the six members, inna, Yankel, Zvi and Elias all have their own threads. I honestly don't know if Zvi or Eliyahu have found this group helpful or not?

(Btw, whatever happened to hopefull?)

I second that. The tehillim leads to a lot of guilt, and probably isn't conducive. I thin what we should do is count up the days we've achieved as a group, in order to give us an incentive and a sense of direction.
And Elias- don't leave! We all go through rough patches when we just fall again... and again... and again... Don't let it get you down. We all love you! Keep climbing!

I just edited my post, but you preempted me!

Yeah, I think we need to decide on something as a group for the direction we want to take this.

I leave tomorrow to a summer kollel for a month.

Ok guys, i'm with you. (about stopping the tehillim thing and)

Let's give this group a definition.
Just some obstacles that we may come across, Avrom is only on weekly. Inna is away for the summer. Pidaini is already married (unlike the others here).

What do you guys say?

YO GUYZ STOPPIN TEHILLIM?!

...Ive seemed to have missed out on a lot here sorry for the delay guys!!

Please let me explain why this group is so important to me. It seems like we are loosing momentum here.


What happens AFTER the fall??
By default I'm toast! The world ends and I try to wash away the pain and guilt with more porn. More shame follows - and somehow I still think that masturbation is the solution. This is the famous cycle.................
(14 days later the pain of acting out, is to hard to bear - a new starts like a rotten seed)


This group has only one rule: "You must post once a week" (tehilim was added later).

"But what good does that do, I post 10 times a day!?"
Yes, you are right, you are posting because things are going great, you are x days clean and the world never was a better place! You are just bursting with kedushah and wisdom...
But what when you DO fall and DO feel depressed - not wanting to speak to anyone - THAT'S when we need this group. Comes end of the week (or whatever your day is) you know that the guys in the group are waiting for you. You don't want to let them down, but you know that by not posting you are letting them down even more. When writing to others we are giving chizzuck, but most of all helping ourselves get out of the confusion and devils-cycle. It gives us a few moments to reflect, and often that's all it takes to get back on track. If not for this group, my last fall would have taken way longer to recover from (as above! Truth is, I logged on to post about my fall - that's it. But while I was writing I was able to gather strength to start again from new. But even if we are letting the group know that we are not planning to get back up - the chizzuck response (of all the members) makes all the difference!!
Thanks Chevra!!

(This group has thus two functions: accountability and Chizuk of course)



So please Some_Guy, stay with us - this is what we are here for. Your not holding us back!! On the contrary, you are telling us all "we are honest - no secrets" thank you so much for sharing!!

Chacha, I dont think this group is a stira to having your own threads as long as you make a tcholent to share how the week was overall (I always love yours, and Zvi's kishka is the best!!). I think that's what inna does (-we miss you brother) Any member can gladly make this your home and post 25 times a day:) It just adds and bring us much closer!!


I beg for forgiveness for what I'm about to say: A new member that doesn't post weekly never really joined the group, it makes this group look like a joke and weakens the morale. I'm not talking about missing out a week here and there or going on vacation without internet possibility. I'm talking about welcoming a new brother to our home, that goes abroad and just comes back for the simchas.. (and levayas)
This is my personal view and if you guys think I'm wrong, I will 100% accept that.


This group has been great as it is. New and old members are always welcome to join!! Just don't forget the one and only rule.



This all was just my point of view, I'm not the leader of this group - we all are. Please don't hesitate to correct me.

I deep appreciation,
Avrom

I agree 100%. I never really had a day to post on- I just sort of posted whenever I wanted. I always posted within a week, but still...
So from now onwards, my day will be Thursday. Come what may, I will bli neder make an effort to post on Thursdays. And hey, it's Thursday now, so here goes...
B'H I've been clean for over a week now. My only major challenge was Wednesday, were I was home alone for most of the day. A friend (who knows about my problem) asked me whether I was sure I could trust myself to be home alone for the whole day, so I made a taphsic not to use my computer until someone else got home. Baruch Hashem I kept it, and I'm still clean now.
Have an amazing Shabbos chevra!
ps are we stopping the tehillim?

Thanks zvi! Major chizuck to be fighting at your side!! My day is also thursday!


My week was good. I have an issue: I'm not careful in regard to shmiras eynayim. I try to keep to the three second rule (from the gye handbook) , but I dont give it too much effort. The problem is that I dont view it as harming me. Being that I watched sooo much shmutz - what is the issue to look at tznius women. I know its ossur, but I tell myself "First stop a couple of months watching porn, when you are back "normal", then you can worry about shmiras eynayim." Help and insight are desperately awaited!! aka: "Help!"

I personally think we should cancel tehilim..
( NOW you tel me after I spent 2 hours at the kosel paying my tehilim debts )

Chachaman, where are you??

By the way I think we all read your name wrong>
CHACHAM
, period, we all knew that
so whats
AN?? thats just to confuse us, chacham!!

have a great shabbs!!

Avrom wrote:

I CANNOT "First stop a couple of months watching porn" as long as I'm still looking at tznius women.
Why?
I am not addicted to Porn, Masturbation, or any particular behavior. I am addicted to Lust. Lust means anything from a quick glimpse of something triggering to a full blown fantasy. Sometimes I take small sips of lust, sometimes I drink huge gulps.
Whenever I indulge in my addiction, I cannot stop until it drags me down to a new low.
That is why I cannot afford to look at women, and sip lust.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for helping me. I don't know what to say. Just, thank you all.

--some_guy/Elias/Eliyahu

Most falls start with some sipping and slipping.

See Rambam Hilchos Teshuva [4:4].

והמסתכל בעריות--מעלה על דעתו שאין בכך כלום, שהוא אומר וכי בעלתי או קרבתי; והוא אינו יודע שראיית העיניים עוון גדול, שהיא גורמת לגופן של עריות, שנאמר ולא תתורו אחרי לבבכם, ואחרי עיניכם

Yeah, they should have signs all over that say: Don't even THINK about looking at women.

MT