What has worked for me in tough situations is talking to chevra who can help.

Oh boy, today was pretty rough.  Some more falls and guilt about what happened.  When I'm clean for a while the fall are much harder than when I masturbated/ watched porn consistently.  It used to be that I did my business daily and that was it.  Now it takes over my life and starts pouring over into other areas as well.  It's like it's all built up from the entire time that I was clean.  

Thanks for bringing that up again Markz.  I'm still unable to join a live conference call and I can't bring myself to call someone but I will commit to listening to recorded conference calls for 5 minutes a day on every day that I'm able (ie. not Shabbos or Yom Tov).  Hopefully it'll give me some chizuk, I can really use it.

You wont call someone but what about email?

dms1234 wrote on 29 Sep 2017 18:02:

I do have a partner in this who I chat with, but can I take this as an offer to email you if he's unavailable?

Yom Kippur was really different this year than other years.  Even with the falls that happened two days before Y"K, I still felt like I was able to at least say vidui with some hope that this year would be different.  It's the difference between flat lining and having a small blip on the screen.  If it's a flat line the person's dead without any hope.  If there's a blip, on the outside it looks the same, the body is lifeless, but one person is dead and one's alive.

B"h I didn't have any falls today.  I've been trying to keep focused on the One Day at a Time mentality, I think that's something that I need to work on.  I had some slips today, but nothing major.

See everyone tomorrow!

Ok brother
Hey don't forget to checkout this post ODAAT

You can email me, fax me, tele-prompt me  or call me whenever you like!

Bgit, all I can say is that I feel the same. I remember as a single I would watch porn every 2 days, I felt so holy. because nothing would turn me on (not even porn), I would do my stuff for an hour or two, and that's it. Life would go on without getting turned on by every women / girl on the street. I would laugh when I heard other Bachurim struggle with staring at women. I felt good that I'm somehow not turned on by anything anymore. Now that I try to stay clean, every woman is a whole fight, I feel like lust took over my entire being. That's ironic; I hope it gets easier once we get past a certain point. 

LoveU,Hashem wrote on 02 Oct 2017 16:51:

That's really true, I felt the same way about other people who struggled, not realizing that I'm the strange one not them.

Also, thanks Markz, I'll check it out.

I had another fall today.  I was home alone since it was bain hazmanim and starting feeling lustful.  I guess being home alone will be added to my list of triggers.  It feels like this log is just starting to turn into a record of my falls more than any real progress.

See everyone tomorrow.

bgit wrote on 02 Oct 2017 20:53:

Where?

Where, what?

Hey bro
You said "See everyone tomorrow"

So I asked "Where?"

Close to 711 where I met Yesod?

btw a large Diet Pepsi will be just fine if you're offering - I gotta watch my girth with all these meals coming up

Can I come too? .

Bgit, while we're on the topic of Mark, How's life? (I feel like Mark would ask that)

I've been on gye for a couple of years (i forgot exactly how many, not an old timer, maybe a middle timer), and my 'journey' is constantly changing (progressing?). I've found that each time I 'discovered' a new truth, it's something that I had read many times earlier from the 'old timers', but I never really chapped what it meant until I lived it.

Well, here's one of them. "lust is not our problem. it's our solution to our problem" and the sage advice that goes together with it for me is "enough fighting lust, let's start living life".

I never understood what that meant. If we're not fight the lust, how can we live our life?  it'll take me over.  More recently, I think that I've been glimpsing what that means. I hope that you don't mind that I'm using your thread as a diary.
Question #1 Why are we alive?
Question #2 based on answer #1, How should we spend out time accomplishing our goal?
Question #3, Am I doing that?
Question #4, Do my falls usually happen while I'm involved in my goal?

Maybe I'mgetting older (already 18 or 28 or 38 or 48 or 58 or 68 or 78 or 88 or 98 or...not saying ) but this question bothers me more and more. How come my falls mostly happen when I'm doing something other then answer #2, in other words when I'm wasting time?

if I get serious about life, about the meaning (or goal) of my life then I can start living it and lust will take a back seat. I'll become obsessed with life instead of lust.  Will I still be tempted? Probably, but I won't be obsessed with it, and it won't pop up every 60 seconds.

Why am I writing this here instead of my thread?  Because you can't avoid the trigger of being home alone, just like I can't avoid the trigger of going to shul (ssa), so while avoiding triggers is a good idea, it can't be where the real fight is at.


in other words, (and I'm talking to myself in the next two pictures) we need to






You're probably ok, so you can disregard this. It may just be for people like me who are obsessed with lust.   

@Markz
711 sounds good, I'm always good for a slurpee

@stillgoing
Thanks for the advice, and feel free to use the thread to post your thoughts.  It's important to think about these things.  I'm not sure if I agree with you or maybe I'm misunderstanding you.  It sounds like you're saying that if I/we reallyunderstood what the purpose of life was, I/we wouldn't struggle as much since we would be so involved in living life as it's meant to be lived. 

I'm probably misunderstanding something, but isn't this basically the mussar approach to fighting lust?  "If you only knew how important learning was" or "if you only knew how damaging this is to ourselves/ the world" etc.  Aren't we always going to be human beings with the free will to live as we choose, no matter how much clarity we have at a given time (maybe that's what you meant about it still being there, just lessened)?  With me at least, the clarity is there for a little bit and then goes away like everything else.  Or, at the very least, isn't the process of appreciating what life is truly about a lifetime endeavor?  I'm not 98 yet , but I hope that by the time I get there I'll be living life as seriously as I should.

Also, I know that people might say that I'm in denial or something, but I definitely struggle with lust (although I'm not sure if I fall into the addict category, but I've heard that this is a black hole of a question) and my life has a lot of meaning.  I'm really pretty happy with my life, I have a wonderful, supportive family and am pretty happy about how I spend my time (barring pornography of course).  Things could always be better, but I have a tremendous amount to be thankful to Hkb"h for and my life is good and meaningful.

In terms of my life, the issue started when my life had less meaning and it definitely could have been why I was drawn in in the first place.  At that point of my life I was unhappy with life in general and I'm sure that porn and masturbation acted as ways to "solve" those issues. 

I think that my use of pornography and masturbation these days is  more or less a (deeply engrained) habit from those days of my life when I "needed" it much more.  That's not to say that it's not much more difficult to control when I'm having a bad day or whatever, just that on a day to day basis it's more or less of a habit and not satisfying some deep existential concern (although I'm some level I'm sure it is, as you point out).

These days it's more to relieve the "itch" than anything else (for the most part).  For some people around here, the lust was literally destroying their lives and was uncontrollable.  For me, it was a once a day thing and had been that way for years and hadn't been getting worse at all.  Lehavdil, if I wasn't frum it wouldn't be wildly different than having a habit of having a donut a day.  It's unhealthy, it might make you feel a little gross after, it might make you a little overweight, but it's not going to kill you and it's not destroying your life so just worry about other things.  The main reason why I'm trying to stop is because it's assur and the side benefits are tangential.

This post/ ramble has been going on for a while and I'm realizing that this may be a part of my problem.  Isn't GYE's motto about "hitting bottom while still on top" ?  Maybe I just don't feel like it's such a terrible thing or something like that.  I don't feel like it's destroyed my life.  Is that feeling that you've hit the bottom necessary for a true recovery? 

If it is, then what's the eitza here?  I can learn about how destructive pornography and masturbation are to my neshama and the world, or focus on all the bad things on my life and blame them on my masturbation.  Somehow, I don't feel like these are very healthy approaches.  They're likely to cause serious depression and yiush which are exactly what I/ anyone doesn't need.

Wow, stillgoing, you really got me going !  I haven't thought this through like this and I'm really grateful for the prompting.  It's really helped me get a little more clarity than I had before.  Anyway, I'm sure you have a different take on much of what I've said and look forward to hearing your (and others) perspective.