Day 16

My wife is like a pussycat this morning basically because I found some money for camp.

This is basically a replay of how we met. I liked her because I wanted to enslave her sexually and she wanted someone to bankroll her existence.

I think a more forgiving way to look at it is that she was telling herself that I was taking her for granted and the money is a concrete action that shows her that I care about making her life easier.

Anyhow, I think the kids need it, and while she's a very capable person she's not the mommy at home type, so she needs it too.

After many years I have come to believe that you have to value people the way they value themselves, it's the only way that makes sense. Because she is putting in a ton of work in order to be a good person according to her rules.

They offered me an extra vacation day off the books. I am thinking of using it to give my wife a day off so she can veg out. Not sure yet.

mzl wrote on 18 Jun 2018 02:01:

Do you have a job, chaver?

Hey 'mzl', nice thread. Three things I'm seeing so far that catch my eye: 

1- You don't write about love. You write about your your wife the way I'd write about a politician. Neither good nor evil but simply self-serving. And you describe yourself exactly the same way. You don't seem to judge it, but to accept it as a given. Kind of the way CBT folks (and Skinner before them) look at all people: machines that need to be accepted and worked with, on their own terms.

I think that's very unfortunate and even though I myself am a sex addict sober in recovery (as you may be? dunno) I still feel sorrier for your wife than I do for you. Because you write as though you know better. 

We all can relate to self-serving and ego, this is nothing new for me, my wife, for gedolim, or for anybody. But in a marriage there is usually a large 'buffer zone', called Love and people who share things like their money, their children, their body fluids, and their life-hopes, meet there a lot...many normal married people actually live there most of the time.
I don't get the impression from any of your posts that you have that zone in the landscape of your own life or mind. Perhaps your wife does, which is why she flies off the handle as you describe it, getting Furious at you. Perhaps you just see it as 'her selfishness' acting up again...but maybe your love capacity is so dead that you can't even see it in another person. We all tend to judge other people's motivation based on our own.

Perhaps you feel that you two shamelessly self-serving folks have been married for so many years without meeting in the middle, in that zone. So maybe you chuckle at the suggestion and feel so very sure that talking about love is a waste of time. 

But that's irrelevant. What's relevant to me is that you accept both parties' machine-like existence as a matter of course, w/o room for considering any other option called Love.

I have no time right now to write the other other two things I'm seeing in your posts, but hope to get to that later today.

I hope that everything I write is helpful for you and that you eventually come out of your shell of self-absorption. 

So far, I believe this recovery stint you are on, using GYE, is just another opportunity for you to add yet more layers and complexity to your self-absorption. My recovery and also my avodas Hashem are both based on the opposite language you have been speaking thus far, it seems.

Dov wrote on 24 Jun 2018 14:41:

Yes

You make a good point Dov.

I have an attachment issue from when I was a kid so I don't use my ability to love others and don't really benefit when others love me. But I'm slowly changing.

I think you are labeling my being here a stint but I don't think you could really know how long it could go on for.

I think I'm already recovered but you don't like what I have recovered into. I don't know that you can knock it until you try it though.

I think basically you are right that not having a lot of illusions is kind of sad. And by definition if you do have illusions about love or anything else you wouldn't know. That's why they are nice to have.

My wife is smiling again.

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Day 17

I had a flash of clarity earlier and I knew that my desire to keep to myself is a kind of shame or guilt that I desire sex that hurts my partner, like the erotic cartoon I was shown when I was about ten years old.

I think this is a useful realization because a) I have never done that on purpose, maybe a couple of times if it happened to hurt I enjoyed it more, and b) just because I feel really guilty about it doesn't mean I'm not a sadist. And c) sometimes couples do that on purpose. Before I was frum I had a girlfriend who was a little bit into it (don't bother sending me private texts asking me for details ...)

I think the question I need to answer is did I allow this terrible desire to hurt other people? And the answer is no.

Still, it's hard to accept that theoretically I like other people's pain. Nasty.

I am very angry at someone for writing without thinking about the consequences. But that's not me, I can't control that.

On to other things. One of my top concerns is that I'm eating too much and putting on weight.

Since coming to the forum I think I understood one thing which I didn't know before. While it is motivating to have peer pressure from a group of people, an even greater motivation comes from a large number of dependencies, so that the mind does not consider a certain course of action because it's too much to think about.

An example of this is a career change. A lot has to change in order to pursue a career change. One might need to go back to school, move to a new city where jobs might be available, which would require new schools for the kids ... It almost hurts to think about it.

I have read a book called The Hacker's Diet. The author explains that the book is the tools for weight loss, but not the motivation. He also says that the motivation comes from making weight management central to one's self image. I have been wondering what that really means. I think it means engaging in life in new ways which indirectly tie back to weight management, so that the choice of jumping off the wagon becomes too complicated to think about.

It reminds me of the idea that if you are in a camp and a bear attacks you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the slowest camper.

SSA alert ... I get turned on when I think about Donald Trump. He's such a narcissistic, dominating guy, totally convinced that he deserves all pleasure.

Even when the yetzer makes me giggle I still have to defeat it ...

Not that it's any of my business, but since you put it out there, maybe you should get her on to the GYE womens' forum. Consider that you don't want her to be a slave to her lust, just as you don't want to be a slave to yours. I reckon that the younger you catch it, the easier it is to stop. Then again maybe you don't think its a problem, which is your call as her father. Just a thought.

Dov has a ton of posts, and they are quite entertaining because we're such different people. So far my favorite is the one where he tells a guy to shut up in something like 1,000 words

If I want to meet some frum sex addicts face to face is there like a yearly GYE sex addict convention?

Seems like there is an annual GYE convention. The link for this year's that has already been is here

mzl wrote on 25 Jun 2018 23:44:

Or there is a way that many of us chose; become friends with other guys on the forum.

I feel terrible that I'm not so available to make new friends, but I still have plenty; some inI my own city and many when I travel.