Not doing any better. Thanks for the encouragement though. I promised myself a few months ago not to use my  laptop every day until I've done my basic learning chovos. I didn't do any of them today but I gave in and went on my laptop. I decided to do something hard though, so I just did shnayim mikra (one of my chovos) even though I couldn't be bothered. Earlier, I went to an internet cafe with a supposedly good filter. My laptop has netfree plus extra blocks so I go to the kosher free internet for my pleasure seeking. I have long realised that most filters are useless unless you want them to be good. With this filter I am able to access plenty of pictures of naked women although admittedly it takes quite intensive research to find ones I haven't looked at before. The searching, however, is the addictive thing, often I'm just looking for triggering words or anything not appropiate. I need to learn not to go there but at least I'm not going regularly to the library which also has free internet but which has access to porn etc.
When I mentioned sounding insincere, I think it wasn't clear enough. what I meant was that people start getting defensive when I say Hashem will help because they think its defeatis and denialist....

Ari1990 wrote on 20 Jul 2022 13:12:

thank you for coming on here and relating your difficult and painful story. it is clear that one thing led to another and that the non crossable lines kept moving. this is how the yetzer hara works.  Please keep connected here.  we will not judge and will only try to help.  You have a father in heaven who loves you with unconditional love.  He has been waiting for you.  Allow yourself to feel his love and to love him back. 

wishing you much success

Hi everyone
i would like to share with you my story.

As far i remember  myself i have being attracted to women. My sisters friends, cleaning lady's, books and so on. 
when i was in yeshiva i started to watch porn and to chat with  women on the net. 
during summer i was going to mixed beaches 
i was still very connected to my learning even do i had mixed feeling about being religious. 
i need to say that i am a very shy and introverted person. 
Masturbating started quite early as soon i became bar mitsva.

somehow i managed to get married. i was pushed by my rabbi to get married with my wife even do i was hesitating. i was told that it would pass after the chupah.

and guess what...? 

it didn't.... i just found out about her default, about her being insensitive to anything sexual and to be a very closed minded person.

very quickly i found myself back to watch staff (i was in Kollel then) 

i started to talk with other women and guys (mostly) exchanging experiences..
starting to get into the business of f*** porn and so on.

about 5 years ago i opened a fake FB account with the hope to meet someone there. 

i felted bad about watching porn and i decided that its better to sin in real life rather to dream on pics and videos

i did meet one women from there ( after spending hours to try to get the right ''catch'')

i limited myself not have a real aveirah (halkha wise and also it made me feel less guilty towards my wife) 

i was very shocked of myself and i stopped on the spot everything.

then yetser harah came back and i reopened my account on and off

mostly watching staff

a few months ago i meet one more women .

married and frum ( i have to say that i am mainly attracted to frum women)

*******. and then i felt so low with myself i decided to stop it all at once. i deleted all accounts and phones numbers and became a good boy.

But the need was still there. so i started again to watch porn.. at work (i work in a no frum office in Israel)

almost got caugt a few times but the urge was to strong.


AND then it came.....

i found some blood in my pee. went to do routine test only to find out about a polyp in urine system.

i started to freak out and felt for the first time a real call from above to change my ways. 

i was (and still is) completely broken. i started to imagine myself leaving this world like a baal aveirah, unpure, with all the malakhim created by me attacking me....

i told everything to my wife. 

She was totally devastated.

i was expecting a very taff reaction, instead of that she cried out her soul asking me why i was hurting her so much. Her pain really toke me aback and i realized how much she loved me. 
the fact i told her everything about myself was such a relief that i felted so good and happy. 

We went to a marriage conselor and he is tryng to help us.

it is not easy. I realized that i never learned to love myself. and to love my wife. for real. with all my heart. 

we are very worried the both of us about getting divorced. 

we want to fight for our kids. 

and she has proven to me the best proof of love i could even imagine of. 

so we are going to work on ourselves. to repare our marriage. for me to stop with my addiction. 

here are the steps i took so far:

1. Stop staring at women on the street.
2. learning mishnayos by heart and repaeting them while walking on the street
3. tikoun aklali
4. filter on phone and computer
5. triyng very hard to love my wife. (this point is very scary....to be explained in a different post)
6. investing myslef in my marriage.

to be continued

Hi GYE community, 
My name is Shlomo and I have been suffering from addiction since I was 10 or 11. 
It started out with porn and masturbation for quite a while and progressed when I was around 21 to massage parlors. 
I got married and have a large family BH and stopped when I first got married. But after a year life started getting stressful and I resorted back to my old behaviors...slowly. First porn and masturbation and then after a few years back to massage parlors and prostitutes. My wife has absolutely no idea, yes even to those that say she for sure knows...are wrong. I am a master of covering up I know how to block numbers delete texts and erase my waze history. I can put on a fresh face and walk into the house as if nothing ever happened. We certainly have our arguments and differences but our marriage doesnt look that different from most other ppl our age. 
I have been trying the 12 step program but it eludes me. Similar to trying to lose weight, I know what I have to do, I just never seem to do it. 
I attend meetings here and there, I call my sponsor and read the literature, but I am still acting out. I am not discounting the program but I just dont have the willpower to do whatever it takes to stay sober. 

On the other hand my entire internal world is in decay. I feel disconnected, shameful, frustrated and depressed. I put on a happy face for my kids but inside I am dying slowly. 

Would love to hear feedback from people who have been in similar situations. 
Thanks! 

No, my concern is not if I'm normal, I know 100%+ that I am, I bH have alot of friends, I'm popular, and have bH a beautiful family. My concern is that these stupid taavos (which are 100% muter) escalate me to assur taavos, I'm addicted to look at them, it arouses me and then bring me to assur taavos. My problem is that I find them everywhere - even in shul! imagine! I don't have any idea how to free myself of that.

trythehardest wrote on 14 Jul 2022 16:49:

What an amazing and inspiring story.  I am so proud to be part of a forum that has people like you in it.  I hope that you will be doing something to celebrate. This deserves a lot more than an ice cream!!

I am just going to comment that you mention you put in hard work.  I think that the best way to make sure that you make permanent changes is when you are motivated to do whatever it takes no matter how hard (and expensive) it is.  You obviously recognized this and acted on it.   The investments you have  put in now will shower you with generations of dividends.  Kol Hakovod and please keep in touch. 

Hello, amazing friends,

The "I don't have something to add", "someone can recognize me", "I'm not good at writing" and you finished these lines, are out of the window today, when reaching my 180'th day clean I have to do it in my gratitude to Hashem.

Growing up I have it a very hard time regarding the relationship with my parents I didn't talk to my father for a while and we have a hard time together.

In school and in Yeshiva I always was bitter about the teachers, I lived in pain and thought that anyone is against me, many of the fellow kids were bullying me and I had no one to talk to about it.

Most of the challenges probably had to do with my high sensitivity but it didn't help I felt in pain almost anytime that I remember.

We also had in the family a few tragedies that didn't make me feel better and here again, I had no one to talk to.

When I grow up I started to suffer from serious anxiety and panic attacks I always imagined that I am dead and nobody is picking up my body... this put on me a new level of unmanageable pain that I couldn't go through alone.

Not to paint things only in a dark way through the years I had a few amazing ppl that I could talk to but these were when I got in the higher teen years.

While engaged to my wife I already started seeing some signs but never dreamed of what will happen in real life.

After the wedding it started a painful life that I felt I couldn't survive; with BPD symptoms I have to eat, have friends, talk, think, and everything in between exactly like she wanted to make a story short life then feels like hell.

To fast forward to the good end story my life is now amazing Boruch Hashem, my wife is much better, my financial situation improved, no anxiety and panic (I am not soo scared of dying anymore...).

And now to why I share these, while I did go through all these I had a major pain killer m and inappropiate content was unfortunatly a part of life; I wasn't addicted just I know that from all the pain I can get a litlle relief.

With hard work and with help here from your amazing guys on GYE I managed to see things as they are, and that I have to take real steps to improve life, with therapy or other steps, and not choose the easy/tragic way to get out of the pain.

I think by me clarity was key, I told myself "yes, it feels good, (that's why it's such a hard mitzva) but what want you to give up for it, your Kedusha? Parnose? Family life?".

I am not naive to think that there could not be obstacles down the road it probably would but I hope with Hashem's help as I have seen already what a REAL and RELIEVING life means I will stay strong.

Thank you Hashem for your amazing support always and especially I can't thank you enough for helping me get out of this tragic mess of life.

I think you didn't understand completely my main question. I completely understand that there's such a thing of "fetishes", and that is pretty normal. What bothers me is that I have the same fetish for men as well, (and no, I don't think I'm SSA, although I might enjoy looking at a nak*d man, but I would be "farekeled" to do something with a man - bH), so I have this nisayon even in bhm"d. My eyes would search under the tables to look for somebody taking off or dangling his shoe (!!, sounds crazy right??, believe me I feel horrible about it), this has been going on since I'm a kid (tens of years). In fact the beginning of my PM problem has been only thinking and fantasizing of friends in yeshiva dangling their shoes (how crazy, right??!!), if I Wouldn't have the problem by men I wouldn't come to any addictions whatsoever, since I was a very ehrliche bochur to begin with, it's only after I got hooked up with the above that it "shlepped" me to other stuff, that's on what I was wondering if somebody can relate to this. Anyway, thank you for your reply.

It's strange and it's getting me nervous.

While I have taken much stronger steps than I've ever taken before (I intend to post more about that) to be successful in battling this addiction, It's never gone as easy for me in the past as it is going this time around.

​I guess I should be thankful, but I'm not...just worried...

Striving4more wrote on 11 Jul 2022 18:33:

     First of all gotta wish you congratulations on this! You are incredible!! Keep up the good work and I can’t wait to hear you start posting after day 90! Im sure you will be a big chizuk to the other members of gye!! Secondly, I can’t speak so much from experience post 90 days as im not so far beyond 90 myself but there are a few things that i thought of along the way.
     One thing which is always important to remember is that 90 was and never will be the end goal. 90 days (besides for your neuron pathways being redirected for whatever that means etc) shows that you can continue living the rest of life without porn or masturbation. If you did it for three months, you can do it forever. That’s the yisod of 90 in my opinion. I didn’t have some crazy feelings on day 90 that now im going to be free from this struggle…it actually felt pretty similar to every other day. The only difference was that i reached a goal i set for myself.
     Secondly, a big motivation of mine from the beginning of joining this site was to hopefully be in a position that one day i will be able to help others get out of their personal hell. If i can show someone else that no matter how hard it gets that i will be able to push through, then they will see that they also have the ability to keep going strong. That’s definitely something i still keep in mind. 
     Third, my long term goals in life automatically mean that i need to keep up my motivation to keep on going. Im going to be starting to date in the near future and i want my marriage to be on solid ground with my past being the past and the future full of opportunity. I don’t want to be a Moe Steiner (-; (see the new story teller thread if you don’t get this…)
     Fourth, I’m quite happy where my life has gone to without being addicted to porn. I have more time on my hands in general, im emotionally healthier, and overall i feel great about myself. All of these feelings are not something i really experienced when i was stuck in the world of pornography. I don’t want these feelings to ever go away. There are still times where the battle gets tough and I remind myself of the guilty feeling that i had right after a fall in order to battle my yetzer hara. The yetzer hara only lets you think of the pleasurable moments of porn and masturbation without you remembering how horribly guilty you felt right after…
    All of these and more are things that im misbonein on to help me want to keep fighting this battle for the rest of my life. I don’t want to stop at 90. I don’t ever want to go back to that horrible world i was living in. Internalize this and hopefully it will give you the proper motivation to keep on trucking. Wishing you luck brother.
-ftc

Keep up the good work. I mean it. You have in your signature that you won't give up. As long as you keep going. You are going in the right direction.

When I told my rebbi that I think I was not simply struggling, but I was addicted. He told me so what. Even a complete addict has the ability to change, even if it may be a little harder. There is no point of no return. It may be that you need outside help, אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים. This is once a person is "locked" in his problems. But even if someone is there, there is always work you can do yourself. No one will actually help you, they will help you help yourself. (I probably sound like my rebbi and therapist mixed in one. sorry about that.)

I remember reading on GYE somewhere that lack of connection causes p and m, which in turn increases problems in connection. It is a dangerous cycle. I assume that there are many other things that are very similar, like dieting, although to a lesser degree. The question is giving up a short-term pleasure for a long term gain is difficult if you do not have the connection to reality. And instead of confronting your issue directly, we tend to just deny the reality and keep the cycle.
The solution is generally working on connecting to people around you. This idea of connecting with people is to keep us connected to the real world around us. And as they say the opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection. 

I haven't been doing very well. I am getting more convinced i might have addictive tendencies, but the likelihood of me doing SA is not very high. I am also not doing well in other areas of life such as keeping my diet up so its hard to know whats the cause and whats the effect. I have problems with connecting with the reality around me and that might be a factor in my other problems.

Mazel Tov! You make me jealous! Im not being facetious or anyhting like that...... Im serious as a heart attack! You have no idea what you are doing to yourself and to this world and to all of us here at GYE! I was also a bucher and a young boy who started M* at 9 and P and 13 and it changed my life forever. I wish I had the tools that you do, there was not GYE back then and nobody to talk to. So you are lucky in that sense and a  huge inspiration to all of us. 
Now to the point that you make that Hasehm puts everyone of us into different situations to succeed, that is so true you can see it, For example, i shudder to think what i would've become had i been in such a household as you are..... I really try not to think about it, I thank Hasehm that he didnt put me into such a situation. But the fac that He put you, means clearly that he gave you the power to succeed, Otherwise, why would he create you in the first place? to set you up for failure? no way! He is the source of existence and everything good and beautiful. So He has a very bright future planned out for you! Just go with Him and be guided by Him. 
What you wrote about 90 days not being a major number, thats true, however, you can make it a major turning point, use the fact that a lot of doctors said that in 90 days a person can change his behavior and tell  yourself when you get an urge "i now know that i have the strength and the resolve to fight this, i also know that my brain is slowly getting unaddicted so i really dont need this as much as i used to" It will make it easier. 

Good Luck on your Journey and please keep writing. 

Hey everyone,

Today was my 90th day clean. Who thought I would ever make it this far (probably no one being that no one knew my secret(-: but that’s beside the point…) For all those who didn’t read my original point I’ll summarize it quickly here. I was introduced to porn at around age 7-8, figured out masturbating on my own around this age also, and got hooked on it before I even knew it was אסור. I was hiding my addiction throughout middle school, high school, and Beis Medrash. Life was hell for me. I was living a double life for far too long and the inner turmoil was so painful. I thought I was the biggest Rasha in the world and thought that I would go to the grave with my secret. This past Bein Hazmanim I fell in the worst way that ever happened to me and that was the spark for me to go searching on the web to figure out a real solution to put my life in order, thus I discovered GYE (For more info see my original post).

I'm now 22 years old. I’ve had a secret for 15 years. That’s a long time. Longer than I thought anyone in the world ever had this problem. I realized how wrong I was. I have read about many people who are or were in far worse situations than I was. After reading through their stories, I realized one simple thing. If there are people out there who were in worse situations than I was and they managed to pull themselves together, I can pull my life together also. I have a shot at life. No more excuses. It’s time to buckle down and beat this battle. I knew that I had to do something fundamentally different than every other time I had tried to stop. What was that fundamental difference? Communication. I had a place where I could let people know what was going on with me. I had a place where I could see how many others struggled with the same situation as I did. We are all men. We all have sexual drives and unfortunately many, many of us were exposed to the horrors of porn. It wasn’t just me. After knowing this I slowly but surely started to feel ‘normal’. I had felt alone and different for so long, and now I felt that I was just like anyone else. I’m not going to ask g-d why he put me into a situation where I was exposed to porn at such a young age and why I live in a house with many unfiltered devices and why we live in a generation that you can’t even walk the streets without being horribly exposed and why this and why that. G-d has his reasons and they are far beyond our comprehension. That’s not what I have to worry about. What I do have to worry about is how I’m going to deal with my reality. How to make sure that I now stay a changed person. How to make sure that I don’t slip back into the abyss that I was once in. That I take the inspiration from gye and channel it into real-life situations where I am struggling. I can feel comfortable knowing that everyone else struggles too and just because it’s hard doesn’t mean that I’m going to fall. I have the capabilities to carry out what I really want to be in life. A true Eved Hashem.

So I reached 90 days. After three months of ups and downs, I finally reached the ‘magic number’. I don’t really feel any different than I did on day 89 nor do I  really feel any different than I did on day 88. And day 92 won’t really feel any different than day 91. But I do feel different in one way. I’m a person who can set a goal and reach it. If I could reach this goal of 90 days, I can reach 900 days, I can reach 9,000 days, and I can keep going for the rest of my life (of course only with the help of Hashem). It may be hard sometimes, and it may feel like I'm about to give in, but I can do it! I can push through! So I’ll have urges sometimes and I know that I will and I know it will be hard, but for now, I don’t have the option to go masturbate or watch porn. I have other ways of dealing with these issues, but going back to my old habits is just not an option anymore. It’s not who I am. That’s what the number 90 signifies for me. A person who can reach a goal that they set for themselves even when the going gets hard. “Cause when the going gets hard, the tough get going”.

So all those out there who read this, know one thing. You can reach the goals that you set. It is possible to break free from this life and there is always gonna be someone who was in your situation or maybe even worse who also broke free. Use them as an inspiration for yourself. Start posting on the forum and share your struggle with someone else. Maybe one day you will pick up the phone and call someone or go meet in person as I did and you will see that there are so many people out there who can give you support when you need it. Porn does not have to define who you are!! You can live a good meaningful life without it, but you must utilize the tools that gye has to offer in order to break free. If I and so many others did it, you can do it to!!

I honestly have to thank everyone here for responding to my posts and encouraging me to keep going. There is something so satisfying when people respond to your posts, so thank you for that. I do have to give a special shout out to both HHM and Vehkam for their continued support to me as they were both there for me when i needed it most. I must give a huge shout out to GYE for all of the holy work that you do. It’s amazing to see how many people have gotten their lives back because of you! So thank you, thank you to the gye team!!! I must express hakaras hatov to hashem for enabling me to get this far on my journey and with his help, I hope to continue on for the rest of my life doing the one thing that I always truly wanted. To be a true Eved Hashem.

ps. I appreciate all feedback, so feel free to respond(-:

fishel klien wrote on 03 Jul 2022 20:42:

Welcome! There are many great people here and you are not alone. There are also many on this site who were stuck for years, and sometimes decades, and have succeeded in breaking free and rewiring their thinking and actions. Abuse can be a major factor in sexual problems and addictions, and opening up about it can feel scary and painful. Do you have a therapist to work through this with? If not, please consider reaching out to Relief or Amudim. Both have great resources and can help find the right therapist for you while mantaining your privacy. Hatzlacha Rabbah!