Thanks Ano,

Great metaphor.  Our addiction (Y'H) tries to convince us we can just peek or test him and we
are powerless without Hashem's help to pass this type of test.  Remove lust, lustful thoughts,
lustful pictures, lustful people from your life and you won't act out.

Hi all

I've been a bit slippy the past few weeks, I've taken on  a strong resolution to not slip up at least for today.
I need encouragment from you guys, it's really hard for me to stay motivated.
I've found with me, that being depressed is a big problem for me when it comes to this addiction.
I suffer from depression, and when things are rough, i tend to ignore all the boundaries I have set up for myself.
I just say, stuff it, and do it anyway.
I need help being motivated and staying strong, even when I dont feel so good.


Thanx all.  ;D
Net

I would use the power of vows to help you avoid such places in the future. For example, make a vow that for 6 months you will give $200 to Tzedaka if you go into one of those places.

Normally making vows is frowned upon by our sages as with someone playing with fire, but when it comes to girding oneself from sexual temptation, we find that making vows is praised by the Torah and by Chaz"al. As the Pasuk says "Nishbati Va'akayeima, lishmor Mishpatei Tzidkecha" - "I have vowed and will uphold it, to guard your righteous laws". And also it says "Nishba Lehora Velo Yamir - Oseh eileh lo Yimot Le'olam" - "He who swears to prevent bad and does not nullify... he will never falter". And Chaza"l also say that Bo'az swore to guard himself from transgressing when Ruth came to him in the silo at night, as it says "Chai Hashem, Shichvi ad haboker" - "In the name of G-d, lay here until morning". See here and here to learn how to make vows safely and effectively!

But what Elya wrote above is also very important. Like Elya once posted on the forum:

Our addiction (YH) tells us that we can do Teshuva by passing by places we used to go, just to say we passed by and didn't go in again, or didn't meet that person again.  But this is a setup, because when you do it enough times you will go back to it.

It's like this story in 6 chapters:

Chapter 1: I walk down the street, I see a hole, I fall in.
Chapter 2: I walk down the street, I see a hole, I fall in, I get up.
Chapter 3: I walk down the street, I see a hole, I walk around it.
Chapter 4: I walk down the street, I see a hole, I cross to the other side.
Chapter 5: I walk down the other side of the street
Chapter 6: I walk down a different street.

Know that what ever you did in the past is never lost. Every time you say "no" is priceless.

But you have to understand, this struggle is not resolved through resolve alone. It is an insidious disease, like a spiritual cancer, and it takes a lot more than "resolve" to break free. You have to understand this and be willing to take more serious steps if you want to truly break free. Join the phone conference on Sundays, speak to Elya on the hot-line. Consider joining a 12-Step group in your area. Use the power of vows in a SMART and SAFE way. See this page and this page. See a trained sex addiction therapist, or at least join the Tuesday night phone group that has a trained therapist on the line. Etc... This is a battle for your soul. At the end of the day, it's going to be either you or him. Just like in Israel, the goverment learned from the failures in the Lebenon war three years ago, and today they are doing much better on all fronts. That's the way to fight. Learn from the past, fix the breaches and FINISH THE JOB.

We are here for you.

Rabbosai,
I do not know how to get up. I thought after my fall last week that I could just simply start again but I can't. It is hard to imagine how on Monday I felt so good and strong and with one foul swoop the yetzer hora has knocked me off my perch. I went 32 days without giving in at all and then...........
It is strange, part of me thought before the fall, I am not addicted anymore. I won't fall. I am stronger now but alas!
I tried getting up adn starting fresh but I failed at that. This Shabbos i was struck with some chizzuk that we are entering the parsha of Shovavim. I do not exactly understand the intricacies but I recall that these are the weeks that are mesugal for doing Teshuva for aveiros in the area of Yesod. I am mispallel that I will be able to get back up as Chazal say Sheva Yipol, Koom!
I took upon myself that I will IY"H take on to be shomer myself especially carefully during the Yemai Shovavim and with a lot of Siyata Dishmaya I hope tp be able to finally conquer this.
P.Y.

Thank you for the recommendation and links to these amazing stories.  It is amazing to see that other people who were in the same situation were able to break free of this horrible addiction.

Today I began my first day.  This morning at Shacharis, I davened to Hashem to help me succeed THIS time, because it was time to put it behind me.  For too long have I fallen and then asked Hashem for forgiveness, knowing that I could not control myself the next time.  I would even rationalize that I shouldnt ask for forgiveness that morning because I knew what I was going to do that day.

Baruch Hashem, today has been a great day.  I don't get the taavos on a daily basis, just every once in a while, and that is when it is hard to control it.  But I will succeed!!!

welcome home dear Jew. We are here for you. For starters, I would read the first 5 stories and the replies on this page. As you read, digest the advice that is given there. When you are done there, I would read some of the recovery stories here. There you will see that people in your Matzav or even worse, have succeeded in breaking free.

Beating this takes more than just a decision. Don't kid yourself. This is an addiction, a kind of spiritual disease. But once you know that, there are tried and proven methods that can help you keep the addiction in complete remission and under full control BE"H. I would advise you to speak with Elya on the hotline here and join the free Sunday group as a start. Also, a strong filter is very important. And each time, before you travel, post here on the forum about your dillemas and fears, and think about what brings you to fall, and we will work out a battle strategy together. For example, I know a guy who used to browse the yellow page books in his hotel rooms and find the bad stuff. When he realized that he was only a step away from the edge of the cliff, he made a vow not to open the yellow pages in his hotel room at all. You see, you can't face the Yetzer hara straight on. You need to have a plan to hit him from behind, and avoid him as much as possible. See Rabbi twerski's approach on the bottom of this page.

Have you considered therapy? It is very helpful to have someone trained in sexual addictions help you deal with this, face to face. Our site has lists of therapists, list of filters, lists of anything you need. Just ask and I'll point you to the links and advise you on the best ones and best strategies...

Keep posting here. We are all here for you. Hashem has waited all these years for you to be ready to do Teshuvah. In the process of breaking free you will learn great things about yourself and about how to give your heart to Hashem, even in the most difficult times. Join our soldiers now battling the evil in Eretz Yisrael. You are now in the REAL battlefield. You can make a huge difference!

I have been receiving the chizuk emails for months now, and yet, as hard as I try and as much chizuk as I try to internalize from the emails, I still seem to slip.  I must conquer this.

I made a New Year's resolution to stop being mishkav zera, not looking at pornography and the likes.  I was able to make it until the 5th, and then fell again today.  This is when I decided that it was time to start taking the emails more seriously, and begin "blogging" if you will about my journey to sobriety.

My porn addiction used to be far worse, looking at it whenever I could.  Now, although I have been able to control myself while at home or at the office, whenever I travel it seems that I cannot control myself.  I spend hours at night in the hotel room searching the internet for porn.  And even worse, not only have I fallen to the internet and porn, this has lead me to massage parlors, which provide more than just massages.  Every time that I go there I feel horrible about myself, telling myself that I wont go again.  I can't.  How many people who I hurt if I told them what I was doing.  My life would fall apart completely.  My wife, my kids.  Everything.  Every time I daven, and say the special tefilla asking for forgiveness in Shma Koleinu, I know how I am kidding myself.

Today is a new beginning.  I can no longer go on doing what I have been doing.  I feel horrible about what I do every time it happens, and it is time for it to end.

And so I begin my journey to sobriety.  While I cannot count today as day 1, I will have two day 1's - today and tomorrow.  I will succeed.  Everything in life not only requires Hashem's help, but also requires hishtadlus.  When I set my mind on almost anything in life, I will do whatever it takes to get it done.  In business, within the community, etc.  So this is part of my hishtadlus, and I daven to Hashem that he will help me to control my hirhurim and taavos, and give me the bracha that I will succeed finally in conquering this horrible position that I have fallen into.

Everyone on this forum's mind is a bit messed up. Almost anyone who was once addicted to these things has warped his ability to look at women in a normal way and must make barriers and fences for himself that perhaps others don't have to make. We need to be much more careful not to watch Goyish movies for example, or to browse even normal Goyish news websites. We need to be much more careful where we go and who we interact with. But this is not a Chisaron. This makes us HOLY. We are FORCED to be holy if we want to stay Erlich! This is a GIFT from Hashem. After all, most Yidden want to be holy deep down, only they don't have the strength to stay away from these things because they are not FORCED to like we are.

Hashem knew we would be in this situation. He knew we would fall and fall and he waited for so many years until the time would be right and we would learn to give him our hearts. We, here, have a much greater potential for true "ahavas Hashem" and personal growth than do most other Yidden. We have the ability to shoot up the spiritual ladder at a much faster rate than others who don't have this intense struggle. We must rejoice with this challenge and learn to focus all our yearnings to the source of all beauty, all good, all pleasure and all love: Hakadosh Baruch HU!.

45 days is half way to 90! That's a big milestone. Be holy, you make us all proud to have you here with us on this forum, a fellow soldier battling deep in enemy territory, shoulder to shoulder with us all!

Yes, the addiction makes it harder to love because it warps our sense of love to something that is not real. Only when we learn to protect our eyes do we open ourselves up to a new type of love that we couldn't access before. We were blinded by the light of false love that flashes bright (and then burns out), and we couldn't see the candle of real love burning true.

True love is built through appreciation and appreciation is built by forcing yourself to say tings like "thank you", "I love you", and by doing things for your wife, even if it's against your nature. The more you do for someone, the more you feel love for them.

battle log- day 45. things are getting easier. i still have what if questions- someone told me these are normal stages to go through in marraige but i seem to be coming to them late and moving through them slower then normal- any thoughts?
  does this addiction make it harder to love? or is my sense of love and apprreciation simply warped?

First, thank you battleworn, for the chizuk.  It's a great way to start the morning.  Hopefully, I will be able to continue ramping up the offensive against the Y"H.  Now I know shmiras einayim is the guarding of the eyes and simcha is joy.  I can't remember ruchnius, though.

Guarding my eyes is a challenge.  Just walking to the checkout line at the grocery... well, need I say more about that?  Beating the years old habit of doing the opposite of guarding my eyes may well be the biggest battle of this whole war.  I've already stopped going to the Fox news website; I like their reporting of national and international events, but the pictures are simply awful.  I've substituted a lot of the Jewish sites recommended on this board, but I have yet to find something with comprehensive coverage that I like (of course Fox wasn't so comprehensive either, BBC is far more comprehensive but I can't stomach their antisemitism).

I made it through last night.  Moetzei Shabbos often presents its own unique challenges.  My wife and I have a date night every Moetzei Shabbos, and we both love books.  Our most frequent destination is a local Barnes and Noble (no Judaica shops here are open Moetzei Shabbos).  I was keenly aware last night of just how many impure images are on display at that store.  It seems browsing a bookstore is a dangerous pasttime for me.  I can probably find something else that my wife will enjoy; I'll just have to work at it.

Davening this morning was more focused for me.  The Gaza situation was weighing heavily on me, so I was able to let my tefilos focus on the IDF and the difficult time they are in right now.

I have now completed 14 days through last night...  Two weeks!  I have had some really difficult battles, but I've made it thus far.  It makes so much of a difference to me to have this board.  Fighting the battles alone was so much more difficult.  Knowing that I'm going to come back to this board to "file my reports" with my fellow soldiers is making a lot of difference.  I guess it has to do with a sense that I'm not alone, that I'm strange for having this problem.  Seeing here and on the GUE site that there are people here who have struggle as long and even longer with this addiction to masturbation and other such things is reassuring.  Seeing that these same people are now fighting and beating the Y"H is empowering.

I guess it's time for me to relate my story.  Some background info will give some context to my story.  I am a convert to Judaism of several years now.  I was raised nominally xtian and did an extended stint in evangelical type xtianity from college into my 30's.  How I ended up converting I won't share here as it my reveal my identity.

I have been struggling with masturbation and intermittant porn usage for nearly 30 years.  When I was around 13, someone shared some porn magazines with me.  I was instantly hooked and soon began masturbating as well.  Along with this, I also entangled myself in a very inappropriate relationship with a girl that was on and off for four years or so.  These things laid a corrupt foundation for my life that has haunted me ever since.  I quickly got to the point where I was masturbating twice a day or more.  I met my future spouse in college.  We were both religious xtians at that point, but while my xtianity generated a lot of guilt about my activities, it didn't do a lot to give me any means of overcoming.  We married shortly after graduating college.  I had hoped that this would give me the means to overcome the masturbation, but it was not to be.  In addition to the power of the addiction, there was a physical problem that cropped up requiring our abstinence from sexual activity for several weeks.  By the end of that time, masturbation was strongly entrenched in my marital life.  Over the years I made various efforts to overcome the addiction but it was all done without understanding the nature of what was happening, and thus was unsuccessful.

When I was preparing for my conversion to Judaism, I heard of Tzvi Fishman and his website.  I read his website, got his book and began to understand the depth of the dangers of sexual immorality.  Shortly before my conversion date, I began what was my longest stint of abstinence from masturbation.  This stint ended due to a combination of work related separations from my wife, depression, and failure to proper guard my eyes from impure sites (during this stint it was impure non-porn websites and exposure to immodestly dressed women in my work location).  From that point I wavered back and forth between purity and impurity, sometimes lasting a few days and sometimes a few weeks.  Sometimes the impure times were marked by some internet pornography usage and others it only involved masturbation.

Recently the struggle was particularly bad.  Over the summer I lost my job (I had developed such a bad attitude toward that employer that I had nearly stopped working at all).  Thankfully, within a month I found new employment.  However, the new job involved relocation, and when I got my family moved with me, there was real and significant strife.  My wife and children were headed off the derech, we were headed for divorce.  On the surface, it had to do with the fact that my wife and I seemed to be headed in different direction religiously.  Under the surface, I suspect that my many years of sexual immorality had caught up with our relationship; I wasn't fighting for the marriage the way I should.  Not surprisingly, new efforts to improve the relationship with my wife have also spurred me to a renewed commitment to fight the Y"H and guard the bris.  I am also just in the past couple of days beginning to involve her more with this battle.  I try to avoid all the gory details with her, but I am letting her know what are my particular areas of struggle and how she might be able to help me.  We are just beginning, but it seems to be positive.  They don't seem to be in quite as much danger of going of the derech, though I still have concerns (especially about my teen son).  Well, that's a start for now.  It will be Shabbos in a few more hours and I need to do a few things.

Rabbi Miller used to speak about  how we need to praise Hashem for Malbish Arumim every day, in that we are different than the animals. And I think it says in the Gemara, Rava Kara Lem'anai mechabdusah, he called his clothes, his "honor".

I had a nice thought once. We say in Brachos every morning Malbish Arumim first, and after that, Matir Asurim. If you want to achieve "Matir Asurim" and break free from this addiction, you need to Malbish Arumim first and get a good strong internet filter  :D

BTW, all these thoughts you have show you are trying really hard and forcing your intellect to rule your heart. This is all Hashem asks from us. I promise you if you keep it up, you will see that it will get a LOT easier. All these thoughts about "If only my wife looked better" and if only I had this and that, EVERYONE goes through that at a certain stage. But after working on ourselves - which you are doing every day, it slowly goes away and we become happy with our lot. Really.

Keep it up Tzadik!

I have a wonderful image that I remember from my childhood, the days before I began my addiction.  I remember being at a camp in the Appalachians.  Near the camp was a lean-to for hikers on the Appalachian Trail.  The lean-to sat in the middle of a clearing in the trees and a large stream ran through the clearing.  The stream had a bridge over it made up of two logs (and no rail).  I remember sitting on a large rock in the clearing just listening to the water run over the rocks.  I remember it as one of the most peaceful places I have ever been.  That was maybe thirty years ago, but I still can see and hear it so well.  Just had to share the image that will be my tool now.