I just returned after months of not being here and was very disappointed to see this last quote from our dear friend Rav Dov shlita. I do find some solace that it was written in 2013 and sincerely hope that Reb Dov may have changed his mind about what he wrote. I don't think that Rabbi Miller would hold that one should disclose to his wife and break her heart just because he's an addict. That's more selfish addict thinking...

I just returned after months of not being here and was very disappointed to see this last quote from our dear friend Rav Dov shlita. I do find some solace that it was written in 2013 and sincerely hope that Reb Dov may have changed his mind about what he wrote. I don't think that Rabbi Miller would hold that one should disclose to his wife and break her heart just because he's an addict. That's more selfish addict thinking...

If you regularly masturbate, you can easily become addicted. This addiction comes in the form of daily regularity that curbs your desire to go out. It also does not allow you to harness your sex drive, which can be used to motivate yourself to work on wealth-building projects.

mzl wrote on 09 Aug 2018 19:48:

A CPU only has a set amount of resources to run multiple threads at a time. By raising the priority of the applications in foreground, you leave over less processing power for the applications in the background. Eventually the system would either force kill the background apps or at least hibernate them depending on the OS setup.

Your brain works in a similar fashion. By being fully in mind with the task at hand, you leave less room for background thoughts. It can be called mindfulness, living in the moment, or similar names. One of the ways to get rid of background thoughts, is to overpower it with positive conscious thoughts.

Hatzlocha Rabba!

This post isn’t so much about my struggle but more like a place to vent my feelings about the future. I am 22.  For the first time in many years I got up to 130 days thanks to my sponsor. It felt great. I fell last week and haven’t gone back to the shmutz. It hurt to fall, but I realized I used to fall 2/3 times a week so I am happy of my achievement. 

but other than that I am worried about falling in the near future. I feel quite lonely. I am so alone during Ben hazmanim. I had my first date this week. I was so nervous. I was told she didn’t like it. She doesn’t want to continue. It doesn’t help that my friends are getting engaged now. 3 just came back from Israel after Pesach and are engaged. It makes me jealous and worried about my future. Will I find a girl that suits me?

This addiction has made me so insular and quite sad and alone. It doesn’t help that I come from a broken home and want to marry from a regular yeshivish home. Will I find what I desire? I feel sad and worried.  

This addiction has made me so insular and quite sad and alone

mzl wrote on 05 Aug 2018 14:03:

Just for the record, you deserve most of the credit for 'dispelling' your own desire, not we. You are the one wjo reached a bit past your own comfort zone - and that little bit has paid off for about 2 months already, for you.

Your contention that G-d hates sexual thoughts has no basis in fact. Please reconsider before posting ideas that are a bit misleading. There's a lot to say about the topic but writing in bitter generalities isn't helpful. You write with bitterness, and unfortunately it has been a pattern of yours that others have picked up on, too. It raises the hackles of others and puts up their defences, and I think that's unfortunate. For you probably have a lot to give but wear a coat of prickly mail that protects you from actually making more friends than you have here. And I'm sure the loss is mutual. I think you can drop it and be more vulnerable, as most people are who are liked. The cost is not that high...unless you need approval for everything you do. People with self-esteem that weak can't afford vulnerability, so they often opt for self-pity, "me against the world", armchair criticism of society, extremism, insisting they quickly grasp the truth and understand better than others, and often busy themselves with the moral inventory of those around them. A little loneliness isn't that much to pay, is it? And it's lonely at the top...but better than being mediocre and one of the 'Great Unwashed'.

The things you have claimed about your wife, you do, yourself and claim about others. I think you are projecting...a lot. Think it over. It'll be a great relief for you to break out of the hole you have dug for yourself. 'Karma' isn't your problem. There are no 'barons of recovery'. You're the one who casts yourself out, and there is no 'power' here that you have "talked truth to"...you're making all that up.

Don't bother considering this:

If you want the people in this forum to change their behavior - or your wife to change hers, there is a simple solution and it is very close to what you suggested:

You wrote that they only hope of finally changing your wife is the intervention of an outside force, correct?

I'm suggesting that you beginning to focus exclusively on cleaning your own side of the street without trying to manage or criticize others around you, is outside your experience, so far. It's an outside force - a thing that would be very new to you and those immediately around you (and even here on the Forum). Try that out for two weeks. And watch what happens to the way people interact with you here. Try it out for a month and watch what happens to your wife's behavior and priorities.

My wife discovered this trick years ago. My sponsor and many of my friends in SA have been demonstrating it to me for the past 21 years, and I'm getting better and better at it myself.

That's why I'm sharing all this stuff with you. It's the stuff that is making my own life better. Why should I be selfish and keep it to myself?

Wow, it's been some time since my last post. I felt the need to post this in light of the SSA section of the forum being shut down and an email thread among some GYE peeps that emerged afterwards discussing it.

While I am saddened that the SSA section was shut down, because it certainly helped me in pre-recovery, I understand that people were using it for the wrong reasons. Would I still like for it to exist? Definitely. I think that it can exist under the right circumstances. Up until this point, the description of the SSA forum had some language about "moving towards healthy heterosexuality." That description really bothers me. For many people, myself included, changing one's sexual attractions are all but impossible. I personally went to conversion therapy for 3 years and it did not change my attractions at all. Therefore, I take issue when that seems to be a goal of the SSA forum. Additionally, I suffered a lot of trauma from those years of therapy, and I only realized it when I got out of it. For 3 years, the message I received was that I was internally broken and defective, that there's something wrong with me and that's why I'm gay. I still suffer from that trauma, even though I've been sober for a while and been going to healthy therapy for over 2 years. I've also done a fair amount of research about those who went to conversion therapy, and many seem to have my experience also. I know plenty of guys who were in the conversion therapy community and the vast majority of them received no decrease in their heterosexual attractions or they are openly gay. At the time, I would have been an active supporter of the therapy, but I was completely clouded by denial. I didn't realize there was another way to deal with my sexuality without trying to change it.

In program, I've met many people who are homosexual. (I'm refraining from the use of SSA because, for me, it's a term that supports denial. Additionally, the Webster definition of "homosexual" is one who has homosexual feelings.) My Sponsor is one of them. Many of these homosexuals are living straight lifestyles and Torah lives also. None of them, to my knowledge, are in conversion therapy. How could this be? The answer is acceptance. They accepted themselves as gay/homosexual and they realized that this isn't something that's going to change. But they were ok with that. They learned to love themselves fully, even with their sexuality, and they found ways to live to their morals while still accepting their sexuality. For many of these guys, they found that with a strong enough emotional connection coupled with sexual sobriety, they could perform sexually with their wives.

I am a full believer that everyone has a choice to live their lives the way they wish to, so long as they aren't hurting others. This includes those who wish to pursue gay relationships and those who wish to pursue straight relationships. I'm not God and I can't tell people what to do or what not to do. If someone is a homosexual and wants to pursue heterosexual relationships, I wish them success. It's a hard journey, but if one has the right systems in place, I have seen it be done. If one wants to pursue gay relationships, then I empathize with their desires and I can understand where they're coming from. To each their own. But what I will not do is support practices that are harmful and traumatic. The reality is that conversion therapy AS A THEORY ( I cannot stress this enough) may have some logical basis. I know that I wasn't "born" gay (I was sexually addicted to heterosexual lust for about 4 years before my homosexual attractions developed) and I certainly believe that there are psychological components to my sexuality (along with genetic/hormonal components). However, conversion therapy as a therapy was incredibly damaging to my development and true self. And I am not alone with this, there are many more people who are right here with me. The fact is that conversion therapy is being banned all around the globe. If the majority of Western society is coming to realize that this therapy is harmful, and my experience certainly validates that fact, then I think I will side with them on this issue. For GYE to put forward a message supporting such practices hurts my soul.

To treat homosexuality as an addiction, which GYE was very much doing, is abhorrent to me. Homosexuals, including myself, need to be treated with love, tolerance, and patience. Not treated as broken vessels. I only got consistent recovery when I learned to love myself, and I believe that's true for everyone. The fact that I lust after men and Shmerel lusts after women is a non-issue when it comes to treating sexual addiction. The more we make it an issue, the more it will hold people back from recovery. I needed to stop watching porn because it was destroying my life, whether it was heterosexual or homosexual.

Do I believe that GYE should be a safe space for those who are homosexual? Yes, I certainly do. There is so much shame among Orthodox homosexuals that they need a place to talk about it openly and learn to accept themselves. I think that the there should be a message of sorts that explicitly states GYE isn't a place of judgement, rather a place of recovery. But if we are going to approach this momentous task, then it must be done right. Sadly, I don't think GYE was doing it right in the past.

I've felt this way for a long time, but for various reasons I did not post my views on this website. I think it's time. Again, I want to repeat that I support ALL choices, so long as they aren't harmful, and I believe that certain homosexuals can accept themselves as homosexual but still pursue a heterosexual lifestyle, given they have a lot of help and support. But I would never want anyone to endure the trauma that I received, and am still going through, by being in conversion therapy. It took me a very long time to realize that Hashem loves me with and without my attractions. It is not an aveirah to have homosexual attractions (only to act on them) so why, as Torah Jews, are we trying to change it? Especially when there's so much probability that things will go wrong. It took me a long time to understand that Hashem gave me my attractions for a reason and it was not a mistake. (I can't count the number of people in program who have confided in me about this subject, simply because I'm willing to be open about it). It's time that we turn the chapter, or maybe restart the book, to help our fellow brothers.