ieeyc wrote on 06 Mar 2018 08:50:

Thanks ieeyc thats a great point. I know that I’m not supposed to go into marriage expecting it to heal anything or be a lifesaver, rather an attitude of whatever I get out of this is a plus, and maybe just focused on my wife getting something out of it. If I focus on others needs, often my own gets fulfilled.

I think that the expectations do come from past experience though. You’re making a pretty bold assumption when you say my meeting girls was lust. You’re probably imagining some picture that I met with girl in a pizza shop on motzei shabbos, then went to a movie, then kissed her in the darkness of the theater. Well hey, that wasn’t me. I had relationships of over 2 years where I spoke/texted consistently almost every day, just emotional support, growing together in frumkeit, helping each other get through our teen years and become better people. Was everything I did l’halacha? Nope. But for me personally, these relationships were positive. During these relationships, I lusted less, i watched less porn, I masturbated less. I felt full. 

So i guess that kinda built expectations for me. If I got this fulfillment in the past, I believe I can get it again. Is that dangerous? Maybe. But at the end of the day it all comes down to how hard I work on my relationship with my wife, right? And if I’m willing to sacrifice for it, then who’s to say I won’t get that emotional fulfillment again? One thing I can say is I do believe I’m not just basing this off how past lusting made me feel.

HakolMilimala wrote on 05 Mar 2018 17:58:

Please don’t be disappointed if you don’t find that emotional intimacy and bonding right away in marriage and excuse me for saying this but that emotional intimacy that you experienced when you met with girls I think was plain lust you were feeling  disguised by your emotional needs being met .keep on inspiring us!

Hi everyone
This one is kind of hard for me. As an orthodox, being addicted to p**n is hard. So after hard efforts of more than 2 years, i eventually got cleaned and GYE was a big part in this victory.

What a great feeling it was to be clean after 20 years of addiction ! In every aspect. As a orthodox i felt aligned with our Torah's values. As a husband i felt i was not lying to my wife. As a man, i felt i had control over myself !

But
6 months ago , i went like a robot to a esco**. It was so ...easy. I did again twice this year.
I'm shocked about myself, i cheated my wife, i took the risk of hiyuv kares.
What happened to my recovery ? I prefer to go back to the previous addiction and stop this one.

Has any of you experienced this ?
Thank you my friends
Paul

It's one thing to tell a friend that you're addicted to porn, I'd imagine it's another level to connect with someone in-person who struggles and relates to the same, to support and provide a shoulder for each other. Do you have that? (I don't! but I think it would be hugely helpful)

While it's obviously not the same level as marriage, I would think that an honest relationship like that is about emotional intimacy and bonding.

Thanks Hashem Help Me,
but personally, I could always use the words porn, masturbation, sex, ejaculation.
Im not sheltered. I can use these words and I can talk about porn and masturbating and escape. I have real-life, non-anonymous friends that I can tell and have told I’m addicted to porn.

This is not about that. If you would read my posts, nowhere do I mention that I’m looking for someone I can be open to with about struggles with acting out. That is not what this is about. And for all those that appreciated Hashem Help Me’s post, you should see this discrepancy. I appreciate your response friend, but this is about the pain that leads to all that.

I believe this is about emotional intimacy and bonding, which is not something I think I can achieve with any fellow man here on gye. It’s something that in our system just doesn’t exist until marriage if you’re going to play by the rules. And that’s why there’s not much hope for change for me at my current age and stage in life. It’s just about waiting and pushing through, I guess?

Hi GYE Friends. 
I was at plus 70 days of sobriety and I was feeling proud about myself for making it that far. Purim came and I took an Uber ride back from a Purim party and the Uber driver just happened to be a young nice girl. I started to flirt with her and my adrenaline kicked into very high gear and when I got home I went onto a website that I had listed in my inner circles, it only lasted a few minutes before I amazingly pulled myself away from it. The next day I spoke to my sponsor and I realized that I would have to start over from day one since I violated one of my inner circles. The following evening after another Purim party I was about to go into my house but my addiction kicked in and I Ubered over to a bar. I took off my yarmulke and started to party like a goy, at some point I was touching a girl and her friend told me that I was being inappropriate, I apologized and left, as I realized that I went too far. 
Boruch hashem I stayed sober today and I now realize that alcohol played a big role in losing my sobriety. I am working with my sponsor to have some rules in place regarding alcohol. Also, my wife was not interested in attending any of these parties and although I didn't say anything to her, I was a little upset about her not wanting to go with me and that made me feel that it was ok to act out. I was also secretly hoping that I would just walk into something that would allow me to act out without having enough time to think about it and contact my sponsor. Hashem gave me just a small taste of that so that I can see how foolish my thoughts were. I am thankful that this acting out has not resulted in what my previous acting out would have been with a massage provider and committing some kind of sexual act. I now have another chance to start over with purer intentions, to learn from my mistakes and to commit to recovery in an even greater way than before. 

HakolMilimala wrote on 26 Feb 2018 05:28:

I think many masturbaters or addicts are know-it-alls to a certain extent, and that's what gets us in trouble. We think we can just figure ourselves out. But what we are really doing is shying away from being honesthone truthfull.  Just a thought.

Anyway glad you enjoyed. If you liked that one I highly advise listening to all his talks. They are what keep me going on this journey.

I just had a small craving before when I saw a title of something on a website that triggered me. I noticed the craving inside me then I remembered that I will have a huge taphsic fine of $500 if I just act out. Even though just reading something lustful to me, on a site would not mechayev me to pay the money, I knew it could be the beginning of the end if I start to get involved. This small wave of craving will snowball into a much bigger wave if I feed it with that information and then I will really be at the risk of losing $500. 

As insane as it sounds I know from the past that at some point after many days of cravings building up it feels like it's worth it to me to lose even a lot of money to give into my craving and look at some shmutz. That's why I know that the taphsic neder can't work alone for me and needs to be done in conjunction with the mindfulness program if I want to have a chance. Right now when I still have my sanity I know that it's not worth it to lose $500 in order just to read or look at some shmutz. So I didn't give into my craving. And guess what? I noticed that it's gone now! This is a very important realization in mindfulness noticing that craving come and will subside if we don't feed them.

So why do I get these cravings anyhow? Why don't most of my friends get them. True they are men and could get a craving if a woman tried to seduce them or something. By why do I get cravings so often even when I am just working or learning Torah and why do my cravings get so strong that I would be willing to go to such great lengths to feed them? like the times when I didn't have internet and travelled great distances to go to an internet cafe just to look at shmutz. Or when I walked around with my laptop around the street just to catch somebodies unlocked wifi and look at something even though somebody who knows me could have realized what I was doing and ruined my reputation.

Addictions are formed by a process which we will call "The Habit Loop". First something happens in life, it could be good or bad. It’s called a trigger. Have you ever been made fun of by your friends at school? What does that feel like? Not so good is it? We want bad feelings like rejection to go away as quickly as possible. So what do we do when our friends cheper us? When we get home we lye in bed and fantasize or watch shmutz, masturbate and we feel better.

So if you act out your brain lays down this memory, ‘oh next time you feel rejected you should masturbate’ now you start to associate a rejection with acting out and this is when craving starts.

The next time we feel rejected, we start to crave masturbation afterwards. The more this happens, rejection leading to craving, leading to acting out, the more this gets laid down as a habit loop.

This can work with positive emotions too.

What’s tricky about habit loops is that the more you do these behaviors, the more automatic they become. Over time, you are not even consciously choosing these actions anymore. Its like you are on automatic pilot. You are not even flying the plane.

When we recognize each stage of the loop, how we are feeding it, and how we can step out to break the cycle. We can start flying the plane again!

Thank you Lifebound. You make a very important point. I think that is maybe why it is important to have short term goals that are bitesized and long term goals that just keep you on the right path but can take months or years to accomplish.

By seeing how the whole process of lusting and acting out works and how this addiction gets formed we can begin to recognize this inside our bodies and begin to change this whole process.

I would say there are 5 main stages:

1. Before the craving- something happens good or bad, pleasurable, or uncomfortable in our lives- This we will call a trigger.
2. Why- We act out because there is a craving in our body telling our brain to use our body to act out. (tomorrow I will talk about how these cravings got formed)
3. What- This is Drug of Choice we use to act out. This is different for every person. It will usually be the kind of shmutz and bodily pleasure that gives them the most excitement and will release the chemicals most effectively and quickly in order to feed the craving and quiet them down.
4. How- This is when we are actually acting out. Do we pay attention to how we feel when we are acting out? How much shmutz do we watch? How many times do we act out? How quickly?
5. After- How does acting out make us feel after we have finished? What do we do differently that we would have done if we didn't feel this way from acting out? What kind of emotions does it produce in the days and weeks after acting out? Does it make us want to do it soon afterwards again.

All this is happening automatically inside of us, each time we lust and act out. And that is why it has so much control. Because we don't really realize whats happening. Just by us realizing that this is what happens and remembering the feelings related to it and paying attention to them, the addiction is already losing a little of the power it has over us.

I have set up a great fence to assist me with the help of Hashem. My wife is my accountability partner and gets an email 1 a week listing all of the sites I've visited. With this, there is no secrecy or hiding in the dark. Amazingly, I have felt a compulsion to not look at women. Strangely it wasn't something I consciously decided to do. In the past, I had done so, but I definitely considered it through thought. 

I pray often that the Almighty would create the freedom for me to see women no different than men. Will this come to be? I don't know. But, reading of Rebe Nachman, I have evidence it does. And I am confident that through perseverance Hashem will graciously assist me.

I am also realizing that it is not just porn of women alone. I am addicted to sex. It is something, if I am not caution, that will consume my mind. Being molested at the age of 5 and later at 7 really created a detrimental desire for that time forward that has grown and grown over the years. It had grown to the point that I allowed a man to give me oral sex (I hope that isn't too graphic). I wasn't and never have been attracted to men, but the desire for that pleasure had me imprisoned to that extent.

After turning away from rejecting the existence of a God I began praying for a wife, believing this would satisfy this hunger. Yet, I found it was not sufficient. I envied Yoseph for his strength to flee because I knew I was imprisoned and in slavery to obey my master had such an event arrived in my life.

Reading emails of Rambam and learning of the middle path we are to attain to and the steps one must take to reach this place, I understood/understand in a small way that I cannot reach this place unless I go to the extreme opposite of what the yetzer has chained me to.

MayanHamisgaber wrote on 22 Feb 2018 23:57:

I wis I was doing good. I'm actually in the BWR hole. I think in the literature of SA/AA it says "self knowledge doesn't work". I'm an addict if a knife was over my head I would still act out. Except if I work my program. And I needed a beter step 1 but now I've got it. So ODAAT.

Stay Strong
(join program?)
God loves you.

yehoshua wrote on 23 Feb 2018 11:39:

Welcome back.

I'mI'm jealous.

 God speed to you.

Hi all,

sorry, I haven't been here nearly two years almost. How am I doing? Well, I wouldn't be here, if I were doing great.

I made some mistakes at work, nothing big, but mistakes that the whole firm knows about now. Everybody makes mistakes and they nobody gave me a talk or anything. But there were looks, and that killed me. Now, this week I am alone, my family is all on vacation and I am alone at home. So, I saw some videos on youtube (just women dressed s*) and a movie, where there were women topless (there is a lot of that in movies, and my job demands I see movies, but maybe I could avoid it - watching came with a feeling of despair perhaps). Well I wanted to m*, but I didn't want my children to hurt because of me. So I stopped, I could maybe since it wasn't real acting out, it was slipping. If I were to act out for real, that would probably mean I would need a stronger stimulant. Yes my desease progressed, the fantasies I had are not enough, now I think i would want to go live. If that were to happen, I would not be able to stop in mid stream as I did now.
So I still don't have a therapist or attend a live SA group. But I feel like I need someone to hug and to love me knowing this me, the addict me.
I still don't want to go over my wife, like going to an SA group without telling my wife. But if I don't progress in my healing, I will progress in my falling. Vow, that is experience, not fancy talk.
Otherwise I was keeping it together, I worked really hard, tried to exercise daily, cleaned, cooked, even the relationships at home and at work are good. But the fail at work, I failed and then my world came crashing down, like all I do, comes crumbling down, just cos I am so darn incompetent, lazy and careless. At work I hugged a woman today, actors do that and she is an actress, it was a friendly thing - ok, I never hug, but she has issues probably, and felt a need for a hug, and frankly so did I, like two lost children. That can't be good.

How about I share my strength and hope?

I am here and I want to be free. I am sober today. Day 2.

HakolMilimala wrote on 22 Feb 2018 20:09:

I think you're right, nice find. A lot of recovery catchphrases in there.
Agreed about the song itself tho. Not that great

danann@ wrote on 23 Feb 2018 04:54:

thats a great video, thanks for posting it