Dear chaver,
You wrote to GYE in response to a share I wrote that GYE posted in their chizuk email:
OK, Dov, very inspiring insight. What would someone like me, who found out about GYE at 51 years old and can recall being attracted to women from age three, when would I sing: שמחנו כימות עיניתנו ?
First of all, I want to thank you for being open and honest this way. Few here say anything specific about themselves or their real lives, besides a few embarrassing admissions. It seems that you're not just complaining but that you really want to have something to sing about, yourself.
Well, you asked the question, so I'll tell you specifically what it is that I did to get what I have today by the chessed of Hashem:
I tried to get help for myself, opening up to professionals, many times. I took their advice over the years, including taking medication for what they thought was OCD. I went to trusted rabbis and other great men, admitting much of the truth about myself to them and looking for advice. I got married, hoping that sex with a real woman and the relationship of marriage would save me somehow or other.
The fact that none of these things work for me does not make them worthless. On the contrary, they testify to the fact that I tried my very best and that I really wanted to change.
But none of them fixed me.
So the last professional I went to so the whole picture and asked me for further details in my story including all the things that I had tried to do in order to stop and get the help that did not work. She had the wisdom and Hashem's Inspiration - and suggested I call someone in SA, a sexaholic in recovery. She told me that I could share my situation with him and ask him whether he thinks meetings and Recovery are for me.
I got sober at the age of 35 and have been working the program as Hashem's partner in this life. Going to meetings and working the steps with my sponsors since then, has helped me do that and has been enabling me to be sober since then, bH. I've got plenty to sing about now. I have also met many other members in recovery who were far older than I was when I came. So what? They wanted a good life and we're tired crying about things not getting better.
I wish you the same, whether it comes for you through good therapy, help from trusted rabbis, through medication - or through Hashem by 12 Steps as it does for me.
Obviously, the time is now. There are surely many people who will end up being sober much shorter than you will in this lifetime, and yet that didn't stop them from getting the help they needed when they were finally ready.
Hatzlocha!