evey night I daven at a shtiebel about 5 blocks from my house - there are these women who stand outside a small apartment that has a sign advertising 'psychic readings' on it - they've asked me if I want a reading about 5 times already whenever I pass - once they followed me for about a block trying to convince me.
So, I started walking on the other side of the block - it worked until tonight. I walk down the block on the opposite street after davening, and I get a certain sensation that she might cross the street to get to me - and kach haya. There's 2 or 3 of these ladies - two of them dress very elegantly and unfortunately are very attractive - baruch hashem, chasdei hashem one of them is pretty ugly - she was the one who crossed the street to sell her garbage to me. She said 'could I interest you in a reading'? I keep walking, and while walking, I said no
She asked 'why not?'
I said: because my religion doesn't allow it
She said 'does your religion allow you to have sex?'
I Answered: yes, but not with you
She asked 'why not with me?'
I just walked away without answering. I thought that was it - I even said to myself 'baruch hashem she wasn't pretty, or it would have been a huge nisayon'. Then, when I come home, feeling very cnfident that it wasn't even a nisayon. What happened? never make fun of the yatzer hora - he got to me. It got me to have hirhurim about this tramp - if I had passed the same woman on the street, I'm sure I wouldnt have had the slightest second thought about her - just another average woman. What happened? There was a connection - she tried to connect to me, and make herself a factor in my mind. when this happens, there's a shaychus to it happening - you feel, 'it was possible for me to do XYZ'.
I fell tonight, but I learned a huge lesson - a few nights ago I was thinking 'feh! taviah? I am totally finished with it - never happening again. An ishah is just a bunch of tzoah and dam' (1). I had felt so good about myself, I felt kadosh and tahor! The yatzer hora reminded me that I can fall prey to the lowest of women in the most debased, tumah-dige, anti-g-d atmosphere imaginable. Just think - these women might very well be macshefos - and we know that both znus and kishuf are tumah, so the tumah of znus is related to the tumah of kishuf, right?.
Rabbi Twerski sometimes discusses self-esteem - I think this was at play here a lot. When I used to have a girlfriend r"l at 15, she gave me confidence, well, to a degree. It was mainly because she showed a lot of affection to me, and she, coming from the secular world, was sort of validating me, that I wasn't the weirdo everyone always thought I was that I was normal enough to have a girlfriend who was a skinny model. This, when you add in the fact that while growing up in a secular atmosphere, the 'cool' kids always had girlfriends - after I dumped the tool of the soton, I got involved in showing camera videos of myself exposed on the internet to people who were claiming to be women, which also gave me self-esteem - why? because 'normal' girls liked me, and thought I was 'hot' and intelligent. Of course, watching pornography did the same thing - I lived vicariously through the videos, fantasizing about doing those things lemaysoh. So, it comes out that my sexual past all had links to the desire to be validated and have self-esteem, which I thought these people were giving me.
Now we come to the psychic-zonos.
They also played on this weakness of mine - they called me 'sweety', and so forth. They walked over to me, not waiting for me to come to them, which is a chashivus. Even goyim would see them as lowly, so why couldn't I? why was I so obsessed with fulfilling my selfish desires at the loss of my kedushah that I didn't see the overt trickery? These zonos were not being machshiv me - they saw dollar signs. The p-rn industry sees dollar signs, too. The ones who are not professional but post videos of themselves are out for fame and gaiva. The secular women who become people's 'girlfriends' are just crying out for someone to fill a connection they seek which in reality is the desire to feel close to G-d - I dont think that was the case with my former girlfriend though - I think she was motivated by pure design of the sitra achra - Ihave reason to believe she was some sort of demon, or maybe partially demonic - for reasons I cant write about due to nivul peh, there were just things she did that normal people wouldn't have done, things that the sitra achra just loves. But to try to explain without nivul peh; she wanted the neshomos that were about to be brought down, for herself. I'll leave it at that. Our relationship was almost entirely sexual and sexually-oriented - nothing else. We would talk for hours on the phone about nothing but taivos and materialism - this is not how girls are normally. Typically, young girls are eager to discuss fashion, their friends, and other non-sexual things - this one didn't. It was all taiva and the made up illusion of 'love', with the exception of her ramblings about modeling. I never saw her feet.(shaydim cannot change their feet and are web-footed). She seemed to be living in utter materialism and tumah, and always tried to get me to sin with her. She also posted videos of herself online dressed immodestly; her mother was a hippie who let her smoke in her house, and the man her mother was living with was a Jew who was raised frum and become reconstructionist(people who believe you can be a good Jew without believing in g-d) - this guy said he would want to 'learn' with me if I spent the night in their house cv's - there was something spirtiually disgusting about this whole family.
The same thing happened here - no one would expect a yeshiva guy to fall in hirhurim over..for a zonah? I could understand falling in a maysoh znus, since that's the taivoh of a spur-of-the-moment, but hirhurim? desiring her, this ugly pig? and not only was she ugly physically and spiritually(with her kishuf) - what was it? the oldest trick in the yatzer hora's book - THE classification in mishlei of the yatzer hora - the ishah zonah!
I took a mussar haskel from this on another level, too. The first Gr"a on mishlei says that the ishah zonah wants to use her 'chomer' and always find a different 'tzurah'(form, i.e., the one who lives with her) - that is znus. Cheating on hashem for a different tzurah(different value, or religion, or belief, etc..) like a woman cheating on her husband with a different tzurah - this teaches loyalty to G-d over all personal loyalties.
Leaniyus dayti hakoton, I think we can see this come out in the mitzvos. There are mitzvos and halachos that pit our loyalty to g-d over man. Yayin nesech, gevenas akum, bishul akum, tznius, women not learning gemora, no homosexuality or premarital sex(or even thoughts of sex!) all of them are detestable in the eyes of the goyim, something to mock and look at us as backward, 'fanatical', and such. This tests our loyalty to hashem - why are you returning that lost item, is it because it's a mitzvah that g-d told you to do, or is it because you feel it's right?(there's an issur to return aveidos to goyim if there's no kiddush hashem - one who does so is oiver an asei and is mevazeh the mitzvah), and other tests.
Loyalty to G-d means I get my self-esteem from my G-d, and my status as His son made in His image to carry out His holy will - nothing can top that, no zonah, no girlfriend, no women online, not even the entire UN - nothing.
(1) - ayin gemora shabbos 152 - I saw the maharsho on that gemora today, a short and sweet one, after this incident, which explains that it's going on 'oisah hamakom' of a woman. This makes it sooo mistaber - for a long time I struggled to understand that gemora; I thought it meant a whole woman is 'tzoah', and her mouth is full of dam literally, no, zogt the maharsha, mouth full of dam means the pesach is full of dam and tzoiah, yet all run after her like meshugoim. I looked at the gemora after seeing a gevaldige aruch hashulchan - that taiva is keneged the seichel; if not for the fact that hashem made a gezera of giving the yater hora power, no one would want to have children because of the disgust of a woman's body - davar ma'us, says the aruch hashulchan(ayin siman chaf-gimel, even ho'ezer, first shtikel), so, therefore hashem made this meshigas in a person to desire women. Of course, it has other purposes too, like giving us the chance to get schar, use it as a springboard for our love of hashem and our cheshek to always be near him, etc..)
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endnote:
I mostly wrote this to be mechazek myself - getting it all out makes me more organized and mentally satisfied with my decisions in breaking the hirhurim(they're gone now, for now, baruch hashem). Baruch hashem, for the first time in a while, I actually understood a sefer! I typically have to know what a sefer says in order to chap what it is saying - my teiching and understanding of the lashon is very lacking, but the aruch hashulchan is easy to lain; so was the maharshah and that gemora, but other gemoras when I open them, i still get lost a lot of times unless I have some idea of what's going on previously, so I dont want to deceive people by giving the impression that I know how to learn well - I don't. Most of what I know comes from things I learned orally, and what I read in english.
