Momo wrote on 09 Sep 2009 05:22:


seriously! for those of us here who are struggling with slaa and are seeking companionship (healthy) than mah tov?

Can I just add my two cents to this discussion, as a married man and a lust addict I struggle with two things more than as a single.

1. Even when my wife is available I sometimes find it easier to act out online or just masturbate than to initiate relations with her, the romance and intimicy with the wife is not what an addict wants, it's the sex and sex only and with my wife I have to think about her and her needs and spend an hour shmoozing when all I need is a 5 minute release, in SA they call it isolation.  Wife's don't help with that problem. I'm ashamed to say this but iv'e acted out while she was in the mikva.

2. I almost always have a hard time the day after having realtions with my wife.  You would think that once I had my release it would be easy, well the opposite is true, I always go to porn after the fact, I never figured our why until someone explained this to me.  When having relations with my wife, as an addict I only think about satisfying myself and it's called lusting, It's not about true intimacy and satisfying her needs,  it is not a true union and it's a big challenge for me to create true intimicy, without going into groovy details, I lust and lust only and it's become a big challenge for me to change myself. I always feel ugly after the fact and and because the sex was not a meanigful thing just a lust binge for me, it brings on the taava even more.

Hope I made sense.

Dear Moshe,

Thanks for being honest. You make A LOT of sense. I can identify very well.

An hour of talking for 5 minutes of lust. Sure, it's much easier to self-sex, but does that make it right? Aren't we cheating ourselves and our wives of the opportunity to get closer to them relationship-wise?

I think the key is to turn our relationship with our wives from lust to love, from purely physical to physical and spiritual. However, I agree that once you turn on the lust/love switch, it's very, very hard to turn it off the next day. That's why I've said it might be easier to be single. Just learn how  to turn off the switch for good. Hard to do, but once it's off, it's off (until marriage).

And I know, it's easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk. 

Moshe F - you nailed it.

Uri wrote on 08 Sep 2009 20:55:


Uri, that's a good observation. Do you know what it proves? In my opinion, it proves that a lot of people need to learn the hard way that there is no easy way out. As long as your single you can fool yourself that you'll stop when you get married. But once you tried it both ways, you realize that the only way is START LIVING THE REAL LIFE! -TO START LIVING WITH HASHEM!

Hi,

I haven't read this whole thread, so apologies if this has been said already. Basically, I (married) imagine that it's easier to have SOME sort of release. But the fact of the matter is, sexual release does absolutely nothing for my taivahs. I am able (B"H) to have a loving sexual experience with my wife that leaves both of us fulfilled (in terms of a connecting experience). But my lust is still there. It's this drive towards conquering women, or something like that that I haven't quite figured out yet. In college, I loved to win over girls. That was the best part - getting them to agree and let down their defenses.  Now that in marriage there's no need to win my wife over or convince her, that part of me goes unsatisfied. And that is always there. I could easily see myself acting out right before or right after a night with my wife. It's two independent things.

Smith

Rage AT Machine wrote on 08 Sep 2009 20:19:



Eh, need to?

Momo wrote on 09 Sep 2009 12:57:
Now that you are getting into this, I'll just share that a couple of times, my wife and I agreed to have a minute of quiet time with Hashem (prayer) individually, before doing anything. It helped me unload the lust and keep her in mind, for a change. It seemed to help her with something, though I have no idea what, as I stopped trespassing on her spirituality and internal stuff as part of my amends to her. You see, for years I tried to get her more like me, a lustaholic. It was dismal, obviously. So now I do the opposite and it has actually drawn us closer because she shares her mind to me of her own accord, now. And she knows I may actually be listening!

yes, need to. Most young singles participate in singles functions in order to be part of their community and meet other singles. The yeshivish-style meet for the first time in a hotel lobby for the first date, get married on the 6th is simply not the exclusive method used by the greater observant jewish community. An observant married jew, however, should not have a problem eliminating altogether social interaction with women other than his wife.

im still kinda of the fence whether married or single is easier. i think id be in a better position to discuss the topic after ive gone through niddah period (yikes! its coming!)...

i think the biggest obstacle facing the single person is the lack of true desire to change the behavior...even ignoring the various lame excuses you tell yourself (ill stop at 20, when I get married, this is normal, healthy even) when youre single you simply cannot see this as an addiction that you must rid yourself of...as a single, you are guided to right and wrong mostly  by the written halacha...you look at the halacha and although the halacha is very explicit in its prohibition of porn and bating its ties back to the sources are weak...i mean where else have we created an entire torah out of an oblique reference in a story the way we have out of a reference in the story of tamar, er and onan? not that gd forbid i challenge or question the authority of halacha, which I know was given to moshe at Sinai, but i know that the lack of a strong biblical connection between the torah and the halacha was seized upon in my young, immature, single brain to lessen the desire, even if only subconsciously,  to want to change the behavior...it was only after i was married and it dawn upon me what an utterly destructive, life-changing addiction i was stuck in…I started thinking that I am stuck in a pattern that is ruining my life and in an addiction over which I have absolutely no control…unfortunately by then it was too late…whatever I tried I couldn’t (and cant) get out…

if I can go back in time and tell one thing to the single me it would be to stop now, because it will only get harder to stop later and because continuing in this addiction destroys your life no less than hardcore heroin…the reason most of us as singles didn’t do heroin wasn’t because of a halachic prohibition or even because we knew specifically what kind of damage heroin does it is only because we knew that it can do a tremendous amount of unspecified damage…the same here…

now that I am married I recognize that you cannot lead a proper jewish life while stuck in this addiction…the addiction fundamentally alters your jewishness the way even pork-eating (I imagine) does not…this is more than about keeping a specific halacha (like wearing right shoe first then left then tying left then tying right, which is also halacha) but it is about your very existence as a jew…something that single people maybe cannot fathom…

RA Machine - (is that title acceptable, as I am too lazy to write out the whole, entire handle you have chosen on this forum..?) ;D

I feel the same way you do. You know, some say that the reason Shavuos and Shmini Atzeres/ST, don't have mitzvos like the other holidays is because they are about everything. The whole package deal. A specific mitzva observance would narroe it down and that'd be antithetical to the message. Same here. This addiction is about mis-connection and isolation. It's like taking G-d out of yiddishkeit but keeping the religion "looking" just the same. I think it's tragic that yidden allow that to happen as much as it does, and we as addicts are lucky to be unable to survive that way. I was "thrown" at Hashem.
Thanks.
- Dov

Well I don't need to and I'm nowhere near Yeshivish.

In fact, I need to stay away from those situations.

When it's time for me to meet a girl, I'll go through friends rather than start showing up at singles events in the hopes of randomly meeting someone I'd want to have a relationship with.
Disagree if you want, but to each his own. Plenty of my friends have told me on their own--that means without me asking or prodding them--that they (and their wives) will help me out when it's time.


For me, at least at this point, entering a room full of attractive single women is just asking for trouble. The fact that they are single makes it worse, because they're "available".

No way.

Being a "social outcast" works just fine for me.

dov, that was solid - pure solid gold, man...

bruce, i wasnt suggesting that you are a social outcast or that there is anythng wrong with being reserved...your meathod of finding a mate is just as valid (and better even) as any one i have every heard and i pray it works for you...i was simply saying that i can see how (some) single observant men can find valid reasons to be around single girls but i cannot find any valid reasons why a married man can be around women in a social context...

i think i need to get a permanent discalimer to go along with every one of my posts...

Woah, woah...Oops!
RA Machine and BW -
I meant that I agreed with the main body of RA Machine's message, regarding the addiction and related to his poignant description of the halocha/conscience issue.
I do feel differently about the singles thing, which I now realize was the main issue the two of you were getting at!
I do not believe I could handle a room full of singles, and if I could, I believe I'd be ill-equipped, being a lustaholic, to use the experience in a positive way. I'd probably be way overloaded. Perhaps overheated as well!
Dating in general was very, very difficult for me back then and I muddled thriough it quite poorly, even though it was always arranged by married friends. I had no support and no recovery. Oh, and I had no idea what love was. At all.
Sorry if I goofed there.
Dov again.

dov, i understood your original message as you explained it subsequently...

Rage AT Machine wrote on 09 Sep 2009 21:39:


I wasn't arguing with you nor hinting that you were suggesting I'm a social outcast of sorts---I said myself that I'm an outcast! At least insofar as strolling into room full of single young women (dov put it quite well).

I agree with you about married men.

So no disclaimer necessary.