emes thank you I appreciate this insight

simchastorah wrote on 12 Feb 2023 19:24:

My dear friend, it takes strength to post and be honest about what's going on in your life. And it takes gevurah to fight the YH. It's amazing that you feel so much pain in falling, many people, including myself, get their senses dulled eventually after falling so many times, so thank Hashem that you have an incentive to fight, to stop the pain. But regardless, it's gevurah to fight the YH, who has managed to catch us even though we know it's wrong and even though it gives us pain. And It's so inspiring to see a Yid who's in such pain, has so much hardship in his life, and he's here, trucking along, staying clean. My friend, you are a hero and an inspiration!
Keep trucking, and keep posting. @Markz taught us that connection is the opposite of addiction. It has definitely helped me a lot. We are your brothers and friends here, we want to hear how you are doing, and if you c"v fall we'll help you stand back up

DavidT wrote on 12 Feb 2023 20:03:

Maskim all the way… I spent mouths on gye till I finally reached out to Hhm and started being accountable to him ( I still am bh) it really changed the whole ball game…
Send him a email you won’t regret it brother!

michelgelner@gmail.com

simchastorah wrote on 12 Feb 2023 19:35:

Not maskim! Your full of Simchah brother!! ( no need to want your stuff got it in ya)It’s just a little buried under some stuff you’ve done but now that your fighting back and getting your life back you’ll feel the Simchah again In your life and you’ll have a real Simchah in the Torah you learn!!

Thank you sleeepy. I guess in some ways it would be easier to just sweep things under the rug. But in some ways it's so much more painful. The feeling of being dishonest with myself is probably the most painful, followed by the honorable runner up of feeling disgusting from porn and masturbation. Again, I want to believe what you and others are saying, but if I'm being honest with myself, I don't see it as g'vura

I'm quite worried today. I'll be alone at home, and I already hear the voice of the YH whispering in my ear saying all sorts of things. How I'll fail eventually. I guess that's the main point, that deep down inside, and not even so deep down, I don't believe that I can keep it up. I've failed too many times. I fear that eventually I will fall, and then I will be cast back down to square one. Ribono shel olam I want to be free. I want to live with the simcha of kdusha, and with the simcha of gvura. But I'm so scared. I'm so scared I'm going to fall today.

simchastorah wrote on 13 Feb 2023 05:30:

I’ve been in such situations many times too. 

It can be tough.

Do you happen to have good filter / accountability on your devices?

Not exactly. My internet is filtered at the provider level, but I have torrent downloading software. I'm not sure that there's an easy way to make it impossible to have that software, I use Linux, and it's a bit less flexible in terms of internet safety. I have tried in the past not having admin permissions on my computer, but that turned out to be a major pain in the neck, as I am regularly downloading software for work. I could uninstall my torrent downloading software, but 1) i could jsut install it again, 2) I currently use if to download movies, and I'm not holding my giving that up at the moment. Accountability has been the most helpful thing for me, I have accountability software installed on my computer, though at the moment I have no partner! Until recently my wife was my accountability partner, but she begged me to take her off as she couldn't stand to see the emails when I would fall, and i don't blame her. I'm going to go ahead and add my GYE partner as my accountability partner

Thanks for the nudge Markz, I added my GYE partner as accountability partner. That should be a nice deterent.
Bezrat Hashem Naaseh V'natzliach!

simchastorah wrote on 13 Feb 2023 06:11:

Hey brother! Still didn’t figure out how to put on your karma?!?!! My hand was already by the plus to give you one for this beautiful step you just took but then I realize you didn’t put it on yet… nu nu. I guess your working on your גאוה 

btw I don’t really understand your question abt controlling yourself if it’s called being strong…. Of course it is! איזה הוא הגבר הכובש את יצרו… and besides the Mishnah I can tell from my experience even how much  I was disgusted from what I was doing I need major power and kiach to fight my yh. For sure someone fighting this is called a gebor. No???

Hey, no I didn't see where I could turn on my karma from.
You're right, the Mishna says someone who is 'kovesh' their yetzer is a gibor.
But it does not say that someone who refrains from doing sin for any given reason for any amount of time 
is a kovesh. I believe that to achieve the title 'kovesh' you have to be matzliach in
not giving in to the yetzer for a much longer time, it has to become part of your personality.
(Like R' Yisrael Salanter says in I think lamed)
If a person were to be under constant surveilance, would we call him a gibor for not masturbating?
Personally I think that it's clear that that would not be g'vura, that would just be embaressment being 
the victor in a fight between embaressment and sexual desire, or there wouldn't even be sexual desire
because of the potential embaressment.

So it is possible to not give in to the yetzer without g'vura. That being the case, I think even a very long
time is not sufficient to define someone as a gibor, because it's possible that he was never really kovesh
the yetzer, he was just in a matzav where other inner forces were beating out the yetzer. Those other inner
forces could even be unhealthy ones. For example, lets say a person is crazy r'l, and believes there's someone
watching him through the ceiling, and for this reason never masturbates. Is such a person a gibor? Not only
is he not a gibor, but his lack of sin is not even healthy.

Granted in my case I don't believe there's anyone watching me through the ceiling, except Hashem of course, 
but Hashem watching me has unfortunately not been a deterrent in the past. Maybe g'vura is when the force you
use to overcome the yetzer is the belief that it's ratzon Hashem. I wish  I could say that that's my main motivation,
but if I'm being honest, I think that the main motivation for me is that I can't stand to feel so terrible, which in the end
of the day is a selfish motivation. 

At the same time, selfish motivation is not a bad thing. In essence all motivation is selfish, like the chovos halvavos says
no act of human giving is truly selfless, even the one who gives to a pauper because he can't stand to see him suffer is
really giving to alleviate his own suffering. Nevertheless, giving to an ani for this reason is extremely commendable.
So maybe in the same way it's very commendable to overcome your yetzer in order to escape from the suffering?
I really don't know. 

What I do know is that after being clean from porn and masturbation since last Sunday morning, I feel a million times better
about myself and I'm very happy to be staying away from it.

Thanks for still being here if you read this far, sorry for the ramblings of a young man

Here is just me reminding myself that the point of this forum is not to have a place to pontificate about different philosophical ideas. I'm here because I have a problem with porn and masturbation, with fantasizing, with using these things to escape from difficult feelings. I'm here because again and again I have made the wrong choice, I have looked at images and videos of people doing things that I'd be embaressed to describe to anyone. And  I feel ashamed and I can't take it. I've been clean for a bit more than a week, and I want to stay away from this garbage. And I'm opening up in (kind of..) public about it to try and help me with my journey.

I was just reading through No Mask's thread. Yesterday I was reading Hashem Help Me's thread. You guys came so far. I want to be like you. I want to leave behind this bad behaviour. I want to be someone that I can respect.

I think the most trying times for me are when I have some sort of conflict. Or imagine that I'm having a conflict. I immediately start thinking the other person hates me, they thing I'm worthless. And I believe what I make up that they're thinking. And I feel so bad about it I need some way to escape it. And what better way than fantasizing about women. These fantasies mean to me that I'm loved. That these women would love me, that they would take care of me. I guess I feel like I'm unlovable. Like there's something deeply wrong with me, that if anyone would know they would be disgusted by me. And I can't take this feeling. So I replace it my imaging women loving me. Though it's not really loving me of course. And then rather than develop a relationship with my wife, the one woman who could actually love me like I crave, I imagine that these bad strange women love me. And push away my wife, and remove from myself the posibility of developing what I really need. It's sad really.

When I was around 6 - 10, I fooled around with other boys roughly my age. I think it made me feel special, like I had a special relationship with someone. Shortly after that age, I felt super super embaressed about it. I felt so much shame. Then one of the boys who I fooled around with told another boy who we both knew, and he made fun of me for it in front of another kid. That shame has never fully left me. Even though I have spoken about it with multiple therapists, and with my wife. For years I was terrified that it meant I was homosexual, and sometimes I had thoughts about men, and this compounded my fears and made me feel like I'm truly a disgusting person. And that any good quality I have is build on a rotten foundation. And I still feel this way to degree, though speaking about it has helped. P & M only serves to reinforce this idea. I tell myself I'll never get away from it because I'm rotten to my core. I need to vomit all of this out, I need to get it out of my system

simchastorah wrote on 14 Feb 2023 08:33:

It's fun to try though. 

simchastorah wrote on 14 Feb 2023 08:33:

Sounds like therapy may be helpful. It definitely was a game-changer for me.