Hey everyone! Pesach is coming up and I'm going to be the only one home for pesach (besides my parents), and a big reason no one else is coming home is because my father has all these extreme chumras and is usually in a bad mood on pesach, and gets mad very easily, just by someone asking him "why we do..." and he gets all defensive like he's getting attacked, as well as there ends up being not much to eat which just makes everything harder. And therefore I'm kind of dreading pesach already now, which is causing me to want to lust and thereby act out.

Any advise/tips? Also lets make this a platform to share fears and challenges regarding pesach! Looking forward to hearing from you guys!!

vibrantchosid wrote on 10 Apr 2024 00:02:

your invited to me!
i eat everthing besides חמץ.
love you.

vibrantchosid wrote on 10 Apr 2024 00:02:

Hmm I see a Thank you button…
Where did the “ouch” button disappear to 

I can relate, very similar situation. My coping mechanism is to remove myself from the situation, view what's going on as if I'm a complete stranger, and feel bad for him. 

That's what works for me.

Praying for you!

I like that, thanks!

For myself i always have a hard time regarding looking at other woman. I don't necessarily fantasize about them or act out but it bothers me that i enjoy looking at attractive woman that are dressed pretty. 
Yom Tov is always hard to avoid this issue.

Thank God i live out of town because going to lakewood or brooklyn is a nightmare for me

tp1 wrote on 25 Apr 2024 19:22:

what do you mean by this?

In that i know looking is the wrong thing to do yet i still enjoy looking.

I hate to nitpick. but enjoying to look means that you are a healthy male. what the challenge is, is resisting the urge, and of course it should bother a person if he has difficulty resisting.
the reason why I focused on this was that many people feel bad that they have urges which makes it easy to let the urges take over them, when the focus should be on overcoming the urge and not feeling bad about it.

Understood. 
I get the fact that its natural.
I don't like the fact that it takes up permanent rent free space in my brain and i don't like the fact that i enjoy it so much. Especially when i know its wrong.

Oh. I see what you meant. my apologies
keep goin' we're all rooting for you.

tp1 wrote on 26 Apr 2024 04:08:

One of the admins on the forum, Dov, has addressed this idea wonderfully. There is a natural male instinct for connection, but our habit is to turn  that into objectification. In his words:
Which reminds me that when I think of a women as an object, I am really thinking of myself as less of a person and more of an object: A sexual pleasure-being rather than a real human-being.
And:
Dov often talks about a technique he uses when he sees someone who triggers lust; he prays for them! (after turning away of course). Here, Dov describes why this works for him and others in SA. (Warning: Blunt language)
Ok. It does a few things. First and strangest, I owe something to the person I am lusting after because lusting is always an act of "taking". I am using their image for selfish ends. (And saying that "They are obviously begging for it cuz look at how they are dressed!" is BS. I am reasonably certain that the average slutty female out there intends to be lusted after by who they want to be lusted after, not by some compulsive, perverted Jew boy like me.) So how better to show my gratitude?

Second, lusting is the single most powerful, portable, and dependable way I exercise my MEEEEE muscle (the one in my head, not somewhere else ). It is my drug of choice for entertaining myself, for covering up stress, fear, and boredom, for controlling my inner environment - in short, it is my most trusted Power source. Otherwise, why would I use it so much?  So how do I sacrifice it? By just saying "no"? Nu. OK. That's what I always tried to do.... it didn't get me very far away from it. If you know anything about operand conditioning or habits, then you know that I choose to go a step further and use my lust as a guide and tool for giving power to others. To helping me learn to care about helping others. What better way to weaken the MEEEEE muscle than to do what little I can to care about the very people I naturally worship as my (false) Power Source? I turn the tables as much as I can.

Finally, it gives me something to focus on rather than on lusting. And that itself is worth everything, even if my prayers for her are of no benefit to her. Treating a lust object like the real, live person they are is one of the most powerful tools to help me to stop looking at them like pieces of meat (with skin on them). We need to be reoriented. The entertainment and porn industries have succeeded in getting so many of us to believe deep in our hearts that pretty women are all dolls; that above all else they are libidos desperate to be used by us; and that they don't have real lives with obligations, pains, joys, sadness, and dreams of real people... and that perspective entitles us in our hearts to treat them as objects. Is it any wonder then, that most lust addicts grow to expect (no, demand) sexual bliss from their wives as though their feelings are just an obstacle? I looked into the shulchan aruch to see what I could demand of my wife, rather than looking into her heart... now what kind of BS is that? No wonder we were so miserable back then! She was an object, in some respect.

We need exercises to change, it will not happen just because we wish it to. And it takes a long, long time. But it works and it is worth it.

vibrantchosid wrote on 10 Apr 2024 00:04:

How's it going? Surviving?
2.5 days left!