As A single male i wanted to pose a question which bothers me sometimes. When you have a married person with a urge or the like we can tell him to hold it off till you can do it with your partner bheter. But a single person in the battle that wants to give up masturbation and porn totally how is he supposed to be menachem himself with? Wait another 2 years till you can do it? Waiting to hear back from my warm family. Thanks. Stopsurvivingstartliving.

Unpopular answer: You are correct. It's physically more difficult for bochurim. No "pas b'salo", more raging hormones, and no real life to stay clean for (I love yeshiva, and I don't mean that in a negative way. But most bochurim have zero responsibilities and no particular reason to stay clean other than spiritual ones.)

That doesn't mean bochurim have a harder time overall - the emotional havoc, lying and faking, and general screwed-upness that go along with acting out while married are way more difficult problems than the lack of a physical outlet that bochurim are dealing with.

Two problems with your question: 1) You are worrying about the future in an unhelpful way. Who cares if you can never spill seed again until you are married? That's completely irrelevant to whether or not you are clean today.
2) More importantly, the whole hanacha of the question assumes that sexual release is a need and that you either need a mutar way to get it or some alternative nechama. This is an unhelpful-but-totally-normal attitude that will not help you get clean. Sex is optional. Learn that, believe that, and then the question will go away on its own.

(Disclaimer: this is me as a married guy who gets an occasional "mutar" sexual release pontificating. I remember well the excruciating urges of my youth, feeling like I'd pop if I didn't get a release. And I never won the fight for any long period of time as a bochur. So don't get me wrong, you're totally justified for feeling this way. It's just not a helpful attitude.)

Here's the helpful answer: You should definitely call HHM and schmooze this over with him.

Great question and response.

Yes, unfortunately there is a common misconception that marriage will fix our struggles with tayva. Shem already explained it well, so I won't repeat what he already wrote. To be blunt: saying don't masturbate asur now because you can masturbate muttar later is not the mindset to have. Your wife is not a muttar outlet for your masturbation, and when she is treated that way, she suffers, the intimacy suffers, and separation sets in. 

It would behoove you reframe your mindset. Being sexually satisfied can help with urges as a bonus (pas b'salo) but it's a byproduct, not a remedy. 

1)if you are able to develop the perspective of excitement in saying no, then you will not need to be menachem yourself.
2) Learning to turn away from any urges right at the onset and learning to avoid fantasizing will help prevent strong urges.
3)married people of their own set of nisyonos that single people don't have. don't assume that a different situation would make it easier for you.

Hey there, single guy 22yrs old over here.
     
      I cant wait to get married but I wont even let myself start shidduchim mainly because of this nisoyon. One of the things I remind myself while fighting this battle is that I will be a better husband to my wife and father to my children because I am fighting this battle now. But we cant get lost in thinking of the future! As chosemyshem said think of today. ODAAT- "One Day At A Time" is the single most powerful tool at our disposal. I am right now over 200 days with a 100 day streak of being clean but it was taken each day at a time. I have days where I am lonely, sad, longing, craving, tired, etc. and the thing I ask of myself and ask Hashem is "Please just help me stay clean for today"!!
     It gets easier over time, but it is never easy.
           As Dov says Lust kills Love and that's what this nosoyon is. The Beast of Lust is something that is never satiated. That is the fundamental flaw in how you are looking at sex. Of course this is only speculation from shiurim and kosher discussions I've had bc I have no experience in the matter but using your wife as an outlet for Lust just sounds wrong. Lust is a thing of taking and having a relationship with a wife is a mutual take and give. As people have said marriage won't necessarily solve the problem and it actually may even worsen it, this is because the Beast of Lust is unsatiated and gets hungrier once fed. Also a side note: There's another person involved and she may not be in the mood when you have a tayvah so what do you do then? I cant even imagine how hard it is not to satisfy yourself at that moment. That is one of the reasons why we need to build the tools now.
        I am sure I am missing many points that can be made but remember that our job is now not forever. I need to get to sleep so I'm gonna end this here but I hope this helps and please anyone correct me if I am wrong. 

stopsurvivingstartliving wrote on 25 Jul 2024 13:39:

Gonna combine ChoseMyShem and Vehkam's responses (and a Mashal to fit with Jewizard):

I look at it as a ממה נפשך -  if right now we, being single guys, can't view the fact that there are definitively unique challenges, possibly harder overall with marriage (that's what the married guys posit - and hey, they've lived both sides of the coin) then regardless we must still focus on the benefit of being single. What benefit you ask incredulously?? Well, if it is more challenging to be single, then its also where the biggest prize lies. Either way you gotta do the right thing in life. And yeah, I mess up a bunch myself but hey just because its hard to comprehend a reward דליתיה קמן doesn't mean רוב of the time we succeed and shouldn't be proud of ourselves. ODAAT!

A Mashal you can give (for why we should try our utmost, being single) is:

Imagine an olden-day pearl diver, in order to get the pearls he desperately seeks to support his family, he first trains for months to maintain his breathing underwater for several minutes at a time, then he practices diving down to deep depths and slowly ascending so he doesn't get The Bends (a dangerous condition divers get sometimes), finally he embarks on his journey navigating treacherous whirlpools, circumvemting jagged rocks, detouring around rotting shipwrecks, avoiding giant squids and poisonous octopi, getting occasionally nudged by passing schools of fish - all of this meaning nothing to him - undetterred, he progresses to the bottom of the ocean floor gathering a handful of oysters here and there before his oxygen capacity diminishes and he returns to the docks. Then he hands over some of his loot to his sensei who trained him, pays taxes to the Japanese Shogun, and he's left with a measly few shells. He carefully extricates the pearls with hands wavering from excitement and nervousness -- ?@!$   there goes one! After ruining several due to his inexperience, he has a few precious pearls that he lives off of for the next few months until he must undergo another dangerous dive.

Nimshal:
The months spent before the diver's first plunge = the years that we're single from around the age of Bar Mitzvah until we're married. This is our best shot of ensuring a healthy marriage and relationship with our spouse, besides for mystical aspects there are unequivocal benefits of abstaining during our adolescence in regards to our future marriage.
The different perils our diver hero encounters during his dive = the wrenches that the monkey (YH) throws into our sincere efforts of maintaining longterm purity.
The taxes/"ruined" pearls = the occasional falls that are a symbol that were not marionettes on a string, and rather we're on a journey. Most importantly they don't dampen the mood nor depress our hero because he understands that its all part of the process.

Hatzlacha! We got to remember my dear friend to StartLiving!

P.s. I'm (21 &) single and on a journey myself

jewizard21 wrote on 26 Jul 2024 03:47:

Heckuva lot of maturity and wisdom in that post. The only part I think is wrong is that first sentence

But that's a different schmooze and iirc you posted your following the advice of your Rabbis.
Keep on trucking!

Thanks to everyone for taking there time to reply. I read through everything and i hope to Go it over a few times to internalize it. I am so happy i joined this family and now have somewhere to let out my questions and feelings to a non judgemental crowd. Everyone should have a good shabbos and successful one fighting the battle of our genaration!

stopsurvivingstartliving wrote on 25 Jul 2024 13:39:

Just to chime in.
Read and digest all the above posts. Each one is a gem in it's own right.
The way I hear your question is that you see the struggle as being Mz"l and the solution is to wait and do it b'heter.
I learnt over time that my issue is lust and the answer is how to not get into a place of lust [and how to overcome it when it happens]
As a married guy I will bl"n NOT be with my wife as a release. Period. It's to dangerous for me.
I've learnt to stop white knuckling and start working on a solution.
If you find a solution then IYH even as you struggle you won't be looking for a 'nechama' 

stopsurvivingstartliving wrote on 25 Jul 2024 13:39:

Great question
To be honest I thought the same before marriage, but in reality it was easier for me to stay clean as a single.
After marriage, your wife can be Nida, she is not always in the mood ++++++ and no we don't have sex when ever we want.
Once we have it, we want more and different, and like we saw in porn, and if wife is not on the same page its even harder.
So getting married is great but not for the sex

Great thread!! Just to elaborate a bit on @Vehkam's number 1. Read the Battle of the Generation to get an understanding and tools how to do this.

Just yesterday I was in a place full of non tznius ppl, with this mentality it is so much easier to win! Instead of feeling you are missing out, you must look etc you feel awesome that you are being given so many opportunities to gain kedusha!

stopsurvivingstartliving wrote on 25 Jul 2024 13:39:

That is the million dollar question. It’s a big nisayon. You have to guard your eyes and thoughts and then youll  have less of a taavah 

Have the same question 

Hey there R' chaplin, welcome aboard.

As the OP of this thread I will tell you I relate a million percent to your frustration as a single. It's crazy painful facing masturbation and telling it bye bye get back to me after my wedding (see benhashem's post clarifying what I mean). When in the mud it's a very hard thing to deal with.

I will mention that after talking to married people about this I came out with two things. 1) No ones wife's are porn stars (I write no-one because unless she watches as well that isn't the norm, and we don't want to marry a watcher) therefore thinking your gonna finally have live porn in the bedroom is wrong. 2) This is a bit of a contradiction to 1 but not really. As bochurim we feel that number one just isn't true and therefore it adds a lot to our frustration.

Even after hearing how wrong we are and believing it, we just don't feel that way. So yes when we one day IYH find our bashert we will see how right they were but for now it's very painful. An eitza I, for now, found helpful was digging up why I was watching and masturbating, what void I was trying to fill. With that I now am able to try to fill the void in healthy ways, which brings down those urges to act out.

After doing all this I don't really find this question bothering me anymore, because deep down it's just something to blame it on and not really a good excuse (if someone would have wrote this to me originally when I posted my question I would have been very upset, so please don't take this that way) and once you've got a healthy prospective towards the battle it falls away.

Wish you good luck on the battle and I would highly recommend you open your own thread and introduce yourself.

Sincerely,
A Survivor Trying To Live Who Feels Your Pain

*Deleted due to messed up formatting