Thanks. Take your time, enjoy...any time u like to comment go ahead or email me if you like. Whe are all here to share and enjoy the good life.

Thanks Dov, never ever hurtful, and thank you for your considered and well thought out response. I am trying to understand it all, just read it once, but I am a bit chagrined at your suggestion thinking about the Y"H and Shmiras ha bris  etc etc all day can actually be detrimental.  That is a very unusual postulation, and may well be completely true.  I know your observation about tzniusdik dress is spot on...I often look at a woman dressed tzniusly and find her even more attractive and alluring than a pirtzus showing everything.  It is exacylt as you describe...the forbidden becomes the desire.  Everyone realize that a pritzus woman is "easy..." but a tznius dressed frum woman, now that is REALLY assur, and therefore all that much more alluring.  Can't win, either way.  I do applaud you for davening for a complete stranger that you ogle on the street.  I unfortunately do not have that kind of empathy.  

Unfortunately, the more I read and learn on this site, the in some ways worse I feel, in that I see no "cure" for this.  So many obviously deep deep thoughtful spiritual people get the cr-p kicked out of them on a daily basis by this, shall I call it an "affliction."  I am thinking the best we can do is control it, we can't conquer it.  I recall in a Gemara, (perhaps Brachos but not sure...my memory ain't what it was) that Chazal recommend that if you MUST sin, that you go to a different city or area to do so.  This is not condoning the sin, but a real recognition that some of us CANNOT control ourselves for all that long.  My case in point...hard fall, two weeks or so of cleanliness, and even now I can feel the Y"H-dik desires welling up in me...they are actually tangible, so much that I know absolutely that these tumahdik desires wait in the wings for my action.   Oy me haya lanu.  I am not optimistic, but will keep fighting.  That is the essence of the Yid, fighting the natural animalistic desires of man to raise ourselves up to a much higher "madrega."

It is just so challenging...all the time. And, as I mentioned, seems to be even MUCH worse now  that I am older . 

So, we enter Purim time...be careful all of you, booze and our "tayvehs" are a dnagerous and volatile combination.

Hey ataglance, that was a nice response; very clear, and kind of rare around here...

A few things to clarify:

1- The thinking abt the bris thing is simple, just as the tzniyus-terror is. They are how we men worship and obsess about sex and even misuse religion in order to do that. Those who do it, would have it no other way....cuz they van't figure out any other way to get it! Looking at porn is 'assur', so they're kind of stuck with the closest thing they can find to porn and erotica: tikkun habris obsession. I of course respect your right to disagree and also know that I may be dead wrong. But as you see the ztniyus thing, I fig'd the two are just 2 sides of the same coin.

2- I know hundreds of sober guys in good recovery and many of them are religious yidden. Many are goyim. Many are irreligious yidden. The common denominator is that lust fantasy does not rule them, neither does sex at home (and neither does tikkun habris, hahah). We are all growing and not angels, not machines, and that's good...but these are sober people who have not masturbated, for example, for years. Few are on GYE, because GYE is not a recovery site, but mainly an educational and support site. GYE is mainly a religious site. Religion includes sinning and even says things like "sheva yipol tzaddik"...recovery starts with sobriety. Not sainthood - just simple abstinence. GYE counts the abstinence a person has as total success - with a "Wall of Honor" etc...of course it recognizes other aspects of recovery, but there is no program here, per se. It's not a recovery fellowship. It's a place where the main issue is refraining from bad behaviors, period.

So it all depends on what you need, I guess, or what you want.

I am anot putting GYE down in any way! Just admitting it's limitations. And 12 step Recovery  groups have their own limitations, as well.  

3- Empathy is certainly not why I pray for the woman who I don't easily surrender. I pray for her to save my butt. That's it. This is not about her, but about me, me, me. Just as the entire 12 step program is not for G-d's sake, but purely enlightened self-interest. We addicts need sobriety or we will lose our lives (some of us slowly and quietly, others among us loudly and painfully). And the path the 12 steps offer us progressively puts G-d closer to the center of our lives. Religious addicts who are still playing with their drug, say that since they are frum "Of course Hashem is at the center of our lives! We're frum!"....while they masturbate habitually and excitedly (and then cry) and do many other things (and of course hide them all from their wives for 'shalom bayis'), tricking everyone around them for decades on end, as we all did before recovery.

My point is that if there were any other way for me to stay sober than praying for these women when they come up in my mind and eye, I'd use it! Heaven knows I tried all kinds of things till I got to SA! But, nu, none of them worked for me. So I am dead-serious about this: I and all of us addicts are stuck with no other way out of our diseases than (progressively and patiently) doing a few decent things like: praying for others, putting G-d first, letting go of our defects one at a time, and all the other other  things the steps suggest to us. They seem like righteousness to you, but they are not. It is certainly not anything like righteousness. I just need to stay sober.

Does that appear contradictory, to you?

If so, don't worry, for it really doesn't matter.
How contradictory are you and everybody else already?  
Good question, huh?

 

PS. It's a nice approach that has a nice side-effect, too: it's probably our only real shot at a bit of humility. It used to be that as soon as we were clean a few weeks or months, we crashed because we assumed we were finally 'ba'alei Teshuva' and 'won'! Heh. It was just a trick that allowed arrogance in. But we don't get fooled again, as the song goes. Anybody relate to that and ready to give up the 'Teshuvah roller coaster' for sobriety? 
 

The line about religion saying "sheva yipol tzadik" sounds pretty silly (then again, I don't understand much about a lot that's written here; I'm simply a fellow who works what's workin' for me and others). Firstly, the white book is filled with language and stories about hittin' bottom first. Secondly, the passuk is stressin' that there can still be a "v'kam" afterwards.

I think that Dov was referring to the "tzadik" part of the passuk, that its about being a tzadik and Dov is saying that in SA its about surviving and not losing our lives. 

Dov, I read your whole post carefully. As always, alot to think about. One point though. You emphasized that the prayer is not for her. Its for you. That this is about you. Saving you. Making sure that you dont lose your life. I cant function that way. Once its about me, then sometimes "me" would rather lust, fanrasize and whatever else. For me what works is to stay focused on my responsibility. For me, just doing this for myself is dangerous. I need to focus on others. But let me clarify. I dont mean that I am doing this for other people. I mean that my responsibility to others [i.e. god, family, etc] clarifies for me where "i" need to be. Without this sense of mission I dont know if i would be interested in changing or not acting out. So again, its not that i am doing it for them, its that i feel that my identity has to be not about me being happy but me being the person that i am responsible to be. And here is the point for me: When i stop focusing on myself and I focus on outside of myself, then I am suddenly able to see how selfish all the acting out is, and how I am more than just satisfying urges. So, yes its to stay alive but not just so that i can be happy. but so that i can function in my world the way i was meant to .

realsimcha wrote on 20 Mar 2016 21:49:


RS,
I think what you said is so powerful. What I've found, and also learned in years of therapy, is that I act out when I am in too self-focused a mode. My therapist pointed out that often addicts are sensitive people and people pleasers, and the pain of living for other people or trying to always please others swings back at them by making them act out in very selfish ways. It's the yin and yang; people who are healthier and have he right amount of "selfishness" have a self, and then can be self "less". People who don't have enough self end up doing very selfish things to compensate.

What I've found is that the more I've come into normal territory with a healthier sense of self, the more I am able to live- with the proper sense of responsibility to others, including and especially my wife. I am not so worried about me all the time; I'm doing ok so I can worry about her and take care of her. The other way doesn't do it for me personally- I have a hard time praying for someone else with them being my חפץ של מצוה.

realsimcha wrote on 20 Mar 2016 21:49:

You are saying the same as I am exactly. The reason I am consciously deciding to put my mind to caring about her is because this puts me back where I am supposed to be: responsible for others. 

ShaL"oH writes that pig will become kosher one day - that is why it is called 'chazir', meaning 'to go back' (as in "chozer b'teshuva"). He writes that it's ability to be fixed in the future world is dependent upon us having the proper relationship with pig, in the here and now. He explains that this is an aspect of why we refrain from eating it today: If we eat it in its present state, we lock it deeper into tum'ah. But if we establish a proper relationship with pig now, it will be fixed up just right, in the future. 

Is spitting on pigs and kicking them whenever a yid sees them the way to properly relate to pigs? Nope. The RMB"M writes, "A person should not say "I hate pigs and am disgusted by them!," for there is nothing immoral about eating pig. Rather, a person should say "I'd sure like to eat some pig, but Hashem says I must not." Hashem wants us to establish the right relationship with pig, in olam hazeh, so that pig will simply continue to it's next proper level l'asid lavo. Now let me add one more piece, please:

Chaza"l tell us a tzaddik is described as: "Achid Shmaya v'ara" he unites heaven and earth. The good Jew sees a squirrel and wishes it only well. He hates no animal, plant, or person. Even his shunning of the true rosho (and we know very few of those I am sure) is just because the roshon needs din, not chessed, to learn to relate to Hashem right. This is what it means when it says that "Tzaddikim turn midas haDin into Chessed (they use Din only for the ultimate purpose of Chessed) and resho'im turn midas haChessed into midas haDin (because they 'make' the tzaddik use Din for the sake of Chessed though the tzaddik would rather just do Chessed for Chessed and keep the outside of things looking just like their insides [tocho kebaro])". 

So nothing is really about what we 'do' with things or 'don't do' with things. Rather, it's all about relationships - how we relate with everything around us. We are all here together - us, the goyim, the pigs, our neighbors, our children, our wives, our parents and the people in ur neighborhood - and also the pretty women in the world that don't know better. The tzaddikim know how to relate properly to everyone and everything, each tzaddik according to his own derech. And through that, they unite everything to it's own nekuda of malchus, it's individual tachlis, it's nitzotz of kedusha. 

The fact is that the more a yid spits on and 'detests' the pretty woman - yes, the very image he obviously worships because we see he keeps trying to follow and see it again!...the more of a pedestal he puts her on. The more he obsesses about her. The more he puts her down and says she is a prutza and a subhuman - the more of an object he makes her into...all just a trick to lust his brains after her more and more, really. A silly game. Instead of learning to relate to her properly, he is relating to her through his arrogance, shame, and self-comtempt. His trief azus d'kedusha (which is usually just plain azus with a 'hechsher') is gonna kill him, in the end.

Praying for her is a simple thing that we can do to start to restore her humanity to us - to get us back onto the same page Hashem is on. For if we are drooling after her, dying to see her naked on that screen, plotzing to take her image in and use it....then we are treating her like an object already. Hating her at this point does nothing: for we already love her as an object! If that is not corrected soon, we will just use her more and more. Praying for her is a tool for restoring our proper relationship with her once we have taken her as our toy already. As a result of fixing that through the humbling act of suspending our making her into an object and instead praying for her, we will become free of her. She will be restored to the truth of just being Hashem's creature just as we are Hashem's creatures. She has her place in Hashem's world and a tachlis, and so do I. And so does every leaf, rock, and squirrel. That's just a simple, humbling fact to accept. Getting all twisted up with the side-issue of who has a bigger tachlis is not the point. Size does not matter here. (sorry!)  

Now a disclaimer:

The prayer tool is usually not useful as a first-string tool. The first, proper response is to have the right relationship with her right this second that we are sitting on the same bus or train together. And that is simply  this: We have nothing to do with each other - she is not my business any more than I am her business! 
But once I make her my business and have already been taking her in again and again, following her to the computer (or in person) and worshipping her, etc,  it's too late for that great and healthy first-round response. It's now necessary for me to eat some humble pie and face the music.  To accept that I have already taken her into my mind and I am not letting her go...a problem. Now is the time for praying for her.

I only pray for those I do not ignore. My ignorance is usually quick and decisive...and when I fail at it for one reason or another, my prayers are quick, sincere, real and decisive. And they always work.

But if I tried to go around praying for all the shiksas I can find, that would be a bastardization of the entire thing I am suggesting and it would horribly backfire. I have seen people do that. It's just a trick to think about them more and more - just like obsessing about tzniyus and tikkun haBris all day is just a trick to think about women and sex all day long. 


 
 

Thank you so much Dov!
Great stuff.

cordnoy wrote:

Is Gibbor still indexing these?

Mazel Tov Working Guy on your reaching 90 days clean. You are a true inspiration!! May HKB"H grant you a lifetime of cleanliness and purity and that your new way of life be so natural that you will not see a need to count this any more than count how many days in a row that you eat dinner.

pischoshelmachat wrote on 21 Mar 2016 13:42:


Thank you so much, and amein to all your brachos and to you and everyone on GYE!

I am done.  I realize I cannot control my lust.  Last evening was not a good one.  I think I am not able to control myself any longer.  I thouhgt I had this thing under control, and seemed to for a while, but now I seriously doubt.

Had to hide from my wife where I really went last night and she saw right through it, I am positive.

I do not feel like a frum Jew.  I do not feel like anything.  I am not a goy, certainly don't fit in to that world (although I drink like one) ...not a chareidi,  i am a hodge podge of nothing...and that rootlessness may be at the core of some of my issues.  I am looking for love in all the wrong places... to quote a very bad song from the 70's.  Whatever.  Not a good day. 

 

So chevray, what is my next step(s)?  Could use some constructive action oriented advice.

My friend - you said 'control' 3 times. I gave up controlling...

I PM'd you, ataglance.
Have a good day, chaver