Wow I cant believe I'm doing this. here goes then. I would like to share my story and some of my feelings (i may be lengthy hope y"all got patience!) also bc I really think emotions are so tied in to this whole thing. although I'm new to the forum I've been working with and have met/spoken with a few gye mentors and have benefited from that. I have however not been doing great and I'm looking for a new start which is why i recently started talking to someone new and also wanted to check out the forum to try give myself a jumpstart.

       
          At first I was gonna just look around without posting but honestly when i checked it out i was so impressed with the achdus and the open honest discussions and everyone's interest in helping each other while really getting helped at the same time I was like I want in! this honestly just one of the most impressive groups of people I've ever seen. my feelings are that is the epitome of the mayla of bimakom shebalei teshuva oimdim ein tzadikim gemurim yecholim lamoid bo. i think tje simple  pshat in that is the difference is in their avoidah. its true that the tzadik is on a high level and his avoidah is lichtig. while the bal teshuva is at least in the beginning in a place of darkness where his avoidah is nowhere near as lichtig by its nature as the tzadiks not in its level beetzem nor in how it is perceived by him or by others around him. yet its precisely that quality that makes in on a level that the tzadik cant match! bc serving hashem from darkness is a trillion times harder there's is much less sipuk and  ur low matzav itself offers incredible resistance. he's in uncharted waters being mekadesh shem hashem from the darkest places in the world which are not what you would think is a place to see kiddush hashem yet hes lighting it up against all odds without the sipuk of the lichtigkeit of the tzadik which is a level the tzadik never reached. i really thought that shines out here on this forum which is the shpitz avoida mitoich choishech this isn't something u can write about in the yated in big flashy letters this is a bunch of guys doing real grunt work in uncharted areas to lift each other and themselves out of the dark and that's why I say I'm super proud to join.  

         
          Now for my story. I do not know exactly how typical this is but i started being attracted albeit in a very light way at a very young age, I'm talking four five. I still remember wanting my kindergarten teacher to pick me up. around six I started with some very light form of M just like applying pressure and stuff. as I started to get older eight nine and ten it developed into the real thing and basically became a habit whenever I would read which i did plenty as a kid I would act out. It totally became part of my life i couldn't really imagine not doing it. I still remember finally getting wind that it might be assur and literally not knowing how to understand how such a thing which I felt I had no control over and was just part of life could be assur. My childhood and especially by my preteen years were full of fantasizing  and I didn't even think about stopping it. as I got older and went through mesivta i finally tried to get hold of myself here and there but to no avail and generally treated it as a lost case. through this tekufa my struggle mainly was just M not so much P in the typical sense bc I was a little different and was just as attracted if not more to clothed individuals so even a regular movie with a little love could be a problem for me. Also because of that all the extra tznius that frum women have over non frum didn't help much and probably was worse.   
            
       
         Finally when I was a little older one  elul I took on myself to stop on shabbos I don't remember exactly why I may have been inspired by the iglei tal in hakdama who i think connects shabbos to shmiras habris. anyway almost to my surprise it worked! the next year I looked into the hole inyan more and i finally got the guts to talk to people about it. there was an older bachur i was close to who was known as the best bachur in yeshiva a huge metzuyan and oived also. much to my surprise he had struggled with it also. i went to rebbeim one of them really scared me which he probably shouldn't have but at the time it worked I really took on myself to be done with it. and I was for about a year and a half it almost became not a nisayon for me. then came a rough tekufa in my life. It wasn't just that it was a bein hazemanim that i was home and had access to poorly filtered internet. bc I was pretty strong at the time. the reason was that i had suffered really throughout my life with a lot of emotional distress.  i had a big episode at the beginning of that year which had left its mark already but this time especially was really bad. I believe it is this that caused me to to start suffering from some form of ocd/anxiety that manifested itself with certain thoughts of kefira that I couldn't get out of my mind it was a torture beyond words I cant explain what its like when your own mind turns on you but those who know know. Under this pressure I succumbed. at first I managed to get it somewhat under control and when this tekufa was over I would say I was resisting for about a month at a time. at this time in my life i also had a lot of sipuk I was in my rosh yeshivas shiur and baruch hashem we hit off i became a real talmid and he showed me that he appreciated me and I would say the high level of sipuk I had helped not mess up too often. then however i went to EY. I do not know exactly why but there I completely went under probably because I was a lot more out and about and there were a ton of frum women around which as I mentioned could be a full blown turn on for me. and I was back into my habit of doing it multiple times a week.


             This continued when I came back to America but with time this got worse in two ways. Number one I finally fell into more serious P real and AI.  Also even worse bc I always have access to my phone is that I fell into call lines. Put together with the fact that I'm dealing with a personal struggle of a different nature which has been very difficult and affected my learning I find myself at a pretty low point now. I look back at my peak years when I was on fire in learning I had tremendous sipuk I was from the top few guys in my shiur went to brisk the whole 9 yards  and barely messing up and now I go to seder without much interest ( I will say baruch hashem that he even in this time has given me number one really good chavrusas despite my not being as involved as i have been in the past. this has kept me at least somewhat involved which has been a lifeline. number two hashem has given me really great friends who love me and i love back which is the only way I think I'm still hanging on) i don't feel in control of myself i can sometimes spend a whole night doing P or miss minyanim bc of it and i can do M multiple times an evening, my concentration by davening is almost nonexistent i used to say tehilim and feel a close connection with hashem and cant say i feel it now. and honestly i have tried so many times in the last few years that i really have a hard time convincing myself that this time can be it. i feel like a certain dryness as if I'm almost just joking around because i cant be serious about stopping and deep down a certain voice that says u don't really have the self control. yet paradoxically as i write this and also as I'm on my second day clean with my new gye mentor i am hopeful for a breakthrough. just by joining this chashuve group i feel inspired as i mentioned. i do feel like if i can just get into a position of strength with lets say fifty sixty days clean it would be a whole different situation. is rare however in the last few years that i ever got to even thirty and basically never past that. so here's my tefila that this should be the time that i break through with your help and the help of hashem. thanx for reading!

Wow! Thanks for sharing! 

Did you know that Daf Yomi is starting a new masechta on Fri? Maybe you should join? Check out R Eli Stefansky.

justwannabefree wrote on 17 Jun 2025 05:30:

Welcome justwannabefree! You've come the right place! We all have stories with slightly different details but the underlying theme of feeling trapped from a way-too-young age resonates with many here. IyH you'll break free, along the many choshuve bnai torah here. If you're proud to join, we're proud to have you!!

Thank you JWB for that deep and insightful post. 
Welcome home brother! Almost everyone here understands what you are going thru and went thru similar situations. 

Me, Myself and I went thru very similar situations. 
Started M at a very young age, lots of emotional issues. Access to P, etc. 
I also enjoyed learning BH and had good chavruses. I can honestly say "לולי תורתך שעשועי אז אבדתי בעניי'. Only thru learning and getting Sipuk out of the Torah was I able BH to stay afloat. 
You made the right choice by joining and posting.  A lot of Gevaldiga guys on here. 

Stick around, read the posts, work thru the amazing F2F program. If you really work on it, it will change the way you think. 

Check out my Thread Named Logic over Lust, hopefully you can find some ideas that resonate with you. 

Please feel free to reach out to me. 

Welcome to the forums chaver!

Hopefully the chizzuk you get from joining the oilam will carry you through and help you shteig your way out of this.

Feel free to reach out

I guess specifically id love to hear from anyone whos had the experience of trying a lot over the years sometimes even doing extreme things ( for example like a shevua, obviously not a great idea but unfortunately...) and has not succeeded, even after working with a gye mentor to the point where you don't feel so much emotion for trying  because you've told yourself a million times that your try again and it never worked long term. So if you've been in that emotional state id love to hear how you dealt with it especially if you managed to really succeed afterwards but even if your not there yet id love to hear.

like to put it like this i feel that now that im on the forum  i have the best possible tools at my disposal yet im doing the steps like completely sichliyisdik but missing the juice, almost without a drive. i would say maybe a year and a half ago i had the drive but not the tools. I NEED BOTH TOGETHER !!!

Welcome to the forum!

I definitely relate to you about fantasizing from a young age of around 4-5 only to find out when I got older that it is Assur, but already having it so ingrained in me that it was habitual.

I am 23 single (engaged) and Baruch Hashem I am 570 days clean from Porn and about 430 days free from Masturbation. The fact that you are here on this forum and that you have had many tekufos of being clean by shear will is extremely impressive.In my humble opinion there are 2 types of motivation. 1 is for Hashem and that this is assur and the other is doing this for ourselves. I truly believe that one should focus on doing this for ourselves and in doing so this will enable us to open our eyes truly to see the beauty of Hashems creations.

A very important part is knowing what your motivations for becoming clean are and even finding more reasons to become clean. For me personally my main drive was to be clean for my wife and kids, and only after starting my journey did I truly realize what that means and that we need more than just external reasons to stay clean. Sometime the goal will feel super distant and we need an internal component to get through tough times. This is where I believe we need to really change our mindset on key topics related to struggles with Porn and Masturbation.

Common misconceptions:

- I am “giving up” Porn and Masturbation and I will never have sexual satisfaction until I am married.

    This is wrong. While there is an instant gratification to Porn and Masturbation there are actual mental problems that arise from using these outlets in the way we do, and especially from a young age. When we use Porn and Masturbation we are using them as a coping mechanism for difficult or intense emotions. When we numb our emotions we are still in our same difficult situation but added to that is our guilt and shame from using it. We then try to numb those emotions again which eventually resurface because they haven’t actually been dealt with, rather they have just been pushed off. The cycle of feel, numb, regret, feel, numb… is all too familiar and is very unhealthy. By never dealing with our emotions we never develop the proper emotional tools that are crucial to live a happy and peaceful life. 
Another affect of using Porn and Masturbation is that we feel as if we are a fraud and that doesn’t allow us to live as ourselves. We distance ourselves from others because we think that deep down we are a failure and that other people will be horrified by us. We may try to stay aloof from others to try and protect them, including our wives and our children, when in reality that distance only hurts you and them making it harder to break free.

 -Sex in marriage will make it easier to not masturbate

    This is not necessarily true, if a person does not have the proper education of what sex in marriage truly is then it will only make things worse. What we unfortunately have been exposed to online and through secular media is fake. The ideas of Love and Sex that they portray are just fantasy and not reality. Sex as it is displayed in media and Porn is pure Lust and they make believe that they enjoy being demined and belittled. The truth is that just like everyone knows that Hollywood actors are miserable inside, Porn stars are worse off. They are being abused and paid to act as if it is enjoyable. Any man that thinks his wife would conform willingly to such acts does not truly think about women as people rather they just think of them as object of pleasure, and it may just be that they have not been educated on the true nature of sex and sexuality in Judaism.
    The truth is that sex in marriage and sexuality are two of the most kadosh things in Judaism. When a man is truly with his wife they BRING DOWN THE SHECHINA to this world. To truly be with ones wife one cant just take, he must give. When someone just takes they are just doing an act of Lust and this kills intimacy. Intimacy is not sex, Intimacy is the connection and Love that a husband and wife have, sex when used properly in marriage is a culmination of that Love and Intimacy. If one is using his wife for his own pleasure, his wife will notice the lack of intimacy and then it may/will cause her to withdraw from him emotionally causing a strain in the relationship. Meanwhile the husband is totally oblivious as to why he is having a hard time with his marriage and doesn’t know that his wife feels as if he doesn’t want to be connected to her. 
     How do we change our mindset of how we view women and ultimately our (future) wives?
I truly believe that it is a matter of respecting another human being. We need to treat women as humans and not just object of pleasure to look at and use. When walking down the street or even just having a conversation with a woman we should strive to be able to control our initial fantasie.Respecting woman is how I view shmiras eiynayim. They may walk in the streets not stnius but that doesn’t give us an excuse to disrespect them by fantasizing about their body and not recognizing that they are a human with emotions and a life which is so much more than just their body and our animal instinct.
Our initial glance is our instinct as a human, but to linger or to look back is lust.

I would add a lot more but to be honest my first response got lost after a half hour of typing and now this took just about the same time. If you want to reach out feel free to send a message and Ill try to get to it as soon as possible.

One main lesson is to take each day one day at a time. Don’t get lost in the end goal, focus on this day. You don’t climb a mountain by jumping to the top, it takes each step and you may slip. But the most important thing is to get back up and keep climbing.

Keep on Trucking, One Day At A Time!!

thank you jewizard21 for your many wise words and encouragement. sorry for your lost response. I will say that although I won't disagree because you know what works best for you but I wouldn't like for myself to isolate the working for Hashem from the working for yourself and make it completely not connected to my avoidas Hashem. Yet you bring up a valid point how can we regular people be sure of motivation if we don't think about ourselves? So please tell me if you agree to what I was thinking and actually have I think always subconsciously thought about this. I was thinking that you could combine the two. probably in multiple ways. for example one way you can think about it is that I think one of the big reasons to do it for yourself is because you wanna be a better person more clean and upstanding and you want to respect yourself. does that have to mean that your not doing it for Hashem? Maybe not. if your whole lens on what makes someone upstanding and respectable is someone who does good in Hashem's eyes (which even if you think your not a whole tzadik which I definitely don't think I am I still think you shouldn't underrate how much u judge accomplishment based on the toirah) so then you've got some of both! Because your whole value system is Hashem's currency so really when you work to be a better person you are working to gain Hashems currency. Hope i was clear. i also wouldn't be surprised if someone can come up with a different approach to get to the same place. i appreciat again your engagment on my thread and your wise words, and mazel tov to you

You are 100% correct. I wrote it better the first time and I see how this looks like I am taking Hashem out of the picture.
Chas Vshalom!
I didnt mean to say it like that. I definitely agree that Hashem must be a part of your beginings. My idea is that for a lot of people thats not enough motivation to keep on going.
   One of the main things that Porn and Masturbation do is distance ourselves from our relationships and this includes our relationship with Hashem. I have definitely seen that over the course of my journey that my kesher with Hashem has grown to be stronger than ever before!

We say 3 times a day מלך עוזר משיא ומגן Hashem is our king, our helper, our savior, and our shield.
I could not be where I am now without having Hashem help me and shield me and ultimately save me.

Hey JWBF! It looks like you took the brotherhood here like a fish to water! Keep it up, you have what it takes!

thanx so much eerie! definitely appreciate your care and support every day, its keeping me going! 

so my question for the gye oilam out there is like this.  what does the oilam hold when it comes to a kabala on shmiras einayim ( I don't mean P, I mean even looking in the store or in the street) together with stopping to M? Don't  get me wrong of course that has to be a goal but can it be separated to the extent that stopping M can be done first ( no doubt I'll speak to my great mentor reb eerie about this but I am still curious what the oilam has to say)? Truth is from my own experience as I mentioned in my first post I once I once stopped M for over a year. that time I stopped M first and then found shmiras einayim much easier when I started that battle a couple months later. as opposed to right now when I am once again in the beginning stages I find the looking battle to be extremely daunting to take it on completely and really beyond my reach and honestly here's my main concern: taking on full blown shmiras einayim at the same time that i take on P fills me with the feeling that this whole thing is impossible and can make me feel like its not worth the fight. I have seen on some threads that people say u can't really fight M if you're still looking around but my own experience when I was once successful showed me not. Or maybe just maybe my yh is tricking me...…

(just to clarify I think I am already capable of being more mindful of shmiras einayim and giving that fight a slow start I've already seen myself get a tiny bit better but i don't feel ready for a full blown stop like the way I'm trying to take on P)

Shalom Brother JustWannaBeFree and welcome!

I think it may help to break this up into individual points, and then discuss in more detail from there.

When you say kabala on shemiras einayim, do you mean to work on it, or is this like an all-or-nothing for you?

Can you focus on one area at a time? I think absolutely, but you need to have the overall goal and mindset that nothing is hefker, it's just a work in progress that requires manageable and truthful steps.

You can externally work on not masturbating, perhaps white-knuckling, but if you're using lack of shemiras einayim as a lust/tayva outlet, that will make it much more difficult to achieve the internal change. 

If you are being mindful about shemiras einayim and seeing improvements, be proud of that. Check in with yourself honestly when you can continue to make progress whilst maintaining your work on staying away from p and m. 

No one is deciding that they need to stop speaking lashon hara and poof. It's daily learning, practicing, being mindful, and growing as a process. You can take large steps at times, but the ultimate results will always be a life's work of continuous refinement.

Do what you can be, and just be wary of letting excuses slip in. Stay in touch with Reb Eerie and make sure that you are finding the right balance for you at this time, and pushing as needed, where needed, in a stable, honest, and manageable way.

Hatzlacha and Kol Tov

Boy, am I late to the party!!

JWBF, just seeing your thread here inspires me!!! Boy does your story with your kindergarten teacher resonate - I remember getting triggered by my 1st grade teacher bending down in front of me with a loose blouse.... nuff said.....

Your persistence is encouraging and here's my sincerest hopes for you to grow, grow, and grow, and beat the beast!!!

With a ton of brotherly love,
Muttel