Sholom Aleichem warriors,
          I am a regular 15 yr old yeshiva bochur in a top yeshiva in somewhere, but has internet at home. Besides for my own problems with watching my eyes and controlling my hotzoas zera that has been with me for years, i noticed something interesting recently. I have noticed my father, a heimishe guy by the computer late at night. My curiosity got the better of me, and when noone was around, I pressed ctrl H to see history, and found out that my porn problem is inherited from him. I also noticed a secret email address that he has, so i put my hacking skills to work, and got the password from a free keylogging program. What i found was heartbreaking- a bunch of heimishe guys from shul are all a bunch of porn addicts forwarding porn around to each other! So lately i go in and delete all unread inappropriate inbox messages, but i now realize this is just a "moire heter" of my yetzer to do it myself, as my hz"l has been worse lately, so this is no solution for me. How is a 15 yr old yesiva bochur from a good home supposed to deal with this- I cant confront him, and i cant let my mother know about this- she'll divorce him!So before i deal with my own shmiras einayim/bris issues, how do i deal with this without destroying my home????

Wow tough situation.

Welcome to the forum, first of all. Youre in a good place now. Here's what I would say to do. If there are many guys from shul doing this then I would say to send an anonymous email to the Rav of the community telling him you KNOW FOR SURE this is going on without mentioning names and that something MUST be done or you WILL go to higher powers to resolve the issue. Its not a threat to the rav. Make that clear. But if he feels unable to perform the task of taking care of this REALLY big issue then he should assign someone who can to do it, to fix the problem.

-Yiddle

shkioach for the advice, but i dont know how comfortable with my rav to know this about my father, a respected member of the community :-[

So you dont mention names you just say x number of people are doing y and you know for sure they are doing it.

Hello! welcome! i am 15 as well, i would not know how to deal with this either but maybe you should come clean to your father about your own troubles in this area and tell him very respectfully that you know about his and others in the community, even shoe him GYE! you would be helping him more than words can express! your dad could begin his road to recovery as well as the other men from your shul! i know i should not be the one talking because when it comes to this stuff i am most certainly worse than anyone else at talking about this stuff with my parents but maybe it is something you should think about.

nowhere to turn wrote on 10 May 2010 02:11:


Where do I start?  I have a teenaged son in a top yeshiva in my town. I'm a heimische guy in his 50s who also likes many kinds of shmutz, r'l. So, you could be my own son! What would I say to him; what would I want him to say to me? And, what options do you have?

I guess I'm posting to give you a father's perspective. First, I feel like a hypocrite when I come home from maariv and go straight to some online shmutz, or when I act out before getting out of bed for shacharis. As bad as it feels on the inside, try to imagine what having my own son in on the joke might feel like. It hardly matters whether he's doing the same stuff online or not; it makes me feel like a schmuk of a father for not giving him the homelife he deserves and that parallels the top school we struggle to send him to.

So, what's the next step here?  I don't know, of course, but here are some random thoughts from one guy.

1. You are NOT responsible for your father, or for helping cure your father. You are responsible for getting clean and staying that way, for YOURSELF. Period.
2. You are not obligated to clean up the whole shul or even your father's chevra. That's more than a 15-y.o. should have to take on.
3. You are NOT exempted from kibbud av v'em just because your father is acting like a jerk. This means you are probably NOT allowed to be doing things that will let your mother in on the problem, and it may even mean you can't confront your father, either.
4. So, what options are left here?  I'd say:
> take care of yourself: get clean, stay clean, realize how your father's imperfections are simply a human frailty to which you might also succumb if you're not careful.
> take pride that you're tackling this young, because obviously it's trickier after decades like your father has obviously had.
> DAAS TORAH.  I hate to say this, but you have GOT to find a Rav to help you navigate this from a Torah perspective. Your family Rav, someone at school, hell I'd even go to ask-the-rebbe at aish.com or something. (There are rabbeim here at GYE, too, if they're willing.) But between the impact on your parents' marriage, on other marriages in the community, on your own relationship with your dad, etc etc, there are Torah values here. If you go to a top yeshiva, you want to live by the Torah. Even when it's uncomfortable to do so. Like now.
> If I were REALLY devious, I'd suggest something like sending an email to everyone in the email schmutz circle. It would say: HI, I'm one of your children. I somehow stumbled into these emails. I'm really embarrassed for you. I know who all of you are, and both your fake and real email addresses. I hope you realize you've got to do something about this sick addiction. Before someone discovers you (whoops, too late LOL). And before they sell you out to your Rav, your wives, and yes your children. You might want to look over www.guardyoureyes.org and get busy on breaking this non-Torahdik addiction. IT'S NOT ONLY FOR YOUR OWN SELF-ESTEEM, IT'S FOR THE ESTEEM THAT YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HOLD FOR YOU WHEN YOU ONE DAY IY'H WALK THEM TO THE CHUPPAH. Note, you don't have to sign this.

How's THAT for hardball?!! (But don't do it before you show a draft to a Rav. The stakes are pretty high.)

wow Briut! what a take down of my ideas you just socked me right in the stomach  :o!  and of course your ideas are much better! nowhere to turn, listen to Briut he knows what he is talking about, you most certainly are not responsible for you father or his friends! It was silly of me to suggest something i would not do myself i am sorry. i hope you find your path for yourself first! good luck!

First of all, welcome to the forum/ family. You are in the right place. It takes a higher level of presence of mind to be able to assess ones situation and determine that there is a need for a rectifying course. You have demonstrated this and that is commendable. Now, what is the proper course?

I don't feel qualified to answer regarding the family setting, however, regarding writing your Rav, this is a very good idea. You can remain perfectly anonymous. There is no need to expose and embarrass your father. Writing a personal letter to your Rav, mentioning that you are a young man living with your parents and relating what you have found, this should impress upon your Rav the need to take whatever action he sees fit. Your letter can be similar to your first post on this site, only leave out your age in order to remain in a more secure anonymity.

It is a delicate matter and I certainly wish you well, with this and your own struggles. Keep on the right track. Everything you have is a gift from above, merited by your own hard work and those who came before you. Use it wisely.

Wow...I don't even know what to say.

Well, OK, scratch that, I have a LOT to say! First of all, WELCOME!!

Second, I'm incredibly impressed by you. Firstly, that as a teenager, you're seriously working on getting free of this garbage. And even more so considering the complications you've run into.

Whatever you may decide to do, I agree with Briut - your father is not your responsibility, any more than any other jew is. And your first obligation is to get yourself healthy. Which may not be so easy, with all the confusion running around in your house.

It seems obvious to me that you need a mentor - someone you can trust and respect, someone you can look to for advice, guidance, inspiration, etc. All things that you can't really get from your father right now. A rebbe of some sort would obviously be ideal. Do you have a rebbe that you feel you can trust?

Briut, remember - we're all here because on some level or another, we've recognized that this is NOT where we want our lives to be. We've looked ourselves in the eye and accepted that porn, etc, is NOT a good thing. It's NOT acceptable. We respect the fact that we're part of a group of holy warriors who are actively trying to grow past this.

Unfortunately, not everyone is like that. I've seen people vehemently deny that there's anything wrong with being mz"l, watching porn, etc. And wile I do hope that his father is closer to us than to the second group, there's simply no way of knowing - especially as he's part of a group who can support each other in the normal-ness of their actions.

Painful? Yes. Horrifying? Yes. Can we, or even Reb "nowhere to turn" change it? Possibly not.

I submit that step one is getting clean and healthy, part of that includes step 2, which is developiong a relationship with a rebbe. From there, I think things will be more stable, and you have something to work with.

Wow thank you all for the wonderful guidance, and briut i thing you will be the greatest help to me as u see it from the other perspective(i know that if my father knows what i know he would be horrified). What does the oilam think of me changing the password of his email? Hell proabaly think some goy broke in- any opinions??

nowere to run, I can relate to your situation a bit.  I have found on my father's computer that he has looked at some inappropriate stuff.  Fortunately he seems to be able to keep it to a minimum.  On the other hand it is hard for me to have respect for all his learning knowing this.  Like Briut says I cannot be responsible for his behavior and neither should I be sneaking onto his computer to see what he looks at.  First of all it is not healthy for me to think of my father this way and secondly the only reason we feel a need to look at what someone else is looking at is usually so that we can see the shumtz and feel righteous at the same time.
The bottom line is that I am here to work on myself.  I can hope my father finds his way here so that he can work on himself as well.

It is really sad how many respected and learned community members have fallen into this trap.  I tried explaining to my wife that she does not realize the extent this problem plagues our community (I think if women realized this they would give up all hope on us men period).  I remember I once found a brother of mine had looked at some stuff (I think it was his first time) and he was a good bochur.  I told him that if he wants to succeed he cannot look at this stuff, feeling at the same time a hypocrite because I looked at this stuff myself, I think I may have saved him from falling further.  If you read around this site you will come across stories of respected rebbeim who have fallen.  This site is a sad testament to our existence, but it is also a powerful testament to our existence.  Here we are hundreds of people who have fallen and have all the reasons to give up and not try, but yet we are here trying to make ourselves and in the process our world a better place.

In a way I believe that this is the final inferno that we are going through.  Those of us that can achieve purity in this world through the subordinating of this most powerful Y"H are the vessels that hashem can then enter this world through.  It is hard to imagine a challenge to our way of life more threatening than this in the whole golus.  We can with the click of a mouse detach ourselves from hashem and it is we who are here that are saying we do not want this.  We want ourselves to be pure vessels for Hashem!  I don't know what gets someone a ticket to Olam Habbah but if creating this site and bringing so many jews to purity counts for anything then Rebbienu Guard has a one way ticket.

Do you see what a string of different perspectives you found here? Wow, what a great bunch of guys. I don't know at all what might be useful information to you, but please ask (ask anything) and I'd be happy to share my own experiences so that you can make a fully-informed decision.

Strugglingyid has a beautiful take on this; I think you should listen to the vector he's traveling. For me, this means that the focus on YOU and not your FATHER is the only healthy one right now. And in terms of halacha -- you should leave that to the Rav who you WILL be finding , but I'll point out that Reuven haShevet wasn't even allowed to SUGGEST moving Yaakov Avinu's BED! You just can't get into your father's "bedroom" and you can't imagine you know their marriage.  Sorry, buddy -- this is not just my own guilt and shame of how I'd feel if my kids discovered me; this is what would have happened if I had discovered my own father.

That's not to say you are powerless in this situation; it's just that I don't think a direct confrontation is appropriate or even useful. (This includes the passive-aggressive step of changing passwords, etc.) If you caught your father with "street drugs" or having an affair or stealing from the boss or anything else -- your job is NOT to be his parent or cop or whatever. Your job is to deal with what that information is doing to YOU. 

(In all these cases, like with the p**n, you're not totally helpless or without options here. It's just that your position as an outsider to that marriage is a little different. My maxim: "NEVER look "into" someone else's marriage. NEVER." Because you can't see what this all means on the inside, the way you think you see it from the outside.)

More later. In the meantime, let us know more about your specific questions and anxieties. You really have found a crew full of guys who've "been there, done that." We own the whole t-shirt factory!

You are an amazing guy for bringing your concerns to others for input. Most teens would be far too impulsive and invincible to have taken this step. Kol haKavod.

Dear somewheretoturn,

Welcome to our community. I am the admin of this forum...

How fortunate you are that you have the ability to reach out for help and work on this while still young, something your father never had a chance to do! (since GYE didn't exist then  )

Wow, you got some great answers already from the amazing people on this forum!

The Sefarim talk about how, if a father doesn't finish a tikkun in a certain area, it is passed on to his children to fix. By fixing yourself in this area, you will be making a big tikkun for your father as well, and also, you will be hopefully assuring that the same tests don't get passed down to YOUR children!

I know a story where a son recovered from this addiction, and somehow, just as he began serious recovery, his father admitted to him that he had once had this problem, but recently he "got old" and doesn't struggle with it anymore. Coincidence? I think not. Once the son had taken on the tikkun that the father hadn't succeeded to do, Hashem took the test away from the father too!

So I would focus mainly on yourself here. However, I would suggest you send me your father's e-mail address, and the e-mail of his friends, and I can send them all an anonymous e-mail from some obscure address (like steveCohen@gmail) about the great work of GuardYourEyes and how it is changing people's lives... If they have a zechus, they'll check it out and at least have a "chance" at true recovery!

Ok... that's enough for this post. In my next post, I'll give you our welcoming "package" to help you along on your own recovery!

Welcoming Package:

Welcome to our community!

One of our goals on GYE is to help people "hit bottom while still on top" so they will take recovery seriously. To explain better what I mean, please see this page. If you're here, you're already taking serious steps in recovery, so keep up the good work!

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps - which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc... So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not...

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth...

May Hashem be with you!

Rage: you mean, like, forwarding the GYE's daily emails from an account like:
1ofUisMySickDad@gmail.com ???

It's enough to make me laugh out loud.

But I still hope you're kidding. (Even tho you're still not saying to change his password, wipe his hidden stash of photos, install K9 filters with yourself as guard, etc. I just don't think ANYTHING GOOD can come of a one-way control trip.)

Whether or how to have a private, 1:1, interactive conversation (gulp; big gulp; super big gulp) is another whole question. But that's not (yet) part of this dialogue, I don't think.