At the suggestion of Naftali Z, I decided to come over here and introduce myself.

My name is Tuvia and I am a lust addict.

I am currently 12 days clean.  And be"H, will be for the rest of my life.

A little (or a lot) about me... I was introduced to porn at the age of 10.

I am 26 years old and I have been married for 3 years as of this month and just had my third child (three daughters) about 2 months ago.  I have a wonderful wife that is really wanting to support me through breaking this addiction, however it has become very hard for her so I have decided to reach out to GYE for a partner.

I am currently in the gerius process under a yeshivish beis din.  I was raised partly x-ian and part Jewish in a cult like thing called messianic.  My great grandmother on my mother’s, mother’s side married a goy and after 5 kids they divorced (partly because she didn’t want to learn anything outside of her native yiddsh).  However, grandparents we completely secular and only my parents decided to study Judaism.  Because my great grandmother’s record couldn’t be found, I am going through the gerius process to remove any double. 

Back to where I’m at in this addiction… while in high school, I was extremely addicted.  I was looking at p-rn several times a day and m-st-rb-ting several times a week.  It was a very hard part of my life.  Not quite sure why… I had an amazing family that was very loving and supportive.  However, at age 19 I moved to Ari’el Yisroel for 6 months.  While there the draw towards the addiction wasn’t strong at all and I had amazing victory over my yetzer hara while there.  Then when I moved back just before my 20th birthday, I lapsed back and it was just as strong as ever.  It seemed that eretz Yisroel was what drove away my yetzer hara, not me out of havas mitzvoth. 

However, two years later at 22 years old something charged.  I had left the whole messianic thing, and I had hit rock bottom and I was sick of hiding and not living.  I decided to talk with my father and a friend.  My father couldn’t really offer a lot of advice… he was bewildered and seemed like he never heard of my problem.  I talked with the friend and he didn’t know what to do but to just “keep trying my best.”  As you probably know, this doesn’t work usually and it didn’t for me.  At that time I began studying the Nevi’im and Chazal intensely and I’m not quite sure what it was but I started going longer stretches of being sober.  Before I knew it, I was mentoring several other guys my age in how to get out from p-rn and I had gone almost a whole year sober.  Right before my 23rd birthday in Cheshvan I became engaged to an amazing girl I had met while messianic.  She had also left the whole messianic thing and wanted to convert and move to Yisroel.  We were married one month after being engaged.  Before becoming married, against advice I received from others I told my bride-to-be about my past addiction to porn but assured her that I had been clean for about a year. 

The marriage was very traumatic because my mother did not approve of my bride-to-be and preferred a girl whom they were trying to get me a shidduch with because she was from a powerful jewish family in the messianic community.  The whole thing caused a lot of stress to me.  And stress is one of the things that triggers me.

A year after our marriage, we decided to officially start the gerius process.  This caused an irreparable fissure with my parents.  I think the trauma from that caused me to loss heart in some way.  I started to struggle with thoughts and over the next 12 months, I probably looked at porn about 10 times.  That bring us up to this summer of 2010.  At one point during the summer, I told my wife that I had been looking at p-rn.  She was very relieved because she had been dealing with double, worry, etc because she felt that I was but couldn’t find any proof of it.  However at that time I knew I hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.

The gerius process had been going really well and my sponsoring rabbi seemed very pleased with our progress.  However, at that time we were renting a town home and our landlord was having trouble with the city because we were complaining how he wouldn’t keep the house in compliance.  It was 90 degrees in the house during the day because the A/C didn’t work and and my wife who was 7 months pregnant with our third child couldn’t handle it.  The city came out and deemed the house unlivable and we had to move in less than 72 hours.  Because our lease was almost up, we couldn’t get the landlord to help us, so to our dismay we had to move out of the eruv (because there was nothing available in the eruv within 72 hours). 

Right after moving out of the eruv, I lost my job because my company had hired a bad accountant and found out that it was upside down.  All this added stress to me and I found myself wanting to look at p-rn more.  At Yom Kippur I really wanted to make a new start and never fall to it again.  However, after Yom Kippur I fell, and from then until now I have looked and m-st-rb-ted about 6 times. 

After having have lost my job, I decided to start up a company that I’ve been wanting to start for a long time and my good friend (who is also in the gerius process) became my partner.  The office we leased is in the eruv with the main goal of my family being able to stay there for Shabbos.  With things starting to look up, I decided I needed to tell my wife.  She had had a feeling that I was struggling with it again and she encouraged me to contact GYE who I had been reading for a while.  A friend at shul who had also been dealing with p-rn gave me a number to a guy in the community that he heard could help and so I contacted him and he has a weekly meeting in the area, B"H.

I’m ready to beat this and I can’t afford to let this destroy my life, my family, wife, conversion, or future.  So I’m ready to do anything to quite this.  I also want to help you.  Everyone on GYE.  I tell you the above (long) story so that you can help me more. 

If you are comfortable, please share with me what helps you when the temptation comes upon you.  Right now, if I think about how Avraham aveinu would cry if he saw me desecrate the bris hakadosh, then it helps me slow down and not follow after my addiction.  Especially if I remember how he had Eliezer place his hand under his thigh and swear... and Rashi says this is a euphemism for the bris.  If Avraham saw it as such a holy sign, then can't I at least give it respect?


Thanks everyone for helping so far!  This is an amazing community and I hope that Hashem can give me the ability to help it long into the future.

Gut Shabbos!

Tuvia

WELCOME. and good shabbos  ;D

I'm sorry that I cannot offer very good advice other than a really strong filter and accountability software and tefillah.  But I can offer you a welcome and Gut Shabbos!

Wow, what an amazing story!

You're a very holy person, and it's great that you have your wife's understanding and support on this.

I look forward to getting to know you better, and in the meantime - have a great Shabbos!

Welcome Tuvia!

Perfect timing! Join one of GYE's 6 new groups starting this week! www.guardyoureyes.org/?p=2464 . These are free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Jews, along with an experienced sponsor. 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.

Also, 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. 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!

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, it means you're already taking serious steps in recovery, so keep up the good work!

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. The lay down the cornerstone of all our work at GuardYourEyes. Before the GYE handbook people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, someone with a low level addiction wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences", putting in filters etc... For the first time ever, this handbook details all the techniques and tools dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now, anyone can read it through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook to the next tools, as the suggestions become progressively more "addiction-oriented".

We suggest printing out the handbooks and reading it them at least once. Then, we suggest going back and reading them again slowly on the computer, and this time pressing on the many links that are found in the different articles.

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.

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!

matzav.com/messianic-jews-defect-from-cult-turn-to-yad-lachim-for-help

GUE,

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that link.  It is amazing how similar that story was to my story of coming out of the messianic cult.

I had already had a falling out with the cult, but was intrigued with their "deeper" pursuit of Judaism and so was working on the editing staff for FFOZ (largest publishing house for messianics, their "Artscroll") on a project that was rebirthing the commentary of Fievel Levertoff (ffoz.com/index.php?target=products&product_id=335). 

Little did I know that at the end of the project, I would turn in my manuscripts, comments, and suggestions with a preface to the founder who was heading the project stating that because if actually editing the work I was now convinced that conversion was the correct step for me to take and that messianicism was a lie.  In the course of studying the content I had found just how far messianics would go to build a story, even if it meant fabricating things out of thin air.

B"H, yidden in EY are seeing that same ugly side to the cult as well and turning to organization that Hashem has brought about to help hold back the tide of assimilation.

Thank you for sharing.

Wow. I have had experience with Messianic Jews and actually used to attend their concerts in order to meet and talk with the folks there for the sake of explaining the normative Jewish position. It was fun, but I have has enough with that! It's nice to communicate with someone who understands it from the inside and I admire you, your wife, and your journey. The integrity you two have discovered in your lives so far is something you will never lose the rest of your lives.

Which brings us to the lust issue. Your integrity against the stream must make your inability to beat this thing all the more maddening. No? Maybe even scary.

I propose that it may require a miracle for you to remain clean. It may be that you are like me, and that no human power - not even your own - can allow you to remain free of the kind of failure in lust that will mess your life up. And there is no way to 'merit' Chessed (grace). It is Chessed precisely because it is far more than we deserve!

I propose that there are certain ingredients that are necessary in order for Hashem's Chessed to actually stick to us. One ingredient is humility. Admitting our personal limitations to ourselves and to another person in order to help us admit it fully. It is the 'broken heart' King David speaks of in Tehillim. This 'broken heart' has nothing to do with sadness at all. Rather, I believe that it is the longing a Jew feels for G-d - the only Truth, Reality, and Value that really exists - in the face of our own confusion and weakness. We admit our mortality, our fallibility, and our inherent lack of clarity. We are His children, just children. Even Moshe Rabeinu and Avraham avinu understood that they were not really much in the grand scheme of things. Avraham said, "I am but dust and ashes", Moshe said, "Who am I"/"and what are we (he and Aharon) after all?" - meaning, "not much". Were they lying? Not quite. They were simply in touch with the unadulterated truth about themselves...a thing that normal people can afford to ignore during most of their short lives here. Perhaps they need to.... but addicts cannot afford to ignore it. We cannot make it through life at all, unless we face the truth about our neediness and dependence upon Hashem's Chessed. Until we start to really live like people dependent upon and maintaining a genuine relationship with Hashem. Our addiction itself throws us forcibly down this path to true intimacy with G-d...and to true intimacy with people, as well.

Maybe just a bunch of musing. If you find it helpful that's great. Just please know that as special as your story is - as a lust addict, you are not alone.

Dov,

You are absolutely correct about the frustration that I feel sometimes regarding my inability to beat this.  I've been reading R' Dessler in miktav m'eliyahu, and he talks very much about needing a miracle for everything and the steps necessary to make yourself a vessel for it.

I PM'd you.

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement and wisdom.