See I have a rule whenever I was shidduch dating a girl I couldn't allow myself to fall. I thought that when I eventually got married that it would cure my problem. So instituted this rule in order prove to myself that my logic was sound. That the fact that I had someone in my life who was interested in me and who was under the impression while dating me that I was a "good normal guy" made me instill this rule upon myself.

i was dating this one girl for five weeks and things were getting serious. In my mind she was perfect for me, great middos, kind, caring, spiritual, and beautiful.  I had to leave her for two weeks and head back to New  York to finish my semester off. She told me she didn't won't me to go, i told her  "i had to". One night while studying late into the am's my yetzer hara flared up. I beat it a couple of times because I told myself that if I messed up, I would loose her. I was giving myself a choice (as crazy and illogical as the choice may seem) Her, the girl who i wanted to spend the rest of my life with, or ,lust. I messed up that night. The next day she called me and told me that she couldn't come to New York for the following shabbos. That following motzi shabbos she told me she wanted a 2 week break in order to decided if I was the right one for her. After the 2 week break, 4 weeks since I last saw her she called me and decided that I wasn't the right one for her. Crushed is an understatement to how i felt. I know that everything that g-d does is for a reason, sometimes we think we understand why and other times we just have faith. I hope from this experience that i went through and the effect it had on me that I will learn through the help of this website to beat my addiction once and for all it won't be easy, but alternative of giving up or not putting forth proper effort aka "GYE", will lead me to a path of pain and sorrow.

Hello, Fire,

Welcome to the GuardYourEyes Community!

You are making a smart choice in joining us before it is too late. (BTW, as long as you are alive it is not 'too late' yet ;D )


Do you realize that your second sentence is a misconception?

Marriage will NOT change anything!    YOU will change it!    Or rather, you will change!



Am I talking in riddles?  Stick around here & you will understand what I mean.


Keep growing & moving forward.

Keep reading & posting. Take part in our group. The benefits are enormous!

Dear Fire,

Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

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!

First timer
Im also new here, but I wanted to give back a little to the forum which has already given me so much. I was where you are over 20 years ago. Marriage didnt change a thing. Thinking that by controling myself or not controlling myself I was causing things to work out or to be destroyed also didnt help. Im sorry to depress you, it is quite depressing, but so far nothing has helped. Except for this website. It helped for a day. and tomorrow is another day. Keep in touch and we'll get through this together.

Welcome Fire.  My experience is, and every veterano on this cite affirms, that there's no beating this addiction.  All of us here are lust addicts.  And even though things can settle down, and we come closer to Hashem, and begin doing for and thinking about others, and even though we don't act out for very long amounts of time, today I find myself gazing, completely unconscious. 

So we try to take this a day at a time.  We learn to notice things, about ourselves and about our addiction, and about our relationship to Hashem and to others.

This is not an easy journey.  But there are so many wonderful guys here, so many goofballs and rebeim, and goofball rabeim, that the going is more gentle than you might imagine.

I wish you closeness to Hashem that you know He's there right next to you.  Like He's in the room.  And when we give ourselves to Him, then we know real love, what we look for in our lust.

I've been married and divorced three times.  Marriage doesn't change a thing, because it's "out there", and this is an "in here" kind of heartache.

You are blessed if what brings you to this wonderful place is the loss of a potential kallah.  Read the threads around here.  You'll read about guys who lost wives, families, careers, freedom, and came within a hairsbreadth of losing their lives.  You are blessed.  Take advantage of this blessing.  You will change your whole sense of yourself,  And it will show on your face, in your body language, in your voice, in your eyes, and Be"zrat "H you will be given another tzadekkes, and life will be good for her and her humbled husband.

hatzlacha.

1daat wrote on 15 Feb 2011 04:52:


Amen to that!!
Reb Yid here.
Yes. I am one of those "goofball Rabeiim" that 1 daat was referring to.
Enjoy the site and the chizuk from the guys. But please understand that like any addiction, a support group and a strong conviction are usually not enough. Be honest with yourself. If you are not having success with the forum and 90 chart by themselves, enroll in a 12 step or SA program. If you are here to change your life, you must understand that sacrifices must be made - sometimes big sacrifices.
One last thing. This is an addiction. The more it gets, the more it wants. You can't beat it half way. No such thing. Be committed for the long hall, and don't give up after minor successes. Use baby steps. Take your lumps. And if you should fall, be happy that you got so far BUT DON'T BE SATISFIED!! Always strive for more.
May your journey end you off at your long awaited final destination!!
Hatzlocha!!

First- of all brocho v'hatzlocho in all your endeavors!
Second - don't look at the loss of this girl as a "punishment"
perhaps a sign-- take it as such
third- there is alot of material on this site that can help you understand yourself-
you are not "bad" or "worthless" you DO have the potential to get over
your addiction- not thru marriage but via the many ways Hashem will
show you-
You have a neshama a part of Hashem and have the power
to get where you need to go
hopefully you will take these steps & stay away from your Y"H
your improved self will be able to have a better relationship with your real "b'shert"

What wonderful posts!

I have nothing to add, except -
[move][size=64pt][glow=red,2,300]Welcome!

thank u all for the nice welcomes. it really meant a lot to me. With enough hard work and support we will that much closer to our goal.  .....

Where have you been??  Do you normally have acess to the internet or is it just sporadic?? What has been going on as of late?

yah i have access to the internet daily, I have been trying to stay clean through reading the daily emails and reminding myself of some of the sad stories that wives of addicts have posted. see I'm dating now and really want to get a handle on my addictions now before it could be (chusvesholom) my wife reaching out for support due to of my addictions. I recently installed a filter and i had the password but i made it a numerical password so that it would be a wall against me. but that didn't work. so i changed my passoword and email address through a friend. how about urself (risingup) whats ur story?

I'm actually going to start dating pretty soon and I have the same aspirations as you do.  I don't want to have this addiction when I get married.  In fact, since I have not started to date yet, I have not put any thought into what type of girl I want (and people ask me all the time, when they want to set me up with someone) specifically because I do not want my ideal for a wife to be skewed by my view of women in the throes of addiction.  I want my mind to be as clear as possible BEFORE I put any thought into the matter.  I know that some people have told me that I should put some more thought into the matter (not that they know WHY I haven't thought about it, I just tell them that I haven't thought about it) since "You can't just decide all these things in one day when it comes to shidduchim".  But in truth , if one is in confident in something, as I hope to be in a few months, one can make a decision based upon the way he feels (since he is confident; this is the very definition of confidence).

Welcome! Accepting that you have a problem is always the first step, and realizing that it's worthwhile to work on now is a wonderful thing.

I would point one thing out - if losing this girl is the wakeup call you need to move forward, then maybe that is why hashem put her in your life, and all the stress and pain of losing her would be well worth it if it sets you on the path of freedom.

Rising up, just some datinginsights, it is hard to know what specific personality traits that a girl possess will best match yours. You can put some thought into it, and try ur best to find out and and make sure that u share roughly the same haskafah, but in the end its mostly trial and error to see what traits u are looking for. For example, do u know if u want someone more shy or outgoing? u might think u want an shy type but when ur on the date and u realize that she is more outgoing u might realize that "outgoingness" is even more preferable then u thought. As well,just bec it says something on paper doesn't mean she is that.

but back to the issue. rising up what would u do if u can't break this addiction? would u start dating anyways? and can u describe how ur idea of confidence works? is it confidence that u can break this addiction? or ...?

p.s - i hope what i wrote make sense my head feels a little fuzz right now. (not sure why)

have a good shabbos.

I see your point on the Trial & Error part of dating.  I happen to have a Rebbe who is very supportive of such an attitude (though not if done so blatantly-as in: dating anyone that comes up). 

When I say confidence (mind you, the questions that you have posed are very poignant), I am referring to the confidence of making dating decisions based on what type of love relationship I wish to pursue, as opposed to what type of lust-relationship I am going after.

If I weren't to break this addiction, I would break this addiction. It's that simple.  I do not believe in moving on to the next stage before completing the previous one.  And far be it from me (I am not trying to sound negative over here, in case it comes out that way) to decide what is halachikly right, and those that are competent in such matters may respond to this, but I feel that although marriage is so vital to our fulfilling Hashem's will, I do not think that Hashem in any intended for me to have a lust relationship.  I think (in my unqualified opinion) that Hashem would rather me not EVER get married then do so if it were just for the sake of lust (although I am not perfect, surprise! so I do not think that he expects me to take lust out of the picture completely).