first off :  thanks for your forum.  I am kinda at the end of the road for this.  I realise now that the reasons for the upset in my life and my unhappy wife is my "harmless" hobby.  Thankfully a few months ago someone "randomly" gave me a Lazer brody cd while I was at our local chabad house.... this CD caused me to listen to more good stuff, and eventually caused me to read 'garden of peace' (I am 2/3 through).  

So, Yom Kippur rolled around and I was very hopeful.  I knew WHY I had to change and knew what would happen if I didn't....  12 years making my wife unhappy would reach it's inevitable conclusion.

Well I had a good few weeks before YK where I was regularly having conversations with myself ... i would start straying and at work I would convince my eyes to behave.  I knew that my wife suffers when I do this. I would say 'thank you Hashem for guarding my eyes" and that was fine.  But at home... opportunity strikes....yet for a short while I resist.  Opportunity comes again: and I resist (but getting weaker).  Yes!  Then after about a week of this I thought... what the heck, yes I've EARNED IT ..and back to square one.

Anyway, I am hoping that this forum and the accountability partners (not quite sure how that works) will help.

I am ashamed to admit I am 2 days clean only.

Dear 5770,

If only people would realize that, in Hashem's eyes, a single fall after Yom Kippur is only a one-time event (after all, you've done Teshuva for all your past falls).  Instead, most people act as if Yom Kippur never happened and is completely down the drain.  Even if a person falls more than once after Yom Kippur, he's starting again with a clean slate, at least if he doesn't completely throw in the towel. 

Tell yourself: I used to engage in this behavior, but I did Teshuva on Yom Kippur, and that's no longer my Derech.  I may stumble and even fall now and then, but, in general, I'm forging a new path.

You have done a great thing today. Something amazing. Something that will help you for years to come. You addmitted defeat. Welcome. If the pain of falling after Yom Kippor pushed you here  then it is a blessing in disguise. Count your blessing. They come in many different shapes and sizes.

Welcome Welcome and good luck

5770.

Welcome, and thankyou for joining us.

Good luck in your struggle.  You've come to the right place!

5770,

First of all, Welcome!

You've already received some great pointers about YK.

Have you read through the GYE handbooks yet? I think there is a lot of good there.

2 days is only? Davka not. Only usually implies lonely and singular, self with no other. Two? Well, that doesn't sound lonely to me.

appreciate the warm welcome!!  better get started with Day 3!

Good luck with the battle. I am also hoping this will improve my marriage.

I am clean for one week and its a constant fight. This is extremely difficult. There is no way I could do this on my own. But I can say that today is easier than yesterday. That does not mean I am cured, I am not close to being cured. You will find this difficult but it can be done. Get a partner, it is very helpful. Feel free to pm me or email me.

Dear 5770,

The end of one road, is often the beginning of a NEW one, no?  :D

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...

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.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

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!

RESOLVE TO GO 90 DAYS

ACHH YOUR YH IS SHUDDERING!!

90 DAYS!! MAKES YOU A TZADDIK!!

YESS YOU WILL CLIMB THE WALLS PULL YOUR HAIR OUT

POST POST POST

BUY A BOTTLE OF WOODFORD

LCHAIM!!!

bardichev

I am on day 3....   i generally do fine for the first week ... then it's not so much a PHYSICAL urge ... (I am not running around the streets out of control or anything) ...  but the YH cooperates with my desire to reward myself ... I convince myself that I have no great urge... so I might as well go ahead anyway - hey i've earned it!    Besides ... all that tension can't be good and probably will cause prostate cancer  (my YH is a fully qualified internet-educated physician as well).

But...my YH also has one more secret weapon:  I have no holy outlet for myself as I have ruthlessly damaged my wife of 12 years with sarcasm, impatience, criticism and of course ... my secret little hobby.    Conjugal visits have therefore been off the agenda for the last six years.

So... part of me wants to believe that if I guard the bris that it will help me be a better husband and (who knows) maybe help fix things....  But the YH reminds me that my 12 years of destroying what little self esteem she had is going to take more than 90 days to fix so I might as well get back to what I know works and is available 24x7!

Anyway, thanks everyone for your inspired words.  And thank u 'blessed, I will take you up on your offer and PM you!!

Dear 5770,

You might not be able to fix everything in 90 days, but you can go a long way towards showing your wife that you're working on yourself in a number of areas.  Things don't have to be perfect in a marriage in order for there to be a sexual relationship.  Also, Rav Goldschmidt writes in Dear Son that the marital relationship can regenerate, much like the liver (a damaged liver can often repair itself, unlike any other organ in the body).  So don't despair.

Two questions: is your intimate relationship on hiatus because you weren't interested, because your wife refused, or both?  Also, does your wife go to Mikvah?

Kedusha wrote on 13 Oct 2009 21:08:


hello Kedusha!

1. not sure how it happened - once the novelty wore off I retreated more deeply into my personal fantasy world.  Net result:   I wasn't interested & she wasn't interested.   She was sad and lonely.....  I was busy with the internet!

2.  Does she go to Mikvah?  No.  She is from a very secular (Israeli) family and allthough when we first met she expressed a strong interest in spirirtuality, my lack of gentlemanly and kind behavior over twelve years killed that desire of her's too... (nice guy, eh?).  ANyway, long story short.... anything too Jewish (or especially chassidish!) really irritates her.  We do a nice shabbos kiddush but all to often that involves stress and argument.  The weird thing is that SOMEHOW i managed to convince her to let our daughter go to the chabad school.  But this also cuases considerable friction as, well, you know.... it's a very small school and other newly-BT parents can be a little (how can I put this politely?) over-enthusiastic... and opinionated.... causing my wife to just loathe them.  ANYWAY I DIGRESS!!!!  Oh  ..... I almost forgot.  No mikvah in town.


 

If you work on the way you treat her (which is not likely to happen without also working on Shemiras Einayim), things can get much better between the two of you.  There are many cases where the husband is Frum and the wife is not, yet the wife agrees to go to Mikvah in order to make the marriage work.  How far is the closest Mikvah?

well, the nearest one is probably 3 hours away. We are a fairly small community here so I will probably not mention where.  And here's the thing: I am not really all that frum, I have to hold back due to my work and my wife.  If I push it I alienate her so I have to tread lightly.  In fact the only thing that is keeping me frum-ish or semi-frum is our daughter who (believe it or not) has a very strong pull to yiddishkeit.  She even gets me to wear tzitzit and kippa as much as she can .... and go to shul... and keeps us 90% shomer shabbos.

At our wedding in israel, my wife didn't go to the mikvah.  she didn't consider herself in need of it (such is the power of a very strict secular upbringing!).  Personally I wasn't bothered (what did I know or care?).  But now I care about these things more.

5770,
Have you read The Garden of Peace by Rav Shalom Arush?  It's a remarkable book, and he deals somewhat with this situation.  I recommend reading the book, but some highlights regarding this issue (as I remember them) are: Don't pressure your wife to be more religious.  Instead, just work on yourself.  At the same time, work on being the best husband that you can (the book gives a lot of advice in that department).  Your wife's reaction (conscious or subconscious) should be: "I don't know what's gotten into my husband!  Ever since he started being more religious, he is so much easier to get along with.  Maybe there is something to this religious stuff!"