I am a regular frum 30 years old guy, married with kids b’h.  I started masturbating at 16, I remember acting out for years as a bochur promising and trying to stop every single time and was convinced that marriage is the solution to the problem.  I got engaged, masturbated through my engagement and not long after I got married I was at it again.    I started working for a company and had my own office with 56k dail up internet, for about two years I didn’t dare go on the internet but then one day I broke that line at work and watched something dirty and from that day on, I must of spent 3 or 4 hours a day, sometimes even the entire day at work slowly downloading images and videos over the internet.  We finally got high speed internet with a filter, so I spent hours finding sited that the filter didn’t block. The reasons and excuses were plenty, if only my wife were better looking, much skinnier, if only she wore something a little more slinky, if only I had a job where I wasn’t give my own room the whole dam day etc. 

Over 9 years of marriage, breaking many red lines and continuing to spend my days on the internet and acting out, obsessed with women and fantasies.  I made charts to try curve the acting out pattern, promised  not to act out a certain hour of the day,  ripped up money every time I acted out, tried waiting 10 minutes before acting out, tikkun klali, mikva, made a thousands of different kabbolos, not one worked even once.    I went to 3 different therapists, 2 rabbonim and finally SA over a period of almost 3 years and I was only getting worse, never better.

Fast forward to today, I act out a lot these days, more than I ever did.  I just can’t stop.  I still go to SA meetings and talk one therapist, the only one that understands addiction well.  I have come to accept that I have an addiction, a real problem.  Call it a disease or illness or whatever but it ain’t my fault anymore.  I am dying to stop doing this to myself, I have had some period of sobriety, a month, a week here a week there and they are so delicious, so full of life, full of energy.  I spent time with my wife, my kids, get some real work done, I give my wife the attention she needs, it feels so good.  But then I dump everything for I have by acting out again and again, it would be so funny if it wasn’t so sad.  How I trade masturbating, some stupid boring porn that I don’t even enjoy anymore for living real life.  It just doesn’t  make sense, yet I do it over and over again.

If going to SA and talking to this therapist has helped me at all, it is the realization that sex is not my problem, I have heard it many times but finally came to accept it.  My problem is facing life, I have an inherent fear of life, fear of real feelings and a fear of facing them.  By now, I know what some of those fears are but many I don’t.    Because of this fear, I have an extremely strong need to isolate all the time, I spend almost all of my evening hours in my office, not to work, just because I want to get away from life.  I would rather watch a movie alone in my office alone than at home with my wife because I need the isolation, I feel comfortable in my office, with my computer and internet.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told my wife I need to leave early for night seder just because I wanted to run to my office.  I have a very special wife who is extremely good to me (yes, she is not perfect and also nowhere near as skinny as I would like her to be), beautiful children ka’h, my own new business that has lots of potential if only I didn’t spend all my time on the internet.  There is nothing going wrong in my world, everything is going really well thanks to hashem, but I am so full of running away all the time from everything, I wish I knew why.

My therapist claims, that acting out is my lifeline, I have been using it for years as a means of controlling my fears, as a way of managing and I can’t just give it all up, it’s pure survival for me.  He says I need to stop focusing on acting out and begin focusing on how I feel, on my fears on trusting life and the acting out will eventually stop.

Anyway, enough shame and embarrassment for now.  I never share in SA, I never talk at meetings either, I walk in and out.  I have a problem opening up to other people, afraid what others with think etc.

I will bli neder post my feeling every day on this forum, focusing on honesty and what is going on in my life that day and not thinking about what you strangers think of me.

I sense true honesty in this story, Moshe. I would say throughout my life Ive never had REAL TRUE honesrty until I wrote my story.

Its great to have you aboard.

-Yiddle

Pure gold in just three short sentences. Would someone teach me how to do that, please?

Hey MosheF, it's the Ohr Hachayim's Yartzeit again.

www.guardyoureyes.org/?p=2045

I promised to post every day but I have nothing to post.  Yes, I acted out this morning but I have no idea why.  Things are bothering me, my work is something I run away from and am really afraid because it's not really going that well recently. 

Hey Reb Moshe, I wonder if the method discussed in today's chizuk e-mail (#805) might work for you... You never know.

MosheF wrote on 25 Jun 2010 14:23:
Now, that's more like it!! May Hashem help you and me and all of us care enough about ourselves in the really important things, that we do whatever is necessary to get them. Like sobriety and sanity. Doing repetitive and cyclical crazy and destructive stuff is what crazy people do. So we are insane, too. May he restore our sanity so we might be really useful for a change!

Love (really),

Dov

dov wrote on 28 Jun 2010 05:37:


If you want the only real reason why I act out, it's going to take at least a few weeks, there are resentments, fears and many other feelings that make me act out.   

The reason that doesn't make sense is because I have the need to do it, because I have a compulsion and obsession to look at women and watch porn and then masturbate, it feels good even though i hate it. 

MosheF wrote on 28 Jun 2010 19:18:


You are almost saying what I hoped to hear.

Resentments, fears, etc., cannot produce lust...what is wrong with you that you turn to lust and cannot successfully quit?  What is the single most important basic fact about yourself that describes why you have this compulsion to look, etc?

I have had to answer this, and occasionally need to re=answer it. It is quite simple and powerful. Nu?

Dov, I'd love to hear your answer.  Is it "I have a disease called addiction and I am powerless over it"?  Or are you after something else?

I think Dov just wants him to say "I'm a sex addict".

I am a sex addict!! there, I said it.  That was easy, a few years ago it was hard because I didn't believe it but now i believe it and fully accept it.  The challenge now is doing something about it.

MosheF wrote on 30 Jun 2010 00:38:

Congratulations. 
MosheF wrote on 30 Jun 2010 00:38:

A good portion of the challenge is won when you've recognized that you are a sex addict.  Although, I would say there is still a little piece missing, because I suppose that some sex addicts are perfectly happy being sex addicts.  The second part of the first step is coming to the recognition that your life is unmanageable as a sex addict.  You may have intimated that just by being here.  But you may want to say it as well.
May we all meet the challenge together successfully

www.guardyoureyes.org/forum/index.php?topic=2705.msg72606#msg72606

Dear Moshe,

Ditto on the congratulations.

"The challenge now is doing something about it," you say. Bear with me please, as I am not arguing with you at all, and some of what I will say seems to be paradoxical. Sorry about that, but here goes...

If I really could do something about it, I'd have done it years earlier! How about you? Is it just new info, or techniques that we need? I think not. Unless you call quitting the eternal escape from the simple truth about ourselves "info" (...technically it is, I guess). Admitting that as I am, I am really unable to win - that all the inspiration in the world will not 'do it' for me...is that "doing something about it? Not in the way we are used to. It doesn't sound like "self-help" to me. But, as I understand it, it is precisely the 1st answer offered to addicts by the program.

Funny...the flip side of this is how many of us act out with our lust! I remember that my search for the porn, etc., was never a peaceful, calm endeavor. No, it was a relentless and eager search for 'the best image', the prettiest, warmest, most inviting fantasy I could get my hands on. "This one  - if I can only get it right! - will save me...maybe it'll fix me up for good and I'll finally be satisfied." The taa'va was not really for pleasure, it was for some sort of salvation. Can you relate?

So, it's funny, no? The way we acted out with our lust, is the same way we tried (and failed) to stop! No wonder it can't work.

For me, 'surrender' means 'hachno'oh'. It requires a broken heart - meaning, my will needs to be broken. I need to come to see that what I have been depending on to 'make it' - both in acting out with lust and with quitting/controlling it, is my problem itself. I do not have the ability to succeed at using lust, and I do not have the power to succeed at quitting, either.

OK, so a bunch of the guys out there on the rest of GYE who are honestly trying to beat this stuff with chizzuk, inspiration, and what they call t'shuva, will say this is craziness, or even apikorsus. They see such thoughts as 'giving up'. To be honest with you, such a perspective never even occurred to me in my wildest dreams (which are pretty wild, being a lust addict...but we won't go there ;D). I always knew in my heart - especially in the throes of giving in to my lust, R"l - that I was truly given over to this lust thing; that it was way more powerful than I. And that has not changed, of course. When did I suddenly get stronger ? A tall order even for my imagination!

So then, what has changed?

All that has really changed is that (due to lots of humiliation) I finally admitted to myself  that as I am (and will probably always be) I am subject to this insanity. I have an allergy that I cannot cure, and that it will carry me away again as it always has. And that my life cannot succeed the way things are.

Maybe there is another way out, make oaths, RR, hypnosis, shots, acupuncture, whatever...but as I am I cannot make it. I need help.

One last thing. One of the beauties of the program is this: Many people (especially men) tend to think in terms of solving problems. So while we are writing our 1st and 4th steps, or whenever we think or write about our problems or what is messed up in us, we want to see it all in the context of a way out, or solution. This is horrible for me. Take the 4th step, for example: We write out all the wackiness in us, quite a list...then tell it over to another person...then become ready to get rid of all the wackiness...then we ask Hashem to fix us up.

What's going on here?

As soon as I become aware of the ugliness in me, I should be disgusted by it, ashamed, and try to solve it - to get rid of it. Particularly if it is an aveiro! To hold onto it may mean that I really don't mind it, and that'd be bad, no?
But that is not the way this program works, it seems. There are separate steps, which must remain separate: First I admit my mishegaas - ad mokon sh'yadi maga'as. I must sit with the truth for a while. Running from it immediately - call it t'shuvah I don't care - it is still running from it! I need to 'try the truth on like a shirt' for it to be part of me - walk around for a while getting used to the facts about me. After all, it has been the truth about me for years, decades, forever maybe...it's time I faced it instead of fooling myself, as I always have, that if only I run fast enough from my self-centered greed, fear, pride, and  it will not catch up with me. That is not what Chazal mean when they say k'boreyach min ha'Eish! Their point is not just 'running' - but running in the right direction. If my entire house is on fire I cannot just run into another room...I need to leave the house. When we learn more or daven harder, make more money, try to have better or more satisfying sex (yup! that was innocent, too), do more chessed, or more kiruv rechokim - instead of getting free of our lusting - we were just running into a different room! We were convincing ourselves that we are not so bad after all. Till the fire spread into that room, too. That was enabling, not healing. Eventually, our jobs, families, religion, they all caught fire, too. Eventually nothing is left - fire is nasty and doesn't care.  And that's how some folks finally come to recovery.

The 1st step is our way of saying "enough running and playing games. There is no way out, so I need a power greater than myself to do some lind of trick get me out of this impossible bind I got myself into. And I need Him to do it for free, cuz I ain't got nuthin' to pay. Well, we do really have 'something'...and that is where the 2nd and third steps come in...but that's cheating, so shashhhhh!

Choser chasirah mitachas l'Kisei K'vodo. Sounds kind of tricky, no? He can do those kind of things...He's the Owner and no one can ask Him, "mah ta'aseh - who gives You the right to do that!?"

The most precious words I ever 'heard' at the meetings were silent, "It's gonna be OK." The drunks tell us that it only depends on our honesty, openness, and acceptance.

Hatzlocha.

ur-a-jew wrote on 30 Jun 2010 15:24:


dov wrote on 30 Jun 2010 15:54:



So the first part is admitting I am a sex addict.  The second part is that my life has become unmanageable.

My life is so unmanageable by my acting out that I can no longer act as a husband or father.  I ignore my family, run away from them whenever possible and hate to hang around my house because my computer is not at home but in my office.  I do not look forward to being with my wife  in bed because acting out is so much simpler, I don’t need to give my porn star any attention, she doesn’t ask for me to listen and doesn’t get upset when I interrupt her.  I can just act out and shut the computer.  I can’t look forward to my wife when I act out three times the same day.

My life is so unnamable that I start a business but instead of working with the challenges that every new business faces, I sit on my computer for hours on end watching porn, videos and wasting time because I can’t face a challenge, and then I cry that I’m losing money.

My life is unmanageable because my acting out has led me to drop almost 100% of my ruchniyus and he guilt is killing me.

There is more but for another time.