Hi I am Stu and I am an addict!

I am married 10 + years with kids B”H and have realized many times in the past few years how this addiction is controlling me and making my life unmanageable at times. 
Like many it all started when I was 12-13 and discovered mbtn.  This continued through high school and my teens using cable TV, porno videos, magazines and plain fantasies as a stimulus. I used to wait and stay up late Sat night watching the dirty movies in a foreign language.  If that particular night’s movie was not an “adult” film, I would switch to the pay channel that was fuzzed out, but trying to make out the blurry naked body figures. 

I got married in my twenties and figured that would be the end of my lust problems.  Although we had (and still do) a very healthy bed life, I am still struggling in this area.  Particularly when she is a nida and asur to me, I fall.  Not only would I sometimes mbt, but many times I ended up trying to mess around with her during the wrong time of the month.  (I have made improvements in this area recently).  Whenever I know that any day she’s going to be asur I would get very nervous; always trying to chap one more time, knowing that I would have a difficult subsequent 2 weeks.  You could imagine how I felt before she would give birth!  Although this is not necessarily wrong, it just doesn’t seem the right reason to have sex, i.e. better do it now because it will be a while until you can do it again.

Ok now let’s move on to the real problem – internet.  The last few years I’ve been victimized by porn on the internet.  Several times I would spend hours and hours looking and looking and more looking without being able to stop.  Sound familiar anyone?  I would be up to the wee hours of the morning, sometimes with my wife or even kids sleeping in the same room.  Although each time I said ok just one more click or until the battery dies, I would have the strength to continue, plug it in and continue until orgasm.  The weird thing is that even though I feel like such a yutz going to sleep at 2am, somehow I would be able to get out of bed five hours later to make it to a 7.30 minyan on a Sunday morning!  Why bother after what I just did? 

Perhaps what even bothers me more is that I’ve acted out many many times at work also.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t have my own private office where I could get away with this.  I can’t count how many days where I mamesh just wasted the whole afternoon looking at porn.  My productivity without a doubt suffers and somehow I get away with it.  If I was my employer I would have fired myself a long time ago. My emunah is that professionally I am not as advanced as I should be because of my addiction.
Of course after wasting a day at work and staying late to look at porn, I would come home grumpy, irritable and even depressed to my wife and kids.  It’s really not fair when my wife calls me in the middle of watching something asking what time I am coming home and I tell her I am busy and have a lot of work to finish.

I tried to justify that this only occurs when I am not together with my wife, but realize that’s not true.  It happens all the time.  Why do I do these things?  Most of the time I think its due to boredom, feeling yucky and tired of the work.  But sometimes even when I have a lot of (non boring) work to complete I drop the work and lust out.  I guess its just an escape of dealing with life and reality.

About 1 ? years ago right after Succos after acting out following such a high of the Yom Tov season, I really realized I needed help and came to GYE.  I think I am making progress, but I am probably far from being cured.  On one hand its encouraging to see that so many others have the same problems and even done worse things than me (I never done anything live or illegal).  On the other hand I see many people succeeding, but I am not there yet.
What have I done?  I started (and still do) read the Chizuk e-mails on a daily basis.  After time I continued to look at porn, so I took the next step and installed the K9 filter on my home and work computer.  This helped until I found a way to watch porn on Google video that K9 didn’t filter.  After a while it did start to filter.  Then I started to watch inappropriate youtube videos. Although it wasn’t technically nudity or porn it’s pretty close to it and we all know it’s wrong.  I occasionally joined Elya’s phone conference, but it’s difficult with no follow up or sponsors to communicate with.  I don’t post too much on these blogs as I find the site very big and hard to manage to keep up with everything.

I did confide with my wife my problem at one point when I had some sobriety under my belt (not necessarily with all the above details, though).  It has helped a bit, but I don’t really feel comfortable discussing with it her now.  Mainly because I think she thinks I am a lot cleaner than I am.  Occasionally she asks me if I am “kosher” lately and I would tell her yes if I am, and try to brush off the question if I am not (that’s my way of keeping honest?)

Overall I go through occasional periods of 3-4 weeks clean but time after time I would find some way to fall.  My latest nisayon is my blackberry.  Even though I had it for 2 ? years, a couple months ago for some reason I caved and just started using it for porn.  Oh yeah the reason is that my phone carrier upgraded my data package to 500 mg from 4 mg.  Before I was always nervous of surfing the net fearing I would go over my limit, now I don’t have to worry about it.  I tried getting a lower data package, but 500 is the minimum.  I looked into J-net as a filter, but it’s not compatible with my package.

About a month ago I stated chatting with another GYE member and it has helped a lot.  This past month was the first time that I could remember in YEARS that I was clean during the entire period (no pun intended) that I wasn’t together with my wife.  I’ve also been making a progress in not looking at the ladies in the street.  (I hope to post more details on this in a later post when I have time).  Although I did have a fall this week (stupid blackberry) I am hopping it’s just a little bump in the road.

I am not sure if this is what was intended to be written and apologize if my rant went on too long.  I don’t like deep thinking too much, but I just like to leave with two thoughts/questions of why I or we continue to look when we’re trying to stop;
a) I am just viewing this because she is so pretty and beautiful.  Sometimes I hear myself justifying continuing to enjoy the picture as it’s a creation of Hashem.  Am I crazy for thinking this or is that the yetzer hora talking to me?
b) Self control.  Isn’t it just a matter of controlling our self control to say enough is enough?  I know that once I start I can’t stop.  Why can’t we put a gage on this self control?