This is my first post.
I've been on GYE for 3 months and I'm BE"H 62 days clean. First time in many many years.
I've read lots of posts on the forum and watched F2F. Wanted to introduce myself and join the Chusheva Olam on GYE.
With tears in my eyes - GYE HAS SAVED MY LIFE. I have never felt this great in my life before.
First heard of GYE when I saw a fundraising ad video the day after Rosh Hashana. Thank you Hashem!
To say the least.. I was surprised there are other people struggling with looking at pornography and masturbation. I was always under the false assumption that only those less in yiddishkeit do this stuff, but someone like myself who is a 'regular normal guy' - never! I'm the only one.
Seeing on GYE that so many other regular people struggle in these areas, has provided me with a sense of calmness and makes the fight easier. I now feel my struggles are normal. My urges are normal. We all work hard to control ourselves. I'm not alone.
I'm married with children B"H. I'm a respected Ben Torah in my community. I B"H have a parnasa and a 'klei kodesh' position which people look up to. I struggled with my urges, porn and masturbation for many years since I was a young child. Throughout the years, a majority of the time I had no easy access to the internet, so my falls were limited to urges from seeing provocative frum women and masturbation. However, once I went to work and had easy access to the internet, I fell many many times, watching porn and masturbating. There were different tekufos of having a filter (at times not working for a while and just let it stay that way). For a while already I have a great working filter, but when I have strong urges, I know how to (with hard work) 'find' and 'search' for porn and masturbate. I've never done anything beyond P and M. Was too scared of getting caught.
I'll try posting later what works for me.
