slippyslayer101

I know that nobody's posted here for a while, but I'm just disgusted at what I'm seeing and can't help but say something! I don't care if overindulging works or not- it's wrong either way!!! Listen to yourselves!!! Do you really want to stand before the Lord with all that filth in your mind, and try to explain to Him why you thought it was okay to purposefully sin over and over again? Libido is a desirable characteristic? You wouldn't even consider for a moment taking a woman with a low libido? Good riddance! Sex means NOTHING from an eternal perspective. And from a temporal perspective, it should mean next to nothing if you have a marriage based on what actually matters! That's disgusting that you would take that into account when choosing an eternal companion! And as far as decreased testosterone levels being your way out of your masturbation problems, if that's the real reason why you gave it up then you shouldn't mention it. I am struggling with masturbation and Id like to say that first of all I'm about to get OFF a medicine that made it easier not to masturbate because I want to ACTUALLY overcome the problem, not cheat my way out of it! Second, you're making the situation sound hopeless. He asked how people had overcome masturbation and pornography, and the only people who had "overcome" it who responded were a guy suggesting the best way out is to find some way to decrease your testosterone levels, and, worse, a guy telling him to just give up on overcoming it and wait till he loses interest because he's done it so much. I really wish there was ANYONE on this site who would actually share a story of how they overcame the problem for real!

I am so sorry because I know exactly what you are going through! It's so hard to overcome. I'm 18 and I've struggled off and on with these sexual sins since I was about 10. I just got back from attending an addiction recovery program meeting. While most of the addictions people were going through there sounded much worse than mine, it was still nice to hear from others. You don't even have to talk yourself. While I have asperger's and often have a hard time "feeling the spirit," I definitely felt good there. I felt like there was hope for me. Also, be sure to recognize that overcoming this takes more than just willpower. For years I believed that while it was important to pray for help, it was essentially something I'd have to overcome by punishing myself more and more every time I did it. Now I've learned that I need to chop away at the root causes of the problem by letting the Holy Ghost enter my heart. Rather than being critical of the repetitive talks I always hear at church, I decided on Sunday to be more humble and see if there were things I could take out of them. While I didn't hear anything new, I still felt a lot more like I had the holy Ghost with me. And you will probably need the Holy Ghost to overcome this, if you're as addicted to it as I am/was (not sure if I've overcome it now, only time will tell).

Thank you everyone for your insights!

Hi, I'm an 18-year-old freshman at BYU and I have questioned my faith a lot over the past couple years. I apologize in advance if I come off sounding like a jerk who is trying to discredit the Church by being overskeptical (if that's even a word). I absolutely want to believe it is true, and I do still think there's a very good chance it is. I'm glad I found this site so I can ask some of the questions I've been having and hear answers from people who don't know me and won't judge me. Possibly my biggest question about the LDS Church is what the role of a prophet is. I've lost some faith in our prophets as I've learned about the things prophets have said in the past. I know the typical responses are that what they said was just their opinion, or that policy is different than doctrine. But what nobody seems able to answer then is how you're supposed to determine what is revelation and what isn't. If a prophet says something like that blacks will never hold the Priesthood, and this turns out to be false, it looks suspicious for us to just brush it off as a mere opinion when the people at the time took it to be revelation from a prophet of God. I read an article on staylds.com (which may not be the most trustworthy site as some of its members think pornography isn't actually a sin, but still...) about what is official doctrine and what isn't, and I thought it was a great article that laid things out neatly for me. But after reading it, I'm thinking "well, if there are only six times where we know for sure it was revelation, then what exactly was the purpose of the prophets that never received any official doctrine?" Some might say that their conference talks contain revelation hidden in them, but what would be the point of said revelation if it was so surrounded by personal opinions that I couldn't help but brush it off? How can I take all the talk about preserving marriage between a man and woman seriously if I know that Joseph Fielding Smith said man would never set foot on the moon? JUST WHAT IS A PROPHET?!? Also, this isn't really part of the question, but it bothers me when the General Authorities make somewhat anti-intellectual arguments for the truthfulness of the LDS Church. I just can't buy into claims like, "The Book of Mormon teaches good lessons so it must be true because a wicked man couldn't make it up." I think what would help me is if I had a better idea of what Thomas S. Monson does for the church on a daily basis. I understand that he is a busy man, so what exactly are his duties (besides giving talks at General Conference)? I haven't been able to find much information about this anywhere so I'd appreciate anything anyone knows about this. Again, please don't judge me. I don't want to sound like a jerk, I'm really just a desperate college kid who isn't having a great life and needs this gospel to be true. Questioning it is just in my nature I guess. It's the same thing with my political views, they've just been all over the place because I feel a need to see things from both sides. I really wish I didn't have these "critical thinking skills" or whatever you want to call them.