What about if I can 'just talk' ?

Comment:
"ive spoken to girls many times without those thoughts goin through my head. and whats the big deal? just like u hold yourself back from talking to them, i hold myself back from acting on it. both are hard. both call for restraint.

Response:
Many things are forbidden by Jewish law. There are actions that one is forbidden to perform, things one is forbidden to say, and thoughts that one is forbidden to entertain. Many forbidden actions are tempting and observance of the prohibitions may be quite challenging, however if the will-power is present one can abstain from action -similarly, one can abstain from speech.

Prohibited thought is often considered to be the hardest to avoid, as where speech and action can be completely halted, the thought process of a human occurs continuously without pause whilst conscious. As long as one is awake, he/she can not simply stop thinking but can only direct the course that their thought follows. Even this direction can at times be challenging, and often when trying not to think about something specific, one tends to find themselves thinking about that particular thing, or at least about not thinking about that thing (which is indirectly still thinking about that thing).

Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (The Classic Guide to Jewish Law) states (ch. 151 par. 2) that any thought that is any way carnal in nature, is prohibited. The continuous and dynamic nature of the human mind means that inappropriate thoughts may enter one’s head involuntarily, and the occurrence of these thoughts is one of man’s challenges and is not a sin as long as one diverts the direction of their thought immediately. However to entertain the thought once it occurs or to voluntarily initiate such thought, is to transgress a prohibition.

In any continuous inter-gender relationship where there is even a slight possibility or mere hypothetical potential for intimate physical interaction, sooner or later an inappropriate thought will pop into one’s head. Even be it a brief, short-lived thought that is entirely unrealistic, because the occurence of the thought is a direct outcome of a scenario the individual has voluntarily chosen to submit themselves to, it could have been avoided and is thus a transgression of the prohibition against carnal thought.

Also, keep in mind that this is all assuming that one will never submit to the temptation for unsanctioned physical interaction. It may seem that one will not ever be realistically tempted to transgress such prohibitions, after all “This is a serious issue, and it is one of those lines that I would never cross.” But many have made this mistake in the past. Every reproductively mature human has an intrinsic unavoidable weakness in this area. As Anonym00kie has pointed out (in a comment to the previous post), the temptation is cumulative and no matter how strong one is, it is only a matter of time before it becomes overpowering. It can happen gradually - over months or even years so that one will never notice it happening, but it is part of the nature of the animal kingdom and it is unavoidable.