It lets me experience the lady world, and i have not had a SO. It is a bit of a substitute.
It lets me experience the lady world, and i have not had a SO. It is a bit of a substitute.
It started out with empowering me to be myself but ended up being mostly for other people, so I stopped and just became myself.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning
Hello Sarah!
I get to be somebody completely different then I really am as a male business owner. I get to be a woman that loves fashion and talks endlessly about it. I get to hug, make hand gestures, feel fabric, look fabulous, and try out fashions to my heart content. From my perfect toenails, fake silicone breasts, shapewear, to the fashionably cut wig I'm a fake woman. However, I'm the absolute best woman that I can be. I love the comments about my hair, that I'm pretty, that my outfit is terrific.....I'm an attention whxxe and the best woman that I can be. Because I'm the best that I can be, I'm relaxed, comfortable, I go out in public and a completely different person then the guy that is running his business. It really is much better then having to take Valium!
Charlie
For me, it is a lot of self-exploration. I was a military brat and had a lot of fitting in issues growing up. So I became a conformist and did everything I could to not stick out. This meant that I didn't do a lot of self-discovery and probably never was completely the person I could have been.
One of the benefits of my dressing is that it has become an outlet for me to explore who I want to be and parts of me that I normally don't let out. So, in a nutshell, it nourishes my real self.
I crossdress because I like it. Ive had a lot of psychological trauma in my life but there is now way in hell my father created something as beautiful internally and externally as Vikki. When did "Because I like it" seize to be a sufficient answer?
Vikki,
"Because I like it" is a great answer. So are "It makes me feel good", "I feel sexy when I dress" or "It's better than hating myself."
I asked the question to get a handle on the positives. We need to define ourselves by the good we experience and the pleasure our crossdressing brings to our lives. I like it too. In fact, I like it a lot.
Sarah
Being transgender isn't a lifestyle choice. How you deal with it is.
"We need to define ourselves."
WHY?
CD'ing gives me a sense of euphoria that cannot be explained. It's a high, it's an addiction, it's anything you want it to be a more. I love the way I feel when I go out as a girl, I love being treated like one. To have men bend over backwards to please you. (only one instance of this, but hey, I'm not complaining.) I feel complete and at ease with myself.
However, in this time, things are becoming widely acceptable that a lot of people 30, 20, even 10 years ago would have been completely and totally outrageous. It just seems people don't care anymore, unless you look completely like a drag-queen, no one's going to care. But, even if someone does find out, this is what makes me, and possibly everyone here as a whole, complete and happy. And this is the question i pose to anyone who finds out my dirty little secret: Can honestly tell me that your as happy as I am with my life?
I've only had to use this once when i was going to a friend's house as my counterpart, he took one look at me and called me a bad word fag. (back when Jamie (the counterpart) was fairly new and i knew nothing of the culture.) I turned, looked at him and asked him as politely as I could, "Are you as happy with your life as i am right now?" He looked down, scratched the back of his head, mumbled no and left.
Different strokes for different folks, Personally as someone who lives on both sides of the coin, if it makes you happy, why care?
When I acknowledge my feminine side I love myself more, I take care of my body
more. I feel more connected with my inner self and the stress of daily living seems
to be less harsh. Almost like it takes the edge off the stress and pain. Even though I
would never change my gender physically, I sometimes feel a lot more girly than manly.
Barbie Girl in a Barbie World
"loves tights"
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
What does my Crossdressing nourish?
Crossdressing is one of the vehicles that is helping me to come to my own personal Self-actualization. http://psychology.about.com/od/theor...chyneeds_2.htm
I had always been so very much a conformist, fearing what others think of me. Learning to just accept myself just as I am without letting that fear cripple me, has helped me gain so much more self-esteem than I ever had. To be able to have an opinion that can be different than others, to take a stand for what I believe in the face of others calling me names, etc (which really hasn't happened, anywhere near as much as I feared).
Accepting my crossdressing and learning to be OK with myself just as I am, has very much helped me to gain much more of a healthy sense of self I never had while growing up.
Joni
"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free" Bob Dylan
One thing that I especially notice is my relationship to my body. I've always felt a little awkward and self conscious as a man. As Sally I feel more graceful. But even more than that I am more in tune with my body. I enjoy the sensations of movement, textures, and temperature much more. It helps that my body image is much more positive as Sally. I am also much more comfortable with touching other people (in a non sexual way). Hugging, touching their arms to direct their attention, enjoying a laugh together. It's all so different from the isolated male behavior that is the norm.
Sally
For me dressing gives me a feeling of being free to be my true self at last, so it helps my self-esteem. It also enhances some of the traits that I have always had due to my transgender such as compassion and the ability to listen actively to what someone is saying, but most of all it is about being me.
When I have to go back to pretending to be "him", I find I am more depressed, less able to express my innermost being and therefore more likely to become impatient.
Check out this link if you are wondering about joining Safe Haven.
This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any
Galileo said "You cannot teach a man anything" and they accuse ME of being sexist
Never ascribe to malice that which can be easily explained by sheer stupidity
I use to scare myself to death. Seeing myself dressed from head to
toe enfemme, staring at my reflection in my full length mirror and wondering,
who the hell is this person staring back at me.Why is he doing this and
what led him to it? What compulsion and what category.Sorry Dana, but
no answer ever came.What my crossdressing nourishes is my lack of
control and my absence of immediate resolve.
sometimes my balls ache for pantyhose............dana.
I guess it nourishes a lot of things inside me. I do not feel the subtle sense of awkwardness, fear or sometimes anger that I often feel when I am in bob mode. I just generally feel a lot more relaxed, (much more) confident and comfortable with myself. I feel more spontaneous, more cheerful, more honest about myself and more comfortable with my appearence.
It's just a shame that I rarely go out en femme (I find a lot of social situations awkward enough in bob mode without having to explain myself to anyone who asks, comments or even raises an eyebrow or worry whether I "pass" or not).
It definitely nourishes my sense of being a whole person. I have a fairly stressful management career with many staff and changing into my feminine self on the outside helps to reflect what I want to become on the inside with them. I am not "the boss" at home (a good start) but it is so comforting to me to let the rest of me out by dressing, checking out you folks on this forum and pushing the femme boundary in my personal life....Dee
CDing does fulfill some psychological needs in me, but in several different ways.
As I mentioned when I joined the forums, I've always been interested in gender identity and representation. CDing then, in turn, affects how people see me as and it's interesting to me how people react to something they're not familiar with. Often times when I'm en femme, I deliberately "let go" of a non-feminine aspect of me and see how people react, not knowing that I'm observing their reactions intently.
One other reason why I CD is to "test" certain qualities and aspects of myself that are untapped so that I'm able to evaluate myself in an objective manner as a boy and see if I'd like to adapt that attitude to my boy self. This very utilitarian way of viewing CDing has helped me discover things about myself that I would never know were possible.
Along the same lines, CDing allows me to express myself in ways that I wouldn't normally be able to because of societal hang ups and standards. It's not that I'm afraid of the reaction or anything, but it's more along the lines of "who'll notice" and "who's going to make this a bigger deal than it is."
I'm not sure if I made any sense with what I typed since I'm not really a morning person, but I hope I'm clear enough to state why I do what I do
I just feel more relaxed and comfortable when I am dressed. It seems it is who I was truly meant to be.
Really have to be careful though as I tend to forget I am dressed and have nearly answered the door or walked out on the balconey when neighbors were around.
Sorry, this will take a few minutes. Lots of wonderful responses and I am sorry I can't include more quotes, but these seem to set the tone and give me just a little clue. I'm thinking that our crossdressing helps disolve the wall between those emotions, behaviors and even the skills that we have isolated in our male upbringing. These are positive life skills and emotions that we need but feel unable to access, causing stress when we can't. When we open that door the stress can go away and we relax. Maybe? I don't know, but I think the quotes offer some support.
Whether or not you really want to crossdress, the trick may be to identify those things you get only when dressed and give yourself permission to use them other times. For those of us who love to dress, we should probably integrate these things anyway. It can only help us make that step toward being "complete" as a human being.
While I'm not dealing with all the posts, these seem to represent the most common types of response.
Originally Posted by Kaz
I feel as if I am a whole person when I am dressed. I feel a huge sense of relief when I slip in to the clothes, makeup, and jewelry
I like the reference to meditation here. It makes sense that we move to new psycological ground using dressing to open things up rather than a koan. "Grasshopper, What is the sound of one earring dandling?"
No longer in conflict, we can relax and enjoy. Before we accept this as part of ourselves that conflict is still there. So I can see why I hated my dressing for such a long time, the conflict, the barriers were still there and it took a lot of energy to maintain them in an effort to perpetuate the split. Accepting was the first step toward integration and access to all the emotions and skills a human needs.
Sarah
Being transgender isn't a lifestyle choice. How you deal with it is.
It nourishes my inner-woman, my feminine soul, that needs expression and to be live, to get out, to be whole and be herself...
--------
Love your woman within...
Know thy self -- Be your true self......
The first would be BALANCE. It restores my senses and thoughts back to more sensual, more feeling paths - as opposed to the usual intense, hard, narrowly focussed, objective driven, male oriented, competitive world we all live in.
The second which is related to the first is INTUITION. My wife claims that I am far more intuitive than most males. This happens becuase I allow my mind (and body) to wander over ot the other side. Women see things that men don't. They don't aways see with their eye's either.
The next would be PEACE. It gives me a quiet (sort of like meditation) peace that clears the decks of anxiety. The only other thing that comes close is gardening (gardening while CD'd is the most blissful thing there is).
Finally, the peace and balance allow my CREATIVITY to emerge. I find that I am most original after or during times when I've fully accepted my feminine side.
My CD nourishes my heart and soul, the very essense of my being.
I was explaining this to my wife this morning. When I first started crossdressing, way back at the cusp of the 60s into the 70s, I felt very clean. I was a good kid, did my schoolwork, obeyed my parents, and obeyed the nuns at school. While I wasn't an altar boy, I prayed every day. I was the kid that any mum and dad would love to have. Good grades, didn't go running around, just liked to ride my bike, sit under tree near a lake, read, and listen to my shortwave radio.
Then when my mum found out about my CDing she abused me. She made me swear the the virgin Mary that I would never CD again. To a Catholic kid liek me this is a BIG deal!
I suddenly felt dirty. I was made to feel as if my clean, lily white heart and soul had been soiled with feces. I stopped smiling. I was unclean.
Yet -- I could never stop going back to CDing, for it was in my CDing itself that I felt clean again -- quite a paradox.
It took many years and many bottles of cheap rum, but I made it through. And now I have a woman in my life who accepts me as the girl I am and the boy that I am.
I still have these issues. I don't smile enough. I still feel bruised and battered inside. But when I crossdress, I nourish the girl within. I heal her hurts. I comfort her.
I also nourish the boy that I am. The reason I say that is because back when all the hurting was going one, it was okay for my sister to try out for softball or get boy's jeans at K Mart. So, the path that my thoughts take is something that I stated in another thread -- I have to become a girl to become a boy. Its only at that time that everything fits
Gotta go away and cry
Huggles
Toni-Lynn
--I'm TN (transnationalist) - a Canadian born in an American's body! I stand on guard for thee!
For me and it seems everybody else, there are many reasons that we dress. For some it is to feel more confident. For others, it is a way to improve their self esteem. It brings me around to the real answer, for me anyways , is it doesn't matter what individual reason we do dress as life is all in each of our own perspectives, and so whatever the combination of reasons and why, all I know is it works for me and I am so glad to be in a place where my SO is supportive and she loves me for all that I am. That I am becoming more confident with who and what I am. That this isn't something thats wrong, it's normal for me to dress as I do! And that I have great sisters here and around me that will help. Whatever the reason you may dress as you do, just know that it makes me happy that you do too! And I will be putting on my skirt with happiness and pride right along side you. I love you all and to those yet to find yoursef reading this later on, after a couple years have gone by, know that I love you too and wish you the happiness, the peace of mind, and the laughter that being honest with myself has brought me.
Handmade TaG-LiNe:
"...And as they pulled away I could see her words
Stagger and fall on my muddy tent
Well I picked them up, brushed them off,
To see what they say,
And you wouldn't believe:
`Come around to my room, with the tooth in the middle,
And bring along the bottle and a president' " -= jIMI hENDRIX=-
I think you hit the nail on the head there.
The relaxation and stress relief that many have mentioned are just side-effects of the breaking down of the wall. They are not the reason for the behavior. I know I didn't have any stress when I was 6 years old, but I still had the desire to be pretty.
I have tried to think of what dressing nourishes in me, but I really can't come up with anything specific. I believe that I am (and that everyone is) a mixture of male and female. That no one is 100% male or 100% female. We just have a higher percentage of female personality, or being, or stuff than most men, and the dressing is how it manifests itself.
It's all nature vs. nurture, and I think it's nature. It's always been in my nature anyway. From the time I was cognizant of the world around me.
It is a quiet escape - another world - adventure - excitement - feminine energy that can't be found elsewhere. It is an alternate dimension and the relief that comes from living in the 'normal' world where this...sameness, this...chaos, this...loveless life could otherwise kill my faith, hope and dream in there being something good out there for me. It keeps me from...falling.
Reading though the various replies in this topic kinda captures all the feelings that I have encountered. I would say the feeling of totally being at one with myself is the main ingedient . I now feel no need to be at odds with anything in my life .I feel that at the end of the day I am living my life now, how I dreamed it would be in all that fantascies I have amassed down through the years. I have to say that it is one powerful feeling to realize the dream, when you consider all the years that you never thought it could possibly happen.
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