Trigger Question

[Rachael Leigh]

I do believe in early childhood where most of our memories are vague had to be where most triggers happened for any of our dispositions to being a CD. I cannot pin point mine but have some ideas why. I do remember wanting to wear girls clothes for as long as I can remember because I really liked how pretty they were. Today that is still how I feel, I love the look feel and style of women's wear and doubt that will ever change. Can I change and not dress? I think yes is the answer but would that mean I still don't want to dress pretty? No it wouldn't so whatever our triggers for some reason we have this need to dress up and for me it's a tough fight that I'm pretty sure ain't worth fighting most days.

[Kayla C]

No trigger for me either.
As far back as I can remember I'd always wanted to be a girl.
I just couldn't figure out why I wasn't!

[Karen kc]

Idont think it was a trigger, I think its genetic also

[Helen_Highwater]

Having a trigger implies you know what made you CD which is different from deciding you are a CD'er and yes will dress in woman's clothing. I have no idea as to why I wanted to CD. I think my head would explode if I tried to work that one out. And I more drifted into it, undies and tights first and the rest is, as they say, history.

[Caden Lane]

I started at three years old. So figuring out a trigger would be nigh impossible.

[Erica Grace]

I've always been interested in both masculine and feminine things. There was never really a trigger in my life to explain why I went out to buy my first dress and all of the makeup and clothes I now have. It was an easier decision to do those things once I found my way to this site over a year ago (didn't sign up until last month). Reading all of the supportive conversations helped me accept myself for me and seek out acceptance of my girlfriend, which I luckily have With my newfound acceptance I jumped at the opportunity to embrace my feminine side.

I remember I was staying in a hotel for work for about 7 weeks straight last February. That is when I decided to go out and buy my first female items of clothing just because it was easy and convenient being in a hotel for so long.

~Erica

[Eryn]

The only change I can see in me is that from desire to crossdress to active crossdressing. That is more a question of "straw that broke the camel's back" than it is a trigger. If it wasn't one straw it would have been another.

[Melissa18]

I don't know if you could classify my first time as a "trigger event" . At age 4 or 5 I saw this particular dress hanging in mothers closet, I remember I just had to try it on, and the rest is history!
To answer your question no I would've tried on another dress. I'm also glad I did try that dress on.

[Princess Grandpa]

I don't really know what that trigger was that first set the desire in me. I do know what the trigger was that made me understand I was a cross dresser. Remove that event and I suspect I would still be in a state of denial.

Hug
Rita

[laura.lapinski]

I don't think I had a trigger. I was just attracted to putting on girls clothes and looking at myself in the mirror.

[Lexi_83]

I would say "sort of." I dressed a little as an 8-9yo, didn't really understand why. Then some more as a preteen and early teen. It wasn't until I was a few years out of college and a friends suggested I cross dress for Halloween that I went of the deep end and started going out.

[sanderlay]

My trigger event was... "Boys don't wear girls clothes because..."... when I asked why. However it would not have changed a thing. The real problem was societies rules... "Boys wear this and girls wear that..." Now if those rules were not there I suspect would have gravitated naturally to wearing something androgynous. My desire is hard wired so to speak. Events would not have changed it.

[devida]

I was just looking at some pictures of me when I was 17, a long time ago. I was very obviously femme back then. I just didn't have the words to describe myself. I remember that even then I was wearing so called women's clothes (they were my clothes) in inappropriate settings. I never fit in with the usual gender dictates, which, in fact, my parents were quite worried about ( because they thought I might be, *gasp*, homosexual). But there was no trigger. I was always different. I never fit in. I was proud of that then and I'm proud of it now. Did it, as Stephanie thinks, result in me not being able to partake in the delusions of the conformed.? Yup, and I was happy that I did not to live my life and die in disillusion. I still am now. I live my own life not someone else's idea of what my life should be. I am sorry I just do not understand why I should live a life in which I am not happy to be me.

[kimdl93]

I think that's an unsupportable assumption. Memories are notoriously unreliable...our brain fills in gaps, sometimes with pure fabrication. The seminal event one thinks they recall is often fragmentary, or fiction.

[CynthiaD]

There was no trigger for me. I've always been like this. My earliest memory of crossdressing is when I was three years old, and I may have started even earlier. It took me a long time to figure out that the other boys didn't want to wear dresses and high heels. I tried to suppress it for a while, but here I am!

[BLUE ORCHID]

Hi Briana, At age four or five years of ageI have no idea what caused it, It's just who I am and it's just what I do.

[shawnsheila]

I have vague memories of me putting on my mom's make up and walking in her heels around 4 - 6 years old. Then I remember getting teased by family members and getting told it was "gay" which was bad.
Then I remember at 14, when no one was home, I would dress up in my moms outfits and feel terrible afterwards thinking something was wrong with me, even though I remember praying that by dressing up, I would magically turn into a girl.
then I suppressed it until I was about 19. I dressed up as a woman for Halloween and I love how it felt. Then I suppressed it again until I was about 23 - 25 where I would occasionally wear my wifes nylons under my work clothes.

I don't recall the triggers for those other then I really really wanted to dress.

Finally I started buying clothes in my late 20's and eventually my wife found my stash and freaked out. Fast forward to today, I have my own closet and a ton of shoes plus multiple wigs. My wife is slowing accepting and my current triggers is just waking up every day... I dress at home (I work from home) just about every day in some fashion or another i.e. Wear an oversize girly t-shirt with leggings (bra and panties of course) and walk around my house with heels until its time to pick up the kids from school. there are time i feel lazy / have no desire to dress (lets face it, its a lot of work at times) but lately I have accelerated in my dressing on how often I like to do it.

[sometimes_miss]

Nope. Before I was molested, I was a somewhat normal boy. No gender dysphoria involved. It took someone telling me that I was really supposed to be a girl, that god made a mistake, and that if I was really good that maybe god would fix me and make me a real girl. About seven years of believing that and convincing myself that it was the correct thing to do, to learn how to be a girl, and there you have it, a well screwed up lad who really believed that he was supposed to be a girl. Later finding out that some things in our personality development can become permanent when you go through them at certain ages, the feeling that I'm supposed to be a girl has never gone away, nor has the feeling that I'm supposed to wear girl's clothing.

[flogo920]

At 7 discovered bras in the hamper about the same time I was being ridiculed for needing a bra as I had large breasts. Putting a underwired lacy black satin bra was an almost out of body experience. I did not realize that I fell down a rabbit hole into a strange new world of sensations, intense pleasure, and as expected a taboo for regular society.

The time was not long going to intense pleasure from daily embarrassment and a life of compression shirts- Built like a linebacker I present as a male in a man's suit- Would not dream of inflicting my appearance on others. Find THAT works for me. But the sensual experience is intense I still look in catalogs for the "perfect bra.

Hugs,

Flo

[edith]

I feel like we're maybe misunderstanding OP's question. The way I read it is "what were the circumstances of your deciding to put on girls' clothes for the first time", rather than "what was the single event that caused you to be a crossdresser".

I was five or six years old and saw an episode of Mr Belvedere where the teenage son crossdresses as part of a fraternity initiation. My mind was totally blown and I knew immediately that I had to do it too. This is my first clear memory of crossdressing, and I would say that it triggered whatever was already present in my brain rather than created it.

Clip:
http://youtu.be/QFb1L9XV1yc?t=13s

[Gardener]

I do not know there was a single trigger moment for me. I was a curious boy and from an early age I found my mother's clothes intriguing as they were so different to what I would wear. I guess in time this evolved from handling to wearing and I can clearly recall how eroticising this was. Quite a shock for a young lad! why I should have been so intrigued is another matter.
In my childhood I was separated from my mother for periods of time as she was unwell and I think this had quite an effect. Handling her clothes was a way of being close to her. I am not sure about that as a "trigger", as I was so young, but it seems plausible. Another layer is about lack of comfort with maleness and a strand of thought that life would be better if I had been a girl. I guess that is one of the ways that unformed brains may deal with unhappiness. Interestingly Mum said to me in later life how much she had wanted a girl. Somewhere I have a memory of her saying I was the "daughter she never had". Again, like the separation layer, one is dealing with possibly corrupted memories.

[Krisi]

I don't know of any trigger event. My dressing started many, many years ago and was gradual.

[Teresa]

Hi Briana, I've come in a bit late on this one but I feel like the odd one out after reading the replies, I did have a trigger event, at 4-5 the girl next door was my GF until 10-11 when I started secondary school. When I was about 9 I was attracted to a shapely swimsuit maybe because it suggested it was her body, I was embarrassed about erections and didn't know about masturbation so when I climaxed it was a OMG moment, I didn't know what had happened but it turned out to be the trigger moment, Cding was locked firmly in my brain, it also explains why I have the need to share it.

[ClaireCole]

When I think about this I remember trying on a fancy dress of my Mum's I found in my wardrobe when I was 5 or so. I tried it on lots, and even used it as a "magic trick" and transformed in the wardrobe for my friends. Eventually I was caught and told off, mostly because it was an expensive dress I think.
It was always my choice to put it on, so I guess I was always going to be a crossdresser. If it wasn't this dress, it would have been another one.

[KatieV]

I would have been too young to remember - seriously, the trigger event happened in the womb! I do believe that this is how I came into the world, with an unusual hormonal (im)balance.. And at age three I was already experimenting with my mom's nylons, that I do distinctly remember.