Admission

[Donna Indelco]

This mainly applies to those of us that have come to grips with their crossdressing. My question is was it a slow gradual process when you finally admitted who and what you were or was their a single incident or period of time where you can say, yes - that's it? Personally, it was a slow and gradual process, more like an evolution rather than an epiphany. How about you?

[nikkiwindsor]

Mmm. That's a good question Donna. I think I need to answer across a few dimensions. First, realizing I was a crossdresser came pretty quickly. Second, accepting it took more time. Lastly, realizing that I'm more than just a crossdresser took even longer. While I'm not transgender, I've come to realize that within my mind and heart, I'm both feminine and masculine. I guess gender-fluid best describes me. Very interested if this makes sense to others and if anyone else feels similar.

[EllieMayxxx]

It took me a few years to realise that i was a crossdresser, but recently I have been thinking that there is more to it. I have gotten in contact with a therapist and im looking forward to where the journey takes me next.

[pamela7]

coming to crossdressing, once I thought of it, was rapid, but coming to realising my gender identity took a whole year of self processing.
I can only speak as a "late developer" that it came slow and gradual, and then all slotted into place. However, i'd guess many lifelong CD folk would know their twin spirit nature as being "forever"?

[Allisa]

I guess you could say slow(as in glacial), but then one day I just said the heck with it I'm a crossdresser, and I don't care who knows and out the door I went, but now in a flash I realized that I'm also Gender Fluid with the help of this site and all here who participate. If only I knew of the "signs" earlier, but no use dwelling on what if, just enjoy the day and the knowledge of who I am.

[bridget thronton]

It was a slow process - it did speed up a bit once I told my spouse and adult children (still not ready to be fully out)

[JustWendy]

When I started dressing over 50 years ago, I had no idea what I was or why I had this urge to try on women's clothes. Over decades, I've passed through sexual satisfaction, to "it's just the clothes", to ultimately realizing I liked my feminine appearance. So, for me, it's been a very gradual, fluid process.

Wendy

[CallmeAlice]

For me it was both, when I first told someone it was two of my closest friends. One of which recently came out as trans and I was thinking about telling her and my other friend (who is now my girlfriend) for about a good week and a half i was soo hinting it before I told them. The rest of my friends I've told, except one who accidentally found out, I just told them with no warning, no hints, nothing was just like *bang* i crossdress.

[Alice Torn]

Wendy, Great legs, avatar! i can relate to your post. Age 13 or 14 i could not resist trying on sisters and moms stuff. Almost 62 now. There are many times i wish i did not have the desire, though. it has been a long battle with guilt and shame, and isolation, and not having a mate.

[MichelleDevon]

I'm going with JustWendy on this - it was incredibly gradual. My first recollection of "playing" with my mother's underwear was pre-school - probably around 1956... And I continued along those lines for many many years, with my mother's stuff, then with my wife's stuff. And I can honestly say I had no concept of being a crossdresser. I think, if anyone had asked me, I wouldn't really have had any idea that there was such a thing as a crossdresser. It was a guilty secret - I liked the feel of nylons, of satin/nylon lingerie and I would "play" with them whenever I had a "safe" opportunity.

Then along came the internet; specifically I discovered a stockings website - www.stockingshq.co.uk This was a total revelation to me. I was interested and excited because it was all about stockings but it had forums where people talked about stockings. It even had a forum called "TV/CD issues" - I couldn't for the life of me figure out what stockings had to do with television or compact discs!!!!!!! LOL Undeterred I stayed there and discovered it wasn't just me! B****y H*** - there are lots of people like me out there. So I got talking to others - CDers and supportive GGs - and I began to understand that I was a crossdresser - this would have been in the late 1990s. It led to me telling my wife of (then) 26 years in 2001 - that went down like the proverbial lead balloon.

A few more years of exploration and experimentation followed, including a couple of years away from said wife during which time I really acknowledged my crossdressing as a serious part-time lifestyle choice and Michelle was "born" in 2007. So I guess you could say it took about 50 years! I think that probably counts as "gradual"!!!

I've moved on apace since then; from my first venture outside the house "dressed" to go and see the Rocky Horror Show in 2006 in the most appalling wig to someone who is happy to be and about as well-presented as I can manage. And my retirement project is to set up a drop-in centre to try to give other "girls" who haven't got as far along the road as I have an opportunity to explore their alter ego in a safe and friendly environment.

So from that first memory it was 40+ years of guilt, 6-7 years of angst and exploration and, so far, 8+ years of real enjoyment (with occasional moments of terror as I push the boundaries.

And I love it now.

Michelle
xxx

[Cheryl T]

An incredibly long and slow process.
Of course since I began in the 50's when there was little information generally available that didn't help.
Until I was about 18 the only other person remotely like me that I heard of was Christine Jorgensen when she went to Sweden for her surgery. At around 18 I was able to venture into adult bookstores and there I found that there were others like me. Magazine and newspapers like "Female Mimic" were my first introduction to this world. That made it somewhat easier to live with as I now knew I wasn't crazy, and I wasn't the only one.
Even still it took decades of hiding and secret dressing to reach the point where I at last said, NO, I'm not living this way anymore. I am entitled to be who I am and this is who I am.
Were I in that beginning stage now as I was in the 50's things would be so different. There is so much information and so many have paved the way for me and for all of us. I'm proud to be me, but it took a very long time to admit it.

[Tina Davis]

I have known for a long time that I am a crossdresser. I have tried to ignore it, and there have been times that I could resist it, but I know now that dressing is a part of me.

[JessieA]

It was in the background most of my life but buried so deep it was causing dissociative episodes. I finally found a therapist that helped me find the issue and determined I needed to deal with the female side of my brain. So with the help of a close GG friend Jessica was born. It was like a switch was thrown and Jessica just became natural part of me. Being gender fluid creates it's own issues but is so much better then before.

[kittie60]

For Me Donna it was easy and quick to admit. No problem with it. The problem was after my grand parents took me to the doctors and then specialists is when I found out I was born tg. Now that took Years to accept it. Close to 30 years. I am much happier with my life and a much better person for.

[Jenniferathome]

I knew I liked cross dressing and never really felt bad about it but I knew it was "wrong." In my early thirties, as I started to dress from time to time after the hiatus of kid raising, I knew I was not alone. I've always been a pragmatic guy and things are what they are so detail was not a real problem for me. However, when I bought a wig, THAT was the moment of admitting I wanted to get out and present as a woman, not just cross dress. The wig, no denying that!

[Kandi Robbins]

It was very quick (if you consider almost 50 years quick).

Actually, the admission part was quick, it literally happened one day driving alone and I blurted out (to myself) "I am a crossdresser". Strangely, I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. From then on, my life changed very much for the better as that was the first time I admitted that to myself.

The coming to grips part began when I was very young and still exists on some level today. I still have the occasional "WTF" moment, after which I remind myself how truly happy I am.

[Kiersten]

I've always known since I was a young boy, just didn't understand it back then. I've tried to suppress and ignore it through out my life, but I finally realized that it is in me.

[AndrewJenny]

Nikki,

I also feel like I'm both genders. It has been very confusing, because I'm more than "just" a cross-dresser, but not "a woman in a man's body". The best way I can say it is that I have a part of me that can only be expressed through female-gendered performance: I have to dress up like Katie so that she can emerge from within me and tell her story to the world. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's the best I can do.

KKat

[Ceera]

About 18 years ago, I had a co-worker who transitioned fully from male to female. One day, this computer tech in another group who I knew, but who I only occasionally interacted with, came out at work and got her name badge changed to read "Samantha" as her first name. Over the next year or so, she slowly started wearing female clothes, cosmetics, and showing signs of HRT and/or SRS in progress. She had a wife and kids, and I never did find out how her transition affected her family life. While some of my colleagues made disparaging comments or jokes about her, I was wiling to accept and use her new name and use her new feminine pronouns, and tried to pretty much treat her as I always had, but accepting her new female role. My wife's reaction when she heard about Samantha was concern about how that would probably destroy Samantha's marriage. Yet I found myself wondering if I could comfortably follow the same path she had started down, and if I found that idea attractive myself. My introspection at the time led me to think that I was unlikely to ever go through SRS, and that I wouldn't do go through a full sex change if it stood a chance of harming my marriage. Yet it surprised me that I also realized that if I could somehow magically transform myself back and forth at will, switching freely between being fully a real female, and being fully my original male self, I would jump at the chance. I'd never heard of anyone being gender fluid at that point, and switching back and forth like that. I don't think the term 'gender fluid' had even been coined then. But the trigger of my co-worker's transition was what first got me seriously considering presenting as female myself.

I didn't act on that epiphany until much later, when I tentatively experimented with under dressing, and wearing panties. And I didn't commit to anything public until after my wife died and I was single again.

[Brandy Mathews]

I think that I came to grips with my crossdressing from the start. Through the years I have thought about purging but never did. I have come to a conclusion that I am about 80% female on the inside. And that percentage seems to get higher, the older that I get. I have really thought about transitioning a few times. Who knows what the future holds.
Hugs,
Bree :)

[Judy-Somthing]

I think I've come to grips with my cross-dressing I enjoy it so much , live and let live!

[Shayna]

A slow (and evolving) process not just realizing I am a cross dresser, but what that means. At various times I thought it was a phase, I thought it was stress release, at times I thought I was over it, felt it was a sexual thrill, etc. I've just come to realize it's a part of me and don't worry too much as to the why. The only person I'm out to is my wife, who found my clothes.

[suzy1]

I am somebody that sort of ‘thinks outside of the box’ so to me there is nothing whatsoever wrong or unusual about crossdressing. Imagine living your entire life on a desert island and never being exposed to the world in general. You would just get up in the morning, get all dolled up and get on with your day. You would not for one moment think you were doing anything that’s not normal…it is normal!

I do go on a bit don’t I? :doh:

[aprilgirl]

I started very young, and while I believed I was the only one with this desire, I somehow knew that it wasn’t ever going away. Nor did I want it to. The only thing that stopped me was the lack of privacy at home growing up, or away at college. I did discover cd publications that included personal ads, which provided me a chance to correspond with others and the knowledge I wasn’t alone. I also told my first serious girlfriend prior to moving in together, and her acceptance went a long way towards me dealing with any feelings of guilt and shame I experienced prior.

[Kate Simmons]

It has always been a part of me that I more or less accepted. :)

[Claire Cook]

Deep inside I always knew that there was a strong female side of me, I just didn't know what to do about it. As a kid I would dress in my mom's clothes whenever I could, then for years dressed only intermittently. Told my wife within our first year of marriage (45 yrs ago...) but since i rarely dressed it wasn't an issue. I think it was coming out to friends, and the support from this site, (and from my wife and GG friends) that maybe 10 years ago opened the floodgates. I had been dressing more and more over the last 20 years, now it is part of my life.

[Beverley Sims]

It has been a slow process although when I was twenty it really took off in many ways.

Hormone treatment and supportive room mates helped cement the feeling in me then.

[Maria Strange]

It started when I was a boy. I would watch female impersonator Danny la rue and dame Edna everidge on tv and as you never saw them in male mode I got it into my head that they dressed like this all the time (remember I was only a boy). So I wanted to see what the attraction was so I went to my mums wardrobe started with a pair of tights and shoes that I could squeeze my feet into. I looked in the mirror and felt my legs. Hey I like this thanks Danny thanks Edna. The rest is history

[flatlander_48]

D I:

Funny, I don't recall any specific point. The first time I went out was Halloween 2003. The next time was January 2014. There are many reasons for that: I was working outside of the country for 6 years, etc. But, what I do remember is that I was quite comfortable when I went out the second time. And, I remember being mostly OK on that first trip out. That would suggest that my personal calibration was either during that first trip or just before.

DeeAnn

[Secret Drawer]

While like many others here, I always knew, or at least always had, an understanding that I had this feminine thing going on. Pre internet, and small town informed, I pretty much thought I was the only person on earth like me... So the acceptance of myself was super gradual, over 40 years or so... But, now that I have accepted that I am somewhere more female than male on the TG scale, I roll with it better, and actually take that part of me more and more seriously. So once the acceptance happened, things seemed to start moving faster, with many miles to go it seems.

[sometimes_miss]

It would have to be ungodly slow and gradual, because I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand what I was for decades. I mean, it all started over 50 years ago, when there was no information about us. I didn't hear or see the word transvestite for the first, oh, maybe 10 years? And all the confusion after that, with nothing much to go by. The information was pretty much only available to the few researchers out there, so the general public had nothing to go on. There was the very brief period where I thought I was gay, the very long period where I thought I was some sort of TS, the very long period where I thought I was normal and all previous was 'just a phase I had been going through', the return to the TS phase, and then finally figuring out I was just CD with lingering feelings of TS from what happened to me as a kid. Yes, a verrrrrry long, gradual discovery process, before I could accept what it all meant.

[threeheavenshigh]

For me, it felt like a werewolf experience. I was lead investigator on the case, surrounded by mounds of blatant evidence that I was the werewolf all along.

[Madilyn A.]

Very much a gradual acceptance over many decades. My epiphany came about 17 years ago when I realized; well that's for another thread.

[Usulsjourney]

From the time I started as a youngster until my late teens, I did not think about it much other than keeping secret. I knew enough to feel that was best. In my early twenties I came to the realization that it was part of me. Period. That being said, I felt it was a part of me that should probably be kept secret. I had no burning desire to go in public so it was just my thing. A long time girlfriend and I experimented with it a bit and I opened up about it to her to some degree but still kept it under wraps. I married in my early thirties and told my wife shortly after. I have felt the same about it since my early twenties but having an accepting spouse makes it much easier to live with. Secrets in a marriage are hard, even when the taboo may be part of the attraction.