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[Annemarie Dutch]

Could use some help out here girls,
Therapy has lead me to this point where there may be an explanation: there are signs my parents wanted a girl, and it was a boy (me of course).

Now i am wondering if I should discuss this with my parents, or at least my mom.
And that may include that I have to tell her the whole story about my CD desires (she doesn't know)

It scares the crap out of me, but I know I have to deal with things to find peace somehow.
Any advise?

[AllieSF]

Sounds like the perfect question to ask your therapist who better knows your particular situation. Feeling like you need to tell is not the same as needing to tell. Part time enjoyment versus full time gender expression and maybe more, probably should be determined first. Nothing wrong with being honest with others. It may give you extra freedom and less worries. However, it can also introduce unnecessary complications into your life that could be avoided. Ask the expert first. Good luck.

[Heisthebride]

If your goal is to find an explanation, putting it on your parents or yourself probably isn't going to help anyone. It simply is what it is. It's like asking why is blue? There is a scientific answer to tell you what it is, combinations of pigment, light reflecting in a specific part of the visible spectrum. But it doesn't explain why is blue.

Sorry for the vague answer but the honest truth is there may not be any one hard and fast explanation. You are a crossdresser or transgendered or any one of a number of labels. But why may never be explained, at least in my opinion. I would focus on acceptance versus an explanation.

Deciding when to tell others, you need to decide when is the right time to do that. Definitely discuss that with your therapist.

[immindy]

Of course your therapist may know best But >> as Allie says do you really need to tell her ? I have been cross dressing for years and finally concluded I was transgender . Those who need to know do know now , such as my wife and part of my family, but my mom is 85 now and does not have a clue so I have not told her. It would not help her to know. My situation is that I am intersexed ( I did not really find out till late in life and the condition is not always super obvious). I am sure my parents must have known though , when I was born, so I always wanted to ask them, but didn't, and won't now :)

[Pat]

Bluntly, if you have a therapist who has guided you to the answer that you are transgender because your parents wanted a girl, then you need a new therapist. I agree that "why" is a useless question to pursue. Even if there was an answer it changes nothing. You are who you are. Most why-seeking is an attempt to find a reason to give yourself permission to be who you are. Skip the middleman and work on giving yourself that permission. ;)

[suzanne]

Why does it scare you? Do you view crossdressing as a bad thing? Most of the people in the site do not. We have embraced our femininity and are concerned with the joys and challenges that go with it. Do you want to rid yourself of feelings you don't understand or accept? Because we in this site have found our femininity can't be purged and comes back stronger when we try. Our biggest issue is the acceptance of people in the world around us, which varies greatly, especially that of our significant others.

You are not damaged, so don't try to find out who to blame. Embrace and accept who you are, which is a wonderful, beautiful and complex human being. Your counselor time should be spent figuring out how to deal with the relationships in your life in light of newfound self knowledge. Your wife or girlfriend can be your greatest ally or your greatest obstacle. Figuring that out should be your priority.

[Jenniferathome]

Do I understand correctly that you believe there is cause and effect going on here? Your parents wanted a girl (the cause) and therefore you became a cross dresser (the effect)?

If your therapist is supporting this view, get a new therapist. If it is just you thinking this, forget it. Just like being gay or straight or having blue eyes, you were born with it. Trying to blame your cross dressing on other factors is a waste of time.

You ARE a cross dresser. So what?

[Allisa]

Find another therapist if this person lead you to believe it's your parents fault you have these desires. You didn't say you actually CD, but if you do just enjoy being a part of a somewhat unique group and it's not easy at first to be honest with yourself. I know I was the only boy out of 3 children(the youngest) and I felt so much guilt that I wasn't the boy they wanted, but I could not pass that guilt onto my mother, and I believe I'm more of a man than I ever was once I accepted that there was nothing wrong with being myself a CDer and fluid. I am not a professional so just my opinion on the info you provided.

[JeanTG]

Do I understand correctly that you believe there is cause and effect going on here? Your parents wanted a girl (the cause) and therefore you became a cross dresser (the effect)?

If your therapist is supporting this view, get a new therapist.


I don't know if it's wrong to say there's a cause and effect. I'm pretty much in the same situation. Except my mother was more blunt about it: she flat out called me "my little girl" from the earliest age, and dressed me consequently and basically treated me as a doll to dress up. I would be surprised if there wasn't a connection somehow. And I can say that this caused me a great deal of grief and confusion in adolescence and young adulthood, and it took me until my 50s to really figure out what I was. I flat out consider what my mother did a form of psychological abuse but I forgive her for it, as there probably was a reason for her behavior. She was so desperate for a girl, she even gave our male dog a girl's name. Maybe some of you can't imagine what it was like to live with that oppression all the time. I was so angry about it as a child that once, when my mother dressed me up in leotards, I pooped in them on purpose. She never made me wear them after that. I was about 7 or 8 years old and I remember the moment vividly. Maybe you can't imagine what it was like to have that much anger pent up as a child.

The irony is that in my youth I rebelled against my mother and her antics and tried desperately to be a boy even though most "real" boys called me a sissy, and I never really bonded with her to the point she'd smother me in order to try to bond with me. I desperately wanted to be accepted as a boy by her above anyone else.

Do I view crossdressing as a bad thing? It is what it is, but my life would surely be a hell of a lot simpler (and cheaper!) without it. I won't lie and say my crossdressing is wonderfully accepted by everyone around me. It isn't and that remains a major problem in my life.

It didn't take me a therapist to affirm this BTW, but my therapist did validate my line of thought. That said, my mother is long dead, and I own my crossdressing. It's up to me to make this fit in my life, but sometimes it's sure as hell frustrating and I wish I didn't have this cross to bear. I'm certainly not looking for "permission" to be what I am. Even if I gave myself "permission", those around me aren't ready to cut me that much slack and that matters much more than any permission I give myself; if I do give myself "permission" and openly act out on what I am, I hurt people around me. It's not all about me but being forced into a double life of secrecy is not my idea of "fun".

So please don't beat up on Annemarie or her therapist. They both may have a point.

[Edyta_C]

I had basically the same childhood experience as JeanTG. Dressed and raised as a girl until about 5 yrs old. Then with the birth of my brother I was forced to switch to being a boy. I do not think that experience makes one TG but probably is why I crossdress. If I am TG it is because of DES exposure. Vary unpleasant forced switch! I ran away from home. I would have been caught sooner except that the police were looking for a boy, not a girl.

Edy

[Helen_Highwater]

Annemarie,

You asked; Now i am wondering if I should discuss this with my parents, or at least my mom. Short answer no. Do you really want to risk making your parents feel like they failed you as a child? That they are in some way responsible for you turning out a CD. We often discuss the ongoing social stigma associated with CD'ing. How do your parents view the LGBT community? If not wholly accepting then they could feel a great sense of guilt. And for no good reason. Why many, nay probably most CD has absolutely nothing to do with something their parents did or didn't do.

Asking them will not bring you closer to a definitive answer as to why you CD and you risk punishing your parents over something they played no part in. Leave well alone!

[Lisa Roberts]

Yup... Stop asking "why" and just enjoy. It took me years to achieve this!! Embrace your inner girl. Hugs to her!
Lace and Smiles
Lisa

[JeanTG]

Yup... Stop asking "why" and just enjoy.

That's the problem for those of us with non-accepting spouses. I can't just "enjoy". The risk and consequences of getting caught are too unpleasant, or the moments too few to avoid a buildup of frustration.

[Rachelakld]

Personally I think your therapist is wrong, sound like shooting at stars and your therapist wants you to believe something external "caused" the issue.

We do like to "blame" external events or "others" - it takes the heat off us
It "explaines" us or gives us an excuse/reason for being how we are.
Once we realise there is no "blame", then we can move on and enjoy our life.

My mum was probably the best person to talk to, she was great, never judged and always loving.
If your mum is anything like mine, you probably would have spoken to her instead of a therapist.

[Diane Smith]

If a parent's wishes and expectations regarding the gender of their expected child could influence whether one grows up TG, then there would be many, many more F2M than M2F people in the world, and that's clearly not the case. My mom expected and probably would have preferred a girl as well, but I don't think that fact alone had any influence on my predilection.

- Diane

[Teresa]

Annemarie,
The fact they wanted a girl doesn't make you one or lead to CDing. To me therapy is part of coming out , trying to understand it and accept . If you feel totally comfortable in your own head telling others becomes easier. One of my counsellors worked on me to stop going round in circles with assumptions, fearing what people think rather than just sitting down with them and talking about it.

Come to terms with it yourself before telling others, they may put a spanner in the works and try and make you feel guilty or ashamed, don't let them do it, they can't change what is inside your head.

[sometimes_miss]

Do I understand correctly that you believe there is cause and effect going on here? Your parents wanted a girl (the cause) and therefore you became a cross dresser (the effect)?
It's not that simple. Wanting to have a baby girl, can cause a parent, even older siblings that feel the same way, to do things subconsciously that reflect that desire, which MIGHT have repercussions when that baby is born male. My mom often dressed me in my sister's hand-me-down clothes when I was quite young, and other things, too which indicate that she would have preferred to have another girl. How much of this affected me, we'll never know, because during the 3-4-5-6 ages, I didn't feel like a girl at all, and behaved for the most part like any other boy.

[immike]

Annemarie-My name is Michelle&I have the same fears you do,about telling mother about crossdressing activities,only because for many years I secretly wore her clothes&she
knew nothing about it.I would wait until she left for work in the morning,then spend the entire morning trying on her dresses,skirts,tops,blouses,shoes,heels&one day I got bold
and took a brand new,unopened pkg of her pantyhose out of her drawer,put them on&selected one of her mini skirts&a silk blouse&4'inch heels&I could not control the feelings
of silky pantyhose&silk blouse against my skin&I began to practice walking in heels,around the house,with draperies closed.As I got bolder,I began dressing in her good skirtsuits.We are about the same size,so I don't think she suspected

[Tracy Irving]

My parents may have wanted a baby girl or they may have just been prepared had I been born female. If that happened they would have named me Tracy. I don't blame them for my cross dressing but I do blame (and thank) them for the name.

I don't care why I cross dress. I am just glad I do!

[Judith96a]

I'm not sure that we can so easily dismiss the impact of upbringing on crossdressing.

My mother wanted a girl and got 2 boys (a few years apart)! Both of us got thoroughly sick of hearing how much better girls were at doing almost anything and everything than boys. I discovered, when my cousin was discussing with my parents names for her -1 month old daughter, that had I been born a girl they would have named me Judith. (Little did they know at the time that I had already chosen Judith for myself). During my teenage years my mother stored her older clothes and shoes in my bedroom, so I had easy access to those.
These are all facts but are they causes of my CDing? Who knows! So far as I know, my brother doesn't crossdress (not that he'd tell me if he did), so mum's none-too-subtle preference for a daughter can't have been the sole causal factor in my crossdressing. However, I had a level of access that my brother never had ( it was my room rather than his in which mum stored clothes), I had opportunity (time home alone) to experiment which he never had and a need for approval which, in my case, was not forthcoming (he was the blue-eyed boy). Take all that together and who knows?. I'm certainly not going to rule it out.
As for sparing my mother any 'guilt'... I've long since ceased craving her approval. If she were capable of feeling guilty, which I doubt, then maybe she should!

[Pat]

Sorry. My folks hoped I'd be a doctor and I have trouble putting on a band-aid -- their early expectations had no effect. Think of all the other things your parents might have wanted for you and compare them to what did and did not happen in your life. The simple act of wanting a girl doesn't strike me as a cause for crossdressing, it sounds like a rationalization.

[Acastina]

While I'm confident that parents simply wishing and hoping for a girl, by itself, has no influence on gender identity or crossdressing in the causal sense, I wouldn't be so sure that childhood experiences as overt as some described here wouldn't have an impact. Even where a mother doesn't dress her son as a girl or treat him that way, the early environment can imprint an awful lot of stuff we still don't know much about.

I knew from early-on that, after two boys two years apart, my parents wanted a girl, especially since my father's side hadn't had one in nearly a century. They got me as number three, and that first female came along 13 months later. We shared a room for the first nine years before a move across town made me roommates with number two. My life was never the same after that. I remember perfectly, as if I had a videotape of the moment, stopping short one afternoon in the doorway to that room, at about age 10, and suddenly realizing that I wasn't going to grow up to be a girl, that my fate was to be like my brothers, with whom I had tenuous relationships that turned bad in a number of ways later in life. That moment put a knot in my stomach that is like a permanent scar.

I had made straight A's in fourth grade, the last year in the old house, and was a happy, androgynous boy who liked to play with girls as much as with other boys. As from fifth grade onward, I dropped to a B-minus average abruptly, stressed by social adjustment issues that I couldn't begin understand or deal with until years later. Something had died at that moment in that doorway, and I couldn't get it back.

I didn't like team sports (being slow and weak didn't help that), didn't like scouting, had only one best friend and few others, all because I knew I wasn't one of them. I was absolutely terrified of exposure to the military draft, not for fear of being killed in Vietnam, but of being forced to survive that all-male environment. I didn't gravitate to guy stuff, and girl stuff was off-limits.

Despite an IQ that has been measured in the 130 range, I staggered through secondary school as a chronic underachiever and social misfit. Only in law school, after having dropped out of undergrad with three years' credits and separating from an ill-advised young marriage, was I able to study effectively and do well in school. As I neared graduation, my gender issues suddenly took over my consciousness, and the conundrum has never left. That was almost 40 years ago.

I had done well in school and passed the bar exam on one go, but I just didn't have the self-confidence to succeed in that hyper-competitive and often uber-macho profession. In fact, it made me horribly depressed, compounding the sense of failure after such high-level professional preparation. It's hard to have confidence in an uncertain self.

Now, in my 69th year, those issues are as big and troubling as ever. I just have more experience dealing with them, have a wonderful wife who has known and approved from the beginning, and I have this forum.

How much of this was due to my parents' wanting a girl, how much to being her roommate for a decade, how much hormonal anomalies in utero (that sister ended up totally butch and I'm, well, here), how much disliking my brothers and feeling myself to be "other" than what they were? I dunno, but I can't summarily dismiss the possibility that being a disappointing male child of disappointed parents is a significant factor in gender variance.

Whether that means taking the topic up with Mom, that's a risk/benefit issue that's not mine to answer. Good luck.

[Confucius]

I can identify with Acastina.

My mother wanted a daughter, but had son after son. When I was born, she was sure I was going to be a girl, so I was a disappointment. However she didn't have to wait long. When I was only six months old, she was pregnant again. This time she gave birth to my sister. My mother always described the birth of my sister as the happiest day of her life. My sister immediately became the pampered princess of my mother. I grew up thinking that if I was only born a girl, then my life would have been so much better. I believed my mother would love me more if I was a girl. By the time I was three years old I was already crossdressing. My sister and I would raid my mom's closet to play dress up. At one point (I believe I was five years old), my mother made me a dress for my playtime. My father made her give it away. My crossdressing was frowned upon.

Anyway, as I grew older I learned I have to hide my crossdressing. I grew up believing that all parents preferred daughter. I believed girls were just better persons than boys. I thought that every advantage in society was given to girls, and that being a boy was a handicap.

When I would crossdress I would feel that I was making my world right. However, I now believe that my crossdressing is driven by the way my brain is hardwired. It is possible that during my early stages of life, during synaptogenesis, I reinforced neural pathways whereby stimulation in one neural pathway (crossdressing) produces an automatic and involutary response in a second pathway (release of neurotransmitters - dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin) which produces the sensations of well-being, sexual gratification, and bonding. (Similar to synesthesia.)

[Acastina]

Your last paragraph sounds like a good beginning to a fascinating new thread. I do think we're mis-wired neurally, whether in the womb or in the first months and years after being born. Also very interesting that your parents had the long-sought daughter that you were supposed to be very soon after they had you. My mom got back in the pregnancy business even sooner after me, since my sister was born 13 months and a few days after me.

[Annemarie Dutch]

Wow girls, what a great number of replies on my post!
Thanks!

It seems I need to explain some more.
My therapist didn't tell me to talk to my mum, but of course we discussed my birth and childhood years.
It made me think about talking to my mother about it.
And yes, maybe I was hoping to find an explanation for my CD, on the other hand I think there is none because we are wired this way.
I can write this down, but I don't feel it yet. Maybe I am still not accepting it.

I like the discussions and different views on it.
I was put on a dress when I was a baby. I wanted to wear makeup when 6 or 7 years old and I did (I made my mum do it!) and even went outside playing with kids that way.
To me this little signs from my younger years must have to say something!

As you can read, I am on a big journey finding out who I really am. And sometimes it frightens me, because after 35 years I finally came to the insight that I also have a feminine side. In all these years I have put something of myself away, and now the box is slowly opening.

[Helen_Highwater]

I had an email from someone I know from the forum who'd had a bit of a hiatus away from CD'ing. The email was to basically say, "Hi, I'm back". In the email she wrote (and I hope I'm okay sharing);

I'm always fascinted about the workings of the human mind (not least my own) and am amazed at how the feelings with regard to my dressing have gone from total disinterest to the feelings that I have now - ie at a level of interest I'm more happier with. This does lead me to question just how much control we have over our thoughts and desires - do we choose crossdressing or does it choose us?

Personally as an only child I was never aware of either of my parents having regrets that I wasn't born a girl or dressing me in anything other than boy's clothing. I do remember having a fascination with women's clothing from a very early age.

I've given up on asking why. It's a question that'll never be satisfactorily answered and even if it was, what difference would it make. I couldn't see it making me suddenly decide to purge and never wear femme items ever again. I've drawn huge satisfaction from my CD'ing. What I've done I look upon as some of the best things I've done in my lifetime (so far!). Don't worry, be happy.