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Of course you can quit! But, you're not likely to find many success stories here on a crossdressing site. What you'll find here are people who either don't want to quit (like me) or people who failed to. You may as well go to a skid row bar and ask if it's possible to stop drinking.
Batty's right you need an iron will or pure fear to make you drop something like a stone... I've quit both smoking (10 years) and drinking (nearly 3 years) but both were for health reasons and fear made both easier than otherwise...
Smoking was waking up to pains in the chest and not being able to breathe... Drinking was being told my undeclared 'alcoholic' state mean't that I couldn't start hormones until some of the damage I had inflicted on myself in my attempts to escape the transsexual thoughts I had was given time to right itself... I'm still not on average doses of hormones after two years, but I'm getting there slowly... I do still have a odd glass of wine every couple of months but I rarely finish it... I have goals I want to achieve and alcohol prevents them.
So, yes, given the right reasons and a cast iron will I think it possible to quit anything. In the case of your dressing, or my transsexualty, I don't know if denying it is strictly healthy... Well it certainly wasn't in my case... It was literally killing me. I think with simple dressing, if you really want to stop, then you need someone you can talk to about the urges you'll undoubtedly experience somedays... You can't help them, but you can talk your way through them...
Best of luck babes :)
Lisa x
Sorry. This is part of you - not an addiction. Just accept who you are and to hell with the rest.
Was it Mark Twain who said "Quitting smoking is easy .. I've done it lots of times.."?
I've gone through long periods when I didn't dress, but I'd see something I really liked, or lingerie in a laundromat or department store, and I'd start thinking about it. I remember a girl friend who once apologized for wearing padded bras ("My clothes fit better") -- this was during a non-dressing period. She left some clothes in my apartment when she was on a trip ... and guess what? Ummm .. they did fit better.
Now that I've fully accepted myself, it's not a question of quitting ... it's just me.
YES, you can quit, if you really want to! But the bigger question is, why would you want to quit?
I did quit being a crossdresser "cold turkey" some years ago. I only started up again after my dear late wife begged me to! She missed her "girl" friend Stephanie. It takes a lot of detirmination to quit, but it can be done. But WHY?
Yes it is.I've gone 2 or 3 day's a couple of time's.
your gorgeous Rachel!
It seems to me that we're talking about two very different things here. Smoking is a physiological addiction to a substance. Crossdressing is something much more personal, and much less "physical" than that (even though it may be manifested physically). For most of us, it's an intrinsic part of who we are. Overcoming a dependence on some physical substance is one thing, but it's something quite different to change who you are, or to suppress your most basic thoughts, feelings, and desires.
Now, I'm not saying it can't be done. I believe it is possible to control our actions, if not our desires - look at those who take vows of celibacy - but as I've never tried to give up dressing, I don't have any personal perspectives to offer on the matter. For me, the more important point is that we need to stop thinking of our crossdressing as an addiction to be overcome, and to start accepting it as a part of our loves. (For those who think I am taking an overly rosy and impractical view, I do realize that the world does not make this easy.)
Crystal
Nope. If it were, you could treat it like you treat OCD. But that doesn't work.Quote:
I don't think CDing is an addiction. If anything its a compulsion. Like OCD or what not.
It's not an addiction either. I think that the difficulty in identifying the mechanism at work is most likely because there are more than one, and it's often impossible to identify who is affected by what.
I don't think I could stop without having something else take it's place; for me, it's a defense mechanism to stress. As long as there is any stress in my life, I'm going to want to crossdress. I might be able to crossdress less, but I don't think the desire will ever go away. Then of course, suppressing the urge to crossdress causes more stress, and the feedback loop becomes self perpetuating.
So, to answer the original question, no, you can't just stop crossdressing without any ill effects, not permanently anyway. But who knows, maybe you'll be the first to discover a way to do it. Give it a shot. It doesn't do any harm to try. But, maybe keep a bra and panties in a glass case handy, you know, so you can break it open in case of emergency.
NFW!
Tara
Take a look at my first post. I had to launch my most massive purge when I went to college and two years later my family left the house I grew up in and I told myself "maybe this will be the end of it". But it wasn't and it never will be. I haven't had a proper outfit in five years and my presence here is evidence of the resulting madness.