A Trigger in Adulthood?

My experience is probably not unusual: I remember trying on my mother's underwear two or three times when I was 8 or 9 (once, memorably, almost getting caught!), and dreaming about wearing the school uniform for girls (a cute plaid jumper!). But I really didn't dress until adulthood.

What triggered it for me? About 20 years ago, my wife urged me to put on some make up. (Actually, she had prodded me once before to do it, but I'd said no.) This time, I put on mascara, eye shadow and lipstick -- and it set off a flood of emotions and desire that has never really stopped. From that night on, I've worn panties regularly and other pieces of clothing with varying frequency.

Has anyone else had a trigger in adulthood that set off some dormant desires?

Moving to a new area and living on my own. Left with my own thoughts the inclination returned. Previous to that adolescence, living on my own for the first time, and occasional fetish urges.

in the early 90's I dressed up as a woman for Halloween, after that I was hooked.

No trigger in adulthood for me but your story is fab. To be 'triggered' into crossdressing by your wife! I love that. Must be about as far removed from a DADT situation as it is possible to get. Maybe should have listened to your wife the first time? To your wife: I salute you. :)

For me it was as an older adult. Wife and I were on a trip and I ran out of clean whitey tighties and she said here and gave me a pair of her silky panties. Girl did they feel wonderful. After finishing the trip wearing panties I've never looked back. Gee I wonder what it would feel like to wear a bra, a camisole, panty hose , etc, etc, etc. Funny thing was I wore panties with my wife's knowledge it was years before I came out to her totally a little over a year ago. There is a story why my wife thought panties were OK but that to long for this post. That trip was one time I was glad I didn't pack enough clotha. LOL

I'm not sure what the triggers were but during adulthood my crossdressing has gone dormant for long periods only to come back stronger than ever each time.

Hi Billie, sounds very familiar to me, always liked the ladies options, but went for years where never crossed my mind to try until some years ago that triggered the idea and I've been addicted ever since :D

Just watching my wife applying her makeup triggers my inner feelings that I need to dress. The lipsticks she uses gets me started wanting the feel n my lips also.

Same here, it was a bra that was my fetish, and did it feel a sensation thru the whole body.

This was my first female thing to bye, and then garter belt and nylons. had the nicest sensation ever.

Never ever thot about ladies things until my 50's. It came rite out of left field! I thot I had become gay!:eek:

So, I'm not gay, but my life will never be what it was before I fell down the "dressing" rabbit hole!:heehee:

Your youth experiences show you were typical CDer, but your environent was not conducive to acting on it. You did say "I really didn't dress". Did you think about it often? Dress a little bit on occasion? I think it is more of a change of life situation where the focus moves from others (children / wife) who now need you less, to then focus on your own needs and desires. And having the wife be a willing participant makes it so guilt free.
Hugs, Ellen

You can't just leave it there Billie! What made your wife make her request? How did she react or behave when you accepted her invitation? How does she feel about what she triggered?

We. Want. More.

The urge to dress has never abated for me. Since retiring, though, I do find more time to indulge.

Like Elizabeth, my urges have come and gone (and changed) over the years with no logical explanation. She left me for almost 4 years and then suddenly she came back, no reason for either.

Oddly, it seems that the combination of worry, loneliness and boredom all played a hand.

The scientists who have studied this behavior have pretty well settled in with an explanation that far more often than not this behavior is a genetic predisposition. In other words, the predisposition is not expressed unless there is something that triggers it. We all have various predispositions built into us. Whether we are right or left handed is actually a predisposition that is activated when we are a baby just learning to grasp things. If right handed you may not be able to do much with your left hand, but if you lose your right hand then the brain transfers as much as possible over to the left hand because of the predisposition nature of handedness.

Thus, with a predisposition such as identifying with the feminine gender when male or masculine when female may take many, many years before something happens that actually activates it and it becomes a disposition. Once activated, situations we encounter are dealt with in accordance with what we perceive to be the proper mode. Thus, it can come and go and be expressed in many different ways, but once activated apparently the brain just flips back and forth in different modes that are perceived as appropriate for the situation. But in some, the "alternate" mode becomes so dominant that transitioning becomes the solution that produces the best comfort and that, according to this explanation, is the source of transexuals.

In the science, it is all thought to be the same process coming from the same source which is a complex of genes that operate together to result in this behavior pattern as being normal in that person; as normal as being right or left handed. At least that is what the current thinking is regarding the cause of this phenomenon we are a part of. There is a great deal of evidence in support of this including identified genetic markers, brain structures and various morphological and anatomical features we have that are indicative of the deeper predisposition that has genetic roots. But it is still a predisposition and therefore variable in its expression. Thus, essentially every description that has been provided to this point in this thread can easily be fitted into the predisposition model. Each person is normal for them and the way things are supposed to work in them as a result of having an activated predisposition to behave this way.

It sure works for me and I am very well educated in the sciences and before retiring, I worked in science for over 40 years. But it has brought a great deal of comfort and confidence to me to know where this probably came from and that there is real scientific evidence to support it and not just conjectures with little verifiable evidence. The struggle, for each of us, is the matter of exactly how do we live with it in the context of the culture we live in? Unfortunately, the science doesn't tell us how to do that. We have to discover that for ourselves. And that, I think, is why forums like this exist and are so useful to many of us.

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Originally Posted by BillieS

Has anyone else had a trigger in adulthood that set off some dormant desires?

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Then doc's experience:

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Originally Posted by docrobbysherry

Never ever thot about ladies things until my 50's. It came rite out of left field! So, I'm not gay, but my life will never be what it was before I fell down the "dressing" rabbit hole!:heehee:

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The simple answer is, we don't know. As nearly all of us grew up in environments where we were inclined to feel that being feminine was the worst possible thing we could be, it would be no surprise at all if many of us simply repressed any idea of behaving or dressing fem, sometimes for decades, or even for life.

We see this in plenty of people who have experienced negative things (physical and/or psychological traumas especially), which they aren't able to resolve into their current life.
Doc doesn't remember any such event. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen. We'll never know.

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Originally Posted by GretchenM

The scientists who have studied this behavior have pretty well settled in with an explanation that far more often than not this behavior is a genetic predisposition.

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Uh, not exactly. That explanation is what is currently the most politically correct, so that's what we're seeing, same as what we have for explanations for why people are gay. It's become the standard answer, all in order to avoid blaming anyone for what most would consider their terribly 'deviant' sexuality. Heaven forbid that we might find another cause that we can blame it all on. It will only become more clear when all the homophobia is out of the picture. Because right now, parents can't stand the idea that they might be responsible for their child being gay or TS (or CD). So those in charge of telling them what the cause is, simply tell them what they want to hear: 'It's not your fault', as if something terrible had happened. Only when we get past that will we be able to look more openly at what goes on in our minds.

I'm an example of how experiences in life can cause all sorts of turmoil. I was not a gay or crossdressing child. It started when someone planted in my mind the idea that I was supposed to be a girl, and that I should embrace it and learn to be one. So I wound up looking for other signs that it might be true. And when you look for things, you're more inclined to find them, even if they aren't there.
By the time I was in high school, I often wanted to dress up as a girl, behave like a girl, and even have sex like a girl. That included anal intercourse. So, someone might just assume that I was gay. Or trans. But there were a few wrinkles that weren't being seen. I had grown up starved of affection; my only source? The guy who was having sex with me, when I was dressed and behaving like a girl. So there's a mechanism going on to support all the not exactly normal behavior, and until that is recognized, the normal gay/ts assumptions will be seen to be correct, as it would appear that I was 'triggered' into my 'dormant' aberrant genetically predisposed sexual feelings
at ages past my early childhood. But a problem with that is, I don't have any desire for any intimate contact with a male, the idea of kissing a man I find repulsive. I don't find men romantically interesting or attractive, and even though I desire it, I don't like or enjoy anything stuck up my butt. It's all caused by the desire for affection, and it's stuck in my brain that dressing and behaving like a girl will get that for me. Even though I know what's causing this feeling, that doesn't stop me from feeling it.

And it never goes away; exactly why, we still don't know. My own hypothesis is that certain things in our personality become permanent at certain stages of our brain's development. The best known example of something like that is language accents; if you learn a new language as a child, you won't have an accent. If you learn it past puberty, you almost certainly will. Why? The part of the brain where the speech center is, well, 'finalizes' during those years, much like a burned compact disc or DVD finalizes and after which can no longer be written to. Sexuality may just work the same. But as we're not allowed to experiment on human beings, there's really no way to be sure. And because so many people repress thoughts that they cannot accept, the actual onset of homosexual/transsexual/crossdressing feelings will probably not be pinpointed for most of us who feel these things.

Why did you wife urge you to put makeup on?

The trigger for me got pulled when I was eleven, I went to a party dressed as a girl and the other girls there thought I looked fabulous.

It was really fun playing with he girls.

blame it on "harp" radio waves ( wonder how many hundreds of thousands in studies the gov paid on that ) radio waves are everywhere but certainly more prevalent now. So whos got data on radio wave wattage /meter vs incident of crossdressing

I do remember some of the early early days of crossdressing but I just feel that was experimentation but it sure felt wonderful.

While looking back on my childhood, there was obvious femininity, just looking at pictures and thinking of how I felt. But the idea of me dressing as a female never entered into my mind. Or the thought I was different than other boys my age. Then.... at the age of 17, I had snuck into a bar (age was 18 at the time) and I had noticed a female college student that for whatever reason I felt drawn to. I was physically attracted to her and decided to go stand next to her at the bar and maybe talk to her. What happened when I got there though was a 10 on the ricter scale for me as rather than wanting to be with her, I suddenly and explainable for no better term wanted to BE her. Scared of what I was feeling probably isn't a strong enough word. Horrified? nope, still no where near what I was feeling, by feeling I wanted to BE her. Well, I had had several beers, so I decided I had had too much and went home. For a few weeks I thought maybe that was it, just too much to drink and got my normal feelings a little jumbled. But then it started to happen again and again. Not when I was drinking. That set off a life of denial, repression, the attempt at purging this femininity from my soul. Never was I successful in doing so. After roughly 30 years I finally waved the white flag and surrendered to it.

I had dabbled a bit in my younger days, mom's clothing when I was very young, and in my teens I had some undies but I stopped because life got in the way.

My wife bought me a pair of high heels, as a joke. She told me that if I liked them so much that I should wear them. I did, and liked it. Of course I needed pantyhose, then undies and down the slippery slope I slid.

She about freaked out and told me it no girlie stuff or she was gone, so I gave in. After some time she sat me down and we had a long talk and she was ok with me buying some shoes and clothing as long as I keep her informed. We since have "enjoyed" dressing in naughty bits together.

The other day I repaired our toilet and some other chores wearing black, leather over the knee boots with stiletto heels while she was messing up the kitchen.

I'm not sure exactly what triggered it for me but my first experience of seeing someone none cis was in this scene. I really enjoyed some aspect of it and was fascinated by transgederism and tranvestites from then on. Even though it was supposed to be a comedic scene I was fascinated with the idea of looking so pretty but still having male parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFL1UXuHJ-A


Other early experiences was the panto dames. I really liked the over the top thrills and ridiculous amount of make-up and used to fantasise about playing one of those parts.

Hi Vickie and Nikki. As it turned out, my wife is into my CDing (although not totally as much as me!).

Speaking of hitting lulls, as Becky alluded to, my wife also pulled me out of one a few years ago. I’d cut way back because my parents had been living with us. After they passed, she got me a kilt and nudged me to go out in it.

Not total CDing, but that got me going again.

We are a good match for many reasons, but the shared CDing interest was great fortune for me.

I wish I could contribute to this thread to support a fellow Connecticut girl's thoughts. The fact is, my desire to dress has never been dormant over more than 60+ years. Life would have been easier if there were some periods if for nothing else but to catch a breath. Some people who know me might say I haven't really started adulthood yet, mentally not physically. So when I reach adulthood I'll keep an eye out for these dormant times.

I dressed occasionally when I was young, into my teens, then got married and forgot about it. Then one Christmas, as a joke my wife gave me a pair of high heels, with a note that said "if you like them so much, you can wear them". I did and it has been crazy ever since! It had been well over thirty years.

It was with me since I was born. Gender fluid and it took me a while to understand it. And I am been feminine most of my life.

I can't point to any particular trigger for my CD'ing. Its always been with me as far as I can remember.

When I moved out of my dorm and had an apartment with my own bedroom, I bought used clothes from a lady who ran an amateur adult site. I didn’t have a car in college so I had to order and ship it to me. It was awesome being able to come in, lock my bedroom door and put on some lingerie.

Not exactly a trigger but more of a boost. I was in the early stages of living as a girl when I saw Boy George at a concert when he first came to the US. I was so impressed, here was someone living the life. It gave me inspiration to continue on.

I don't remember anything that triggered my dressing but I didn't start until my mid 20's after I was married. I'm sure that my desire to dress was in me long before that, I just didn't realize it.

Nothing in adulthood,,,triggered at around 9 or 10,,,mom`s things,heels,OBG,stockings,bras,,,never ever went away after that., only grew stronger and more complete.

Started late-30s as my marriage was breaking up. Waxed and waned late-30s, early-40s, sometimes dressing up all the way with panties, garter belt and stockings/stockings and sussies, bra, slip and skirt. (never wore high heels for some reason). Then my cross dressing was largely quiescent during my second marriage (was just emailing with my second ex today - a bright, complex and interesting woman) but my wife didn't mind me slipping on her panties. Then, back in Canada after a period working in England and N Ireland and it's been up and down, a bit like binge drinking (which I don't do:))); urges just well up out of nowhere. I normally wear panties al the time and sometimes wear a second set (camiknickers or grannies under my outerwear) and enjoy wearing a slip or nightie to bed when the weather is clement.

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Originally Posted by suit

blame it on "harp" radio waves ( wonder how many hundreds of thousands in studies the gov paid on that ) radio waves are everywhere but certainly more prevalent now. So whos got data on radio wave wattage /meter vs incident of crossdressing

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Lots of cross dressing in England in the 19th century (the Mollies for example), back when radio spectrum was just a wasted resource

Interesting, I started at 12.------I find the Psychology of CD TS very fascinating. I've read the literature and analyzed myself and others for years. I would speculate that the "Adult onset" might be what MY condition "evolved " to.-----A desire to "get away from one's self"---if only for a few hours. Then one can be SOMEONE ELSE, without the responsibilities and emotional baggage of one's normal self. ---Not to mention the "fun" of "Looking Pretty" I find it VERY RELAXING and releasing stress. Of course Many of us consider the Femme self as their "real self" are you sure? you might be being "influenced" by what others keep saying, or simply because "it feels so good" Quite often we have more difficulty understanding our selves than others.----But with CD there is so much to consider, an ego element, a sexual element, a sexuality element , SM, escape, etc.

Started preschool years when a playmate flipped her dress over her head! I thought that was neat and wanted a dress! Did not get a dress! Then in teen years,dressing in mom's clothes and very sexual! Then got married, prior to marriage asked if I could wear women's clothes and she said, "There will be only one woman in this marriage!" We married and I wore panties maybe 3-4 times but purged them immediately! I had no idea what this was all about! My wife of 34+ years passed away! 3 months later I was in K Mart buying panties! I found this site and here I am! Unfortunately, it took the wife's death to trigger it! Or was it little Lana that triggered it with here cute white dress flipped over her head? Hugs Lana Mae

I have Crossdressed as long as I can remember, it’s the same story as most of the girls here. This website really gave me incentive to try to be beautiful like all the girls here. I would have never thought I would ever post pictures of me in a dress and full makeup. I’m having fun.

Very good reads, everyone! I guess seeing how clothes accentuate feminine curves on store mannequins, or perhaps seeing a photo of a model REALLY pulling off a particular contour often sets the ball in motion for me. I love myself, but I also love the rush and freedom of physical transformation. My core is the same, but my appearance is soo different!

I was in what is often regarded as a profession for boring people. In the early 2000s I dressed up as a woman for New Year, just to shake certain people's perceptions, after that I was well and truly hooked although I only get the chance to go out for New Year. Years before, I had occasionally and privately, tried on female clothing, and my wife suggested I try ladies jeans when men's ones didn't suit. So, before "going out", I had been regularly wearing ladies jeans and some underwear. I suppose there was a latent tendency to cross-dressing, but that certainly was the trigger - I wish I'd pulled it 20/30 years earlier.

hello all,
I think perhaps my trigger in adulthood was adulthood itself!
luv J

My desire has always been there. So for me it wasn't triggers but just the opportunity to try something on.

Since I didn't have a sister or spend time with girl cousins nothing really fit until I was old enough to be home alone with access to my mother's things. After leaving home during college I always had roommates and little privacy, eventually exchanging roommates for a wife. When she went on her own to spend time with family for a week I jumped right in. Eventually kids began to take up free time but when my wife took them to church I had a couple hours every Sunday. Travel for work meant taking a few girl things along. Finally I followed my wife's example where she would vacation on her own and I started taking short trips once or twice a year where I could dress for part of the time. Eventually I came out to her and could dress more frequently and that continues to this day.

So no single trigger, just the combination of time and opportunity.