I can speak to that. I started exploring cross-dressing in 2009 and I spent the whole year trying in vain to get good at it. I met a few local girls and I skulked around this site as well as a gazillion others searching for my identity. The cross-dressing gave me a new perspective and for the first time in my life I was freed from my carefully constructed "dude" prison. I had never been referred to as "she" before and it felt so right and so wonderful that I think I became addicted to the "scene" for a short time. My childhood desire to be a girl came flooding back and I was swept away by the possibilities and simultaneously horrified by the consequences. I realized in just a few months that I had a serious issue but by the end of the year (2009) I had decided that I was done with this stuff and while I was happy to finally know what my problem was, I was not prepared to ruin my life and humiliate myself by becoming a transsexual.
I had never been a cross dresser and though I always felt feminine I had decided as an adolescent to just try and be the kind of guy I admired. Eventually it all came to a head, and I had a brief but intense cross dressing career before I scared myself straight.
Just a few weeks after my decision to continue my life as it was, I was in a pretty bad car wreck (January 2010) and that's when I made the decision to live an authentic life.
CD's are not stunted or latent TS's they are men who are happy being men and for any number of reasons enjoy dressing up and exploring various degrees of femininity. I never enjoyed the act of cross-dressing, I just really really loved being treated like a girl. A faux girl admittedly, but the she's and her's were almost euphoric to me. This is why I keep hammering on the idea that CD's love the clothes and TS's yearn to BE.
My transition goal is to pass 100% as a woman in jeans and a T-shirt. No make-up, no wig, no heels. That doesn't sound much like cross-dressing does it?