The desire can indeed go away but only when we base it on honest choice.
The desire can indeed go away but only when we base it on honest choice.
Second star to the right and straight on till morning
I've been a closet CD of and on for 50 or so years. The desire comes and goes for me. I don't think it will ever go away. Right now I am in drab and I would like nothing better than to be en femme.🌺
CynthisD made a great comment:
"But if you want my opinion, it never goes away. ... Why on earth would you want it to?"
In my case, after decades of crossdressing and trying to stop, it has nver gone away or abatted in the least.
The rather lengthy comment by sometimes_miss is well worth the read and I really recommed it.
The general impression I have got from dozens of comments on this list is that for most people it never goes away. However, I wonder if it does go away for some people. After all there are always exceptions. CDs who have stopped completely don't seem to post about this on this forum and might well exist.
It is safe to assume that it really never goes away.
My desire to dress somewhat faded as my children were growing up but, now that they've moved out dressing has come back strong.
"This is ME" I am not CRAZY, I'm just a GUY who likes dresses!
Since allot of men dress up in woman's clothing that makes it a manly thing to do!
Much more fun than fishing.
I do construction like house building and I love CD-ing, what's the difference?
Emily I have thought long and hard about this and me, I have made a conscious effort to quit, I did very well with that for a long time, when the thoughts arose, I simply changed the channel in my mind or the subject, Yes I do associate this with sex, I had become celibate. I think about women and dressing comes to mind, I dont think I can accept being this way (celibate). Im not young anymore but Im far from being dead too. I dress at least in something once a day most days now, the urges have become less, but I think some of the relation will always be there. Leaves me with quite a quandry doesnt it? I want to try a relationship again but most women are not very accepting of this kind of behavior to say the least. I also dress more when stressed, I also relax when dressed. I enjoy the clothes in general, I enjoy looking nice, pretty whatever you want to call it. Ive been this way as long as I can remember. This is a part of me , it is me. I know its not going to go away Emily. I accepted this in me when I joined the forum Emily, I let go of all the bad feelings and I have never felt better, I express myself better, Im happier by far. Im at ease with myself. Im still seeking balance in my life, Ive not been real successful previously with balance but Im going in the right direction more than I ever have been before. If your curious as how I see me Im what we refer to as gender fluid, I like being both a guy and appearing feminine, Im straight, I suppose this is fairly typical, I can say no 2 of us are exactly alike from what I can tell. I wear girls jeans, belts, sneakers out in public and sometimes a nice shirt along with it. I mix my clothes male/female and Im quite happy being that way. Im currently trying a new haircut, Im working towards the end results as the top isnt quite long enough yet, I had my eyebrows cleaned up, waxed last saturday 1st time. Im a feminine guy what can I say : )
Mykaa is me! Discovering Peace throughout from the Girl within.
David Bowie "Don't stay in a sad place Where they don't care how you are..."
Disturbed The Light "The truth is waiting there for you to find it
It's not a blight, but a remedy"
Does it ever go I away? Can't say for sure but for me it hasn't. I first dabbled in this in my teens, typical stuff, occasionally trying mom's panties on, etc. It went dormant for a long time as I established my career, raised a family and took on the middle class suburban life style. In my early forties, my marital situation changed, I moved, alone, to another country and realized I really wanted to do this again. Since then my actual dressing has ebbed and flowed, largely depending on living arrangements and opportunity. I have often purged, not out of any sense of self doubt or thoughts that this is wrong, but more out of a feeling that is currently inconvenient and possibly the fear of being found out. Now, I'm more leaning towards making it more consistent part of of my life and damn those that may condemn it (but still not quite there).
Because it doesn't work. Way back in the mid 20th century, therapists tried all sorts of methods to stop homosexuality, crossdressing, and transsexual feelings. Nothing worked permanently. Studying crossdressing in particular, I came across trials done using electro convulsive therapy. It worked; but only temporarily. The subject would need repeated treatments, eventually causing decreasing mental capacity, to the point where they stopped the treatments for fear of leaving the poor patient unable to function at all. And those were only the experiments that were published anywhere that the public could find them. I hate to think of what was done in private institutions where there was little oversight, and perhaps parents brought their TG children to be 'cured'.Originally Posted by Nadine Spirit
I think that at this point, the mental health community has settled on accepting that gender is something very basic in us, and, once we have developed a self concept of gender, there's no way to change it. For crossdressers, we're all just either really more female than male, or have lots of conflicts that we aren't able to accept, much less resolve, because we can't even face the possibility of what it might mean as to who and what we are.
Further, you can eradicate the behavior, but you can't eradicate the thoughts that cause it. Just stopping the somewhat harmless crossdressing behavior would just end in increasing frustration on the part of the crossdresser; keep anyone frustrated enough, expecially males, and what you wind up with is usually violent behavior instead. Not a good trade off.
Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.
It's in our blood and yes its scary. When I was about 18 we were moving house so I had to do a purging, to make my life easier I threw out all my pantyhose and slips during the move. I didn't believe it my mind was so occupied that I didn't have a pair of pantyhose in my position that I had to buy a pair at a store and hed them in my car until we settled into our new home, and then when I got married another purge thinking I will never wear pantyhose again. Then one week back from my honeymoon I was wearing my wife's pantyhose. At that point I knew it wasn't going anywhere and that same night I took a big chance and told her and thank God it's now thirty years later. It's unbelievable sometimes months go by without dressing and then out of nowhere it all comes back and bigger then ever.
When people on this site leave that last message that there leaving and stopping the dressing, my response is, " it may not be tomorrow or next week or next year, I wish you luck but you will be back". Well to make my point it was easier to quit smoking, I get the craving now and then but I can control it, I can't control Maria.
Last edited by Maria 60; 06-15-2016 at 04:42 AM.
I have been crossdressing pretty much all of my life and gone through many purges, each time thinking this is it. I have always returned, sometimes with such an overwhelming urge that I changed in the parking lot of the store I bought my cloths at. It comes and goes in waves, it can be as long as months or wash back in a week. I have given it a lot of thought, usually leading to a purge, but I always return. The insight of the people on this site surprises me, they are deep thinkers, considerate, and very literate. I am thankful I found this group. I don't believe the desire ever goes away, at least not for me.
I've never actually asked a counselor about this in particular if this could ever go away but I know that once I decided to accept the fact that this is a part of me it made things easier for me in accepting the fact it probably won't go away.
Yes I think we can make certain choices about what we do with that self acceptance just like anything but I think for most this is a very special part of our personality and we can choose how far we want to go with it.
It stays with you all your life enjoy it while you have it
The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Everyone in this forum who writes on the subject of purging or walking away from crossdressing say the same thing. It appears to come back every time, sometimes with extra vigor. Those who have tried to purge suggest its more prudent to just put the clothes into storage because of the expense of rebuilding their wardrobes when it does come back.
I believe our gender feelings are so deeply ingrained and mysterious that its more like being left or right handed. You are what you are and attempts at "fixing" it only cause damage. IMHO, the best thing for you to do is find a way to embrace who you are. Good luck!
If your question is limited to those of us who are active on crossdressers.com then the answer is, obviously, no: it doesn't go way. If the desire had gone away for me, after 60 years, I wouldn't be here.
I did some past life regression a few years ago and found out I had been a female who died (by accident) in the prime of her life. This left many feelings of incompleteness, not having achieved goals etc. CDing was thus a subconscious effort on my part to try and complete those incomplete goals. I am now no longer obsessed with wanting to CD but rather I make a far less frequent, conscious choice to to it for fun, when I'm in the mood. I am now in control of it rather than being the victim of an obsession I could nothing about.
This is true. There's no point asking the members here if the desire goes away, it obviously hasn't for them.
But, what of the tens of thousands of people who joined here over the years and who no longer come around. Some may have transitioned, some may have become bored with the forum and they may still crossdress (like my SO). And some have passed away. But I bet there are thousands upon thousands of people who don't dress any more. A friend's husband (in my town) came out to her decades ago. They were deeply involved in Tri-Ess at the time and he even did some pro-bono legal work for them. The crossdressing was cyclical over the 25 years, with periods of intensity where the husband wondered if he wanted to transition, to less intense times, and back to intensity again. There never were any purges because my friend accepted. Their kids knew. Their church community and friends knew. And then he just stopped. Cold. Hasn't dressed in seven years. He doesn't see the point any more.
I think that a crossdresser will only reach that point once he has achieved complete freedom and has gone out at will for years and years. I guess it's hard to stop as long as there is some form of repression (a wife who doesn't totally accept, the need to hide from the kids, living in an area that makes it hard to dress, or living with any amount of internal angst about it), and so as long as these conditions exist there is a need that never really becomes satisfied.
Also, some people just can't get away with dressing in public and dressing alone at home can get old. They cannot pull off blending in, it's hard to keep trying if they feel stared at constantly and so eventually they give up, if they cannot bring themselves to stop caring about what people think.
I think it's wrong to assume that every person who has crossdressed will continue to do so all their lives. Some will, and some won't. YMMV.
Reine
For me it never disappeared but was less strong at certain times to the point where I really could ignore it. It did always return.
I used to wonder if I treated it like an addiction could I control it, but ultimately realized that I didn't want to.
Figured that now might be a good time for me to add some thoughts. I haven't been active in this forum for a while. A few years ago for a variety of reasons, I decided that I had to stop crossdressing and did. I haven't engaged in the behavior now for a couple of years. Still it was a part of me and will always be, so I like to see what's going on in the forum from time to time.
In my case, yes the desire to crossdress goes away, but from time to time, it does come back. How could it not come back? It was something I enjoyed and occasionally I remember the enjoyment so the desire comes back. Still I don't allow the desire to control my behavior. Now granted, the desire might be stronger in some than it is in me and their motivation for stopping the behavior may not be as great as mine or even exist at all. But everyone is different in that regard.
Will the desire ever go away permanently? I won't be able to tell you that until I'm gone permanently and that will be kinda hard to do.
"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think." - The Buddha
I am well past 65 yrs of age and I can tell ya that the desire(s) may diminish from time to time but when they return WATCH OUT!!!!! They return with a vengeance. I have just accepted the fact that I prefer female clothing over male clothing and I also look better when I am "all prettied up".
Molly
"To thine own self be true"
It's the old absence of evidence problem. Certainly it's something that should be studied at the funded academic research level, but that probably won't happen soon.
What I'd note is that if you're willing to accept the crossdressers are transgender (no, I'm not trying to start that up again) and if you accept that their level of dysphoria differs from folks who need to transition more in degree than in type then we can look at the research that has been done to support the idea that treatment by trying to change a person's inner model of themselves is ineffective to the point where it's considered medically more effective to modify the body, then that might argue that a consistent history of gender dysphoria is a good predictor that the dysphoria will continue into the future (i.e. it never goes away.)
Or you can just say we don't know the answer.
For me, it never went away; though I surpressed it for many years, the desire was almost always there. As I aged, I started to dress more often until now, its daily and for longer periods of time. And, I dress much younger than my age to try to recapture what I could have done in my younger years. I've also become Bi-curious, and I now fantasize of being with a man and taking care of his needs.
I never consciously suppressed my desire to crossdress, either. It just went away for a very long time. But in recent years, it came back far more strongly than any other time in my life. I'm 65. I used to only dress on weekends. But in recent months, I have the desire....no, the need to dress on week nights, which I never have done before. It's just such a relief to get everything on, and sit and relax. A wonderful feeling.
"Taking the time to be in touch with my feminine side"
I think it is the same as with everything, the desire comes and goes. I have the desire to go running some days, but not every day. I have read stories of some people not dressing for years, then all of a sudden the need coming back to them. I agree with your original post about dressing being more of a need sometimes, but some days I also "need" chocolate, so I eat it!
As a Gender Fluid person, wow I would say that it will never go away. In fact with both sides of my brain open I think that it is a bio rhythm trait that switches or something like that. But it will never go away and I often wonder what it would be like to be Cis gender. But will never understand that either. But my fem side is as strong as my male side and it seems right to express your gender when you are male or female and it will never go away, but under serious circumstances I am sure we can suppress it for some time. But it will come back stronger.
Part Time Girl
Treatments that attempt to change people are indeed ineffective for both gender dysphoria and homosexuality.
But, (many? most?) crossdressers don't have GD. They don't want to be women. They live their lives as men. These are the people for whom it can diminish over time or stop entirely. And sadly, there's a paucity of research when it comes to the crossdressing because so many CDers are not seeking medical help and they are not interested in leaving their closets.
You mention transgender, and I don't generally use that term any more to describe any group of people, for the simple reason that everyone has their very own personal definition of what it means - whether it is equated to TS, or somewhere between CD & TS, or as it's very own gender, or as a general term to describe everyone from those who only wear panties to those who are transitioning no matter their motives for doing so.
Reine
For myself, it has never gone away, even during that decade of denial. Deep down, you already know the answer.
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