As one who’s dressed since youth, my two cents worth is...it is not an addiction. Why? Because one can quit an addiction...we can’t quit. It’s with us 24/7. My opinion is it’s a genetic compulsive behavior pattern we’re born with. Throughout history, men have dressed. Could it be one or more of your ancestors also dressed and you inherited the cd gene? For me, it explains why I began and why it won’t go away. In fact, I really don’t want it to go away.
I’m inclined to think that is is an addictive behavior. When I started trying on panties many years ago, it was quite a rush. The high of the arousal ant the ultimate climax made me want to come back for more. However, ultimately, a simple pair of panties was not as exciting as it once was. So, I figured that maybe I should try a different color or style. That was more exciting. Then I figured if more panties were exciting, then wouldn’t a bra make it more exciting? Of course! Then a slip, then a garter belt and stockings, , and then, of course more panties, then more lingerie, etc, etc. How many of us have more panties than our spouses? So, I think we are a bit like the heroin addict. We get used to a certain level of clothing but to get the same “good feeling” and as we age, that may no longer necessarily mean sexual arousal, it may just mean comfort, we need to buy and try more feminine things.
I always learn from reading the wisdom of Confucius. You are so right as to why this need that we share has been ingrained since birth. Hopefully science will evolve to the point where society will understand that how we are is as natural as being a left handed relief pitcher.
Is it not natural evolution and the theory of natural attraction?
I don't believe that it is compulsion or addiction!
I was born pretty evolved into a pretty chick and my natural attraction is to the same pretty chicks!
Just go with it!
Stacy!
STOP, Well I just dance the way I feel
Stop breathing imagine none of this is real
Well I just dance the way I feel
Well I just dance the way I feel
Well I just dance the way I feel "Ou Est Le Swimming Pool"
Wow you took the words right out of my month!
My wife thinks it's very emasculating, so I have to sneak it and I don't like to have to keep a secret from my wife.
So when I get a chance to dress It's all lies where I've been or what I've been up to!
"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?
Ah yes, the familiar theme. My question: If dressing were culturally acceptable, would any of this matter? We worry if it's an addiction ( and therefore wrong ) because of what others think, especially wives. A therapist would tell you that you are not responsible for your wife's feelings and you have a right to be happy. I know this doesn't solve many of the day to day challenges many CDs face but don't beat yourself up with guilt over an "addiction". We put female clothes on - the clothes themselves have little meaning - in an attempt to conform our outsides to how we feel on the inside. All people do this whether it's sports team apparel, goth, biker stuff or three piece suits. All of this hand wringing, guilt and persecution comes from the neurotic impositions of our sexist, gender-phobic, religion-as-a-devisive-tool dominated culture.
I think we (CD, Non-CD alike) can lose balance with many things. I know guys who throw their life savings into cars. Many men spend hours and hours of time (and money) on the golf course. For others today, it’s technology and gaming....and others Social Media, and of course sports is another. For women, it maybe reading novels or something else.
My point is that we can create an unhealthy balance in a lot of things. I think the problems with CD’ing are more related to a compulsion to “have to dress” or think of dressing all the time, and letting it consume our mind making us less effective and functional in real life.
Life as fathers, husbands. Life as employees, etc.
If we are incapable to function in these daily responsibilities, I would say that’s a problem. If we think more about our dress, our hair, etc, more than we think about those other responsibilities, we have in my opinion, crossed the line.
So, does that make it an “addiction?” I don’t think so...but in my opinion (as fun as it is), life was not meant for us to spend looking in mirrors and fancying ourselves.
If you can find a balance, good for you. I am currently of the opinion that some dressing is probably important for me to achieve that balance...but I would say it’s healthier, safer, better if you error on the side of doing it less.
I don't know if it is an "Addiction", but I often have to have my "FIX" of CD. Then I can continue on more or less normally for a few days or a week until I "Have" to do it again.-------It's not so much the "dressing like a woman" aspect, but rather the good feeling I get from "Looking/feeling Pretty" and the complete "relaxation and de-stressing" I get from "taking a vacation from myself" and being someone else completely different.
None of the above, as successful treatment modalities for those things have so far been unsuccessful in treating crossdressing.Originally Posted by Deborah2B
My current belief is that at some point, our gender self identification gets mixed up, and consciously or subconsciously, we are trying to reconcile the cognitive dissonance in our own minds. We know we are male, but something is telling us that we are female. The huge block in treatment is the guilt that we experience in embracing feminine things, as the vast majority of us have been brought up to believe that for a male to allow himself to indulge in anything associated with being female, is the absolute worst thing we can do. Due to this, most wish to avoid any connection to it, preferring to believe that we are all just born this way, despite the fact that onset of crossdressing desire almost always occurs much later in life than say, as a toddler. Something triggers the desire, and once giving in to it, for most of us, it just gets stronger over time.
Usually, it initially results in our desire to discard all things connected to being male, starting with the clothing. The stronger the GID is, the more things that we may want to change; sometimes resulting in the desire to remove all body hair, change our head hair style to something that a female and ONLY a female would wear, and then even progressing to changing our behavior, body mechanics, vocal patterns, even speech stylings into that which are stereotypically what women are observed to do. Still, for about 80% of us, we still retain the communication styles and emotional behaviors and intellectual interests traditionally associated with males.
For myself, feeling like I'm supposed to be a girl, despite all other evidence to the contrary, continues to cause some GID, although giving in to the desire to dress as the girl I feel I'm supposed to be, relieves other symptoms of stress for me.
Having grown up wondering if I was gay, then maybe Transsexual, but finding inconsistancies with both those ideas, it took me over 50 years to come to all these conclusions. Take it for what it is; I may be right, I may be wrong. But at least I'm no longer tormented by all the associated feelings that I was, when I was young. While time may not heal all wounds, sometimes it does make them easier to live with.
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 come from the sum of all your senses. From the past, the present and what is yet to come. Resistance is futile!
It's a lot of things. Compulsion because the desire for crisscrossing drives you crazy until you can go get dressed. Addiction because you can't stop doing it. But for most of us we just need to interact with others as women because that's who we really are - we need our real selves to feel accepted and loved, and being accepted as a man just doesn't cut it.
Deborah, your personal story correlates strongly with mine. My wife is adamant it is an addiction, triggered by some kind of childhood trauma, that I could easily give up if I really wanted to and seriously tried to. Yeah, right! Like others, I've tired that approach many times and failed because it feels innate; I can't explain why.
On a lighter note, I will admit that part of me finds this cross-dressing habit is addictive because, if I had the opportunity, my shoe collection would be a hell of a lot bigger.
My Flickr profile
https://www.flickr.com/photos/142337725@N08/
My wife calls it an addiction, as well, since I run to my closet at every chance for my 'fix'.
It is a compulsion, from my point of view, a dragon inside clawing to get out, and if a dress is handy I want to put it on. [I'm exaggerating only slightly].
But these are summary classifications that gloss over the operative elements- and both the addictive and compulsive qualities of crossdressing go away when I feel I have free choice of what to wear.
I'll compare it to the chocolate factory my grandfather ran- his first rule for the staff was "Eat all the chocolate you want!" It took a few days, and they rarely ate it again.
Crossdressing is different because it is driven by the desire to feel a range of things, many of which I can only dimly identify- all I know is that they are on the other side of the crossdressing fence! But I am sliding through the looking glass now. The more freedom I have to dress, the more of these needed expansions in my mental and emotional space, the more physical sensations from both clothes and moving my body differently, and the more interpersonal relationship nuances I feel. As I do, the 'Aladdin's Lamp' effect of feminine clothes weakens.
I find now I am feeling like I can see as a man out of one eye and as a woman out of the other, I feel the thrill of a woman in dressing up and accentuating my sexiness [for imaginary lovers who can appreciate the genderqueer look], andthe annoyance that wearing a nice dress will attract unwanted attention, and maybe it isn't going to be fun after all. I find myself looking at what the other women are wearing and consider how what I choose to wear needs to reflect group norms, or not. That leads me to consider how I would communicate my membership in the team- since my 'womanliness' is limited to deep emotional things and doesn't include the huge range of actual experience of being female, not the least of which is bearing children.
When I am staying aware of the deep feelings and learning to express them- to be soft or sensual, to be aware of a much larger range of my environment in a new way, to let myself be light on my feet, crossdressing just feels like an available choice, and no longer a compulsion. So I don't 'need a fix'- I am fixed. I can enjoy my feminine clothes as my clothes. Not being 'forbidden fruit' some of the edge comes off, but I prefer to have a normal appreciation of the plus and minus of various clothes over the days when I would wrap a burlap sack around me just to try to find the door to my lost self.
This discovery is still fragile. It is all too easy to slide from my wholeness into the habitual stolidity I felt required of me as a man, whereupon the 'magic lamp' of crossdressing calls to me again.
We are all beautiful...!
Not an addiction, not a compulsion, for me it is something that I need to do, it is a part of me that I enjoy and do because it is a part of me
In my younger years I wanted it to be something else because that made me feel better about myself but now, older and wiser, I realise that it is just me and how I am, I stopped fighting it many years ago and embrace it like anything else that I do
Once I managed to come to terms with me a long time ago, it made life very much easier and the one thing I do know is that I would never want to stop
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