Stopping without anxiety and stress

[Cheryl T]

I could stop if I wanted to.
It's just that I don't want to. I feel more at peace with myself this way, more in touch with all my emotions.

Yes, I could stop. I would miss it greatly and I don't know what effect it would have on me, but I could stop if the situation was right.
For now, excuse me, I have just epilated and I need to apply lotion before I dress.

[kimdl93]

....I quit smoking about 40 years ago and I quit drinking more than ten years ago. If I had a need to quit dressing, I could quit dressing. Although I typically dress five days a week or more, I have no problem not dressing when we travel away from home.

You have to learn to control your urges, not let them control you.

When i read this, I thought of John Prine’s song “When I Get to Heaven”, where he says (as a former smoker and cancer survivor) ”I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s 9 miles long” For those of us who once smoked and quit, that desire can linger...may never fully go away.

I suppose its the same for some cross dressers.

[SaraLin]

I'm trying to figure out how to say what I'm thinking without sounding all "lecture-y". Here goes...


I think that the idea of making any decision or "attempt" to stop is laying an artificial "want" on top of the real one.
If someone didn't want to do it, they just wouldn't. It's just that simple. Without the "want", there would be no "doing" - right?

The real reason it's so hard to quit is that what people really want, is to keep going. There might be a whole boat load of reasons why they "should" or "have to" stop - and it might be possible to quit. The problem is that there will always be that yearning, that "itch you can't scratch". Can it be resisted? Will it fade away with time? Maybe for some. Probably not, for many others.

Where YOU stand is for you to decide. How strong is that yearning? How badly to you want to "scratch the itch" and put something on? How do you feel about yourself before/during/after?

Whatever path you choose, I'm sure we all wish you nothing but happiness and success.

[Michelle1955]

My 2 cents, the word / definition of transgender came about to cover basically all of us. CDing definition is wearing cloths of the opposite sex. By default in the public eyes we are all CD’ers.

But their are a lot of people that the thoughts of being a girl started back at very early childhood, for me my 1st pair of panties was at 5 years old+/-, and thoughts before that maybe back to 3 years old but fuzzy memory.

So it was not sexual, as a teenager was extremely hard on me. My brain was saying female and my body was male.
Once my wife asked me about my bras and mad a statement if I was having some fun, I said no.

Cloths are cloths, panties / shareware daily, bras are my next level to satisfy my brain needs at times.
Outer clothing also helps the need.

Do I need to be fully dressed to satisfy my brain NO, do I need female clothing on daily by all means YES.

I’m transgender, and could check off multiple sub headings on the list.
By some definitions I’m heterosexual been married nearly 42 years, but been female for over 60 years according to my brain wiring. So guess I could consider myself a lesbian in some ways. But society would go bonkers.

I am me, I live my life that I was dealt the best I can. I wear the cloths I like.
I have compassion with the young kids that have the same issue I had, some parents accept /some do not. I would have loved to go to school as a young girl. But that is an issues now, back then I would have been in a hospital locked away ‘ burn at the stake.

All of us are somewhat different in our pat, we are individuals.

[Nadine Spirit]

Hmmmm...... in my 20s I was sure that what I had was a sexual fetish. I quit it at some point in my late 20s. Though I can't really say I quit it, so I suppose I thought I quit it, lol. About 20 years later I quit CDing again, this time for keeps, as I decided to change teams and thus their is no longer anything cross about my dressing, lol. I too used to talk about free will. I still believe in free will. I still believe that we are all free to choose. I just realized I was tired of choosing to make myself miserable.

Too you OP, and anyone else wishing to quit, I wish you my very best in your endeavor!

[Star01]

I realize in a moment of clarity a few days ago after commenting about purging and quitting. If I think that I want to purge and quit and the first thing I do is announce it to my friends on a crossdressing forum was I really serious about doing either?

The way Insee it I would have to purge, quit dressing and stop visiting all the websites and purge twenty some years of my photos. After further review I have gotten that crazy idea out of my mind. I am in a restrictive DADT but even some dressing is better than none at all. I will always be a crossdresser so I have already moved on from that idea and will deal with the obstacles.

[sometimes_miss]

I kind of compare the desire to crossdress, with the desire to scratch a frequent itch. Sure, you do your best to ignore it, and if perhaps have other things occupying your mind enough of the time, can keep it out of your mind, but when you add more stressors into the calculation, something has got to give, and for me, it's crossdressing. I went for about 10 years, during which the desire very rarely raised in my mind for more than a couple of seconds, and then was gone as soon as it arose.
But when everything else in my life came crashing down, the desire to crossdress returned very intensely, to the point where thoughts of dressing interfered with my daily activities and even my work.
After discovery, and divorce, and my life settled down. I was able to quit for many months at a time, but with always the slight desire to do it.
In the end, I decided that there was really no reason to suppress it; and indulged my desires to dress up. Why? Because I knew that there was really no reason to punish myself, putting up with that 'itch' and not scratching it, relieving the irritation it induced into my life.
So I dress up, and the 'itch' is gone. But I always know that if I got involved with a woman, and life got too stressful, I'd be back in the same situation as I was in with my ex wife, and eventually that relationship would crash and burn, too.
So I remain single. I will date, but carefully introduce TG topics, to see how my date feels about it, including how she'd feel about dating a TG person.
So far, no luck. Turns out the percentage of women who are turned off by thinking of a guy as feminine, is almost all of them.

[Leslie Mary S]

Tomi, even keeping one item and you are leaving the door to come back.

The last time i stopped dressing was for about 8 years. I'm still here and still dress.

[Tomi]

Hi All,

Thank you for all your answers, the encouraging ones and the critical ones too. And it was good to read about your personal stories in the matter. I try too be not dilusional or repressive or hard on myself so I guess I see how it goes, right know I feel good about myself even though the urge rises from time to time. I certainly don't want to be miserable so if down do road it turns out that stopping does more harm then good, I guess I keep Cding.

Star01, I hear you but therecould be more then one reason to post a thread. My reason was that it bugged me a little that I saw little to none conversation about "stopping without feeling miseralbe". And I just wanted to put another one on the internet so if someone who was intrested in the topic could find opinions different form the general consensus. I believe that discussion and debate pushes forward the society and that is what i was trying to do here

Leslie Mary S, maybe you are right, it was an idea of mine based on my experiences with myself. I think if I threw out everything than the urge would be bigger. It sort of like with people who are taking pills aganst panick attacks. They do carry around the medicine but almost never took it because the sheer existence of the medicine calms them down.

[kimdl93]

This has been an interesting thread. Its good to be reminded that one size seldom fits all.

I am inclined to roughly paraphrase Mark Twain, might say its easy to quit....I have done it many times. In truth my every quitting attempt has been painful at the outset, and ended in relapse. Perhaps that is because I always approach cross dressing as an addictive behavior.

[Star01]

sometimes_miss, I like your analogy about scratching an itch. Some of us have tiny mosquito bites and others have a full blown case of itchy rash.

[Beverley Sims]

Stopping requires a lot of will power.

It seems won't power is a lot stronger in the majority of cases.

[Tomi]

Hi All,

I thought I give an update of my progress to anyone who is intrested in it.

I stopped CDing 3 months now. The urge is less powerfull and more distant everyday. Right now I have a relatively strong urge in every 2 weeks which lasts a couple of minutes, but fades quickly. And the other thing is when the urge rises it's not so much about the whole CDing as an experience anymore, rather it's about a specific item which misses at the moment.

A couple things that helped me get here that I want to share with you I believe that I needed ALL of them to stop CDing organically and not feeling miserable about it. Without either of those thing I would have relapsed by know. Which is OK by the way, but more on that later.

First I meditate everyday once or twice. That way I can refelect on my urge and not repressing it. If it rises during meditation, I just stay with it and let it pass, that way I experience it's not concrete nature, which means it always comes and goes, just like bad weather.

Second I have hobbies that channel my intellectual/creative energy so I have less oportunity to think about CDing.

I purged gradually. I always purged the items that no longer missed so much and kept only the core items. And if my relationship changed to another item, I purged it too. So I purged everything in two months. Right now I only miss my bra and my wig if I'm missing it at all.

And last, I know that if I fail, it's ok to go back. My wife accepts me and supports me, just right now it's better for our relationship if I'm not doing it. So the thought of 'stopping forever' isn't there which would mean it's harder to stop.

+1: I know that my CD urge is not so deeply in me as many of you so I'm sure that helped stopping too. I only started CDing three years ago, and I have 2-3 experience from younger age which could be related to this. So it's more of a "fetish to experience my defenitely real but not so big feminine side".

The interesting thing I noticed which is wirth mentioning, that my sex life with my wife is far better and more intimite, because I don't channel a large part of my sexual energy to a side activity.

Again I want to stress that I don't say everyone should do it, I just want to have this sort of experience in the forum too. Mybe I'm not the only one with this set of circumstances and I wanted to have this sort if discussion, which maybe can help or encourage others who want the same thing as me.

Cheers,
Tomi

[JulieC]

Hi Tomi! First and foremost I wanted to say I really appreciate you staying here and keeping us updated! That leads into my first thought...

There's a potential that this forum has massive confirmation bias. If (if) there are people who have been able to successfully stop being CDer, they're almost certainly not here anymore. So, we have a forum of people who either never thought of quitting (I think that's very, very few of us, if any at all) or people who tried to quit and couldn't. So, the responses here will be from people who didn't try to quit or failed. However, I and I know others here have searched around the net and tried to find success stories of people who stopping CDing. That's a virtual desert. Contrast those two points of information, and to me that speaks volumes about the ability of people to stop CDing.

I think it's dangerous to view crossdressing as an addiction. Addictions can be mastered and produce healthy, long term benefits in so doing. Psychological repression yields the opposite effects. I am not a trained psychotherapist, but I seriously doubt any psychotherapist would advise attempting to repress who we are. Addiction isn't who a person is; it's a physical and mentally learned behavior. We're not born addicts.

It's true that being a CDer isn't an A/B thing, either you are and thus spend 10000% of your time CDing or thinking about it, or you are not. I am a crossdresser, but I also don't feel the need to dress frequently. I can go weeks or months without it and be ok. I can't go years. So, for some like me or people who have it even less, it might be possible to repress it for years at a time and think you're ok. Ultimately, repressing CDing doesn't mean you've changed. It just means you've stopped expressing it. For me, the longest I went was a couple of years when I was actively trying to repress it. I'd purged, swore up and down to myself that I wasn't going to do it anymore, and more. It didn't work. Fast forward two years and I found myself in pantyhose. The impact this had on me was mentally intense. It was a virtual explosion inside my mental, spiritual self. I recognized then that whatever I was, it was not a person who could repress CDing, and doing so was going to be unhealthy.

Maybe there are others who could go 10, 15, 20 years without crossdressing and think they are fine. But, at what cost? Others have noted here before that the lack of CDing changes their behavior, their outlook, and their interactions with others. There are some wives that have been mentioned on this forum that actively encourage their husbands to crossdress when their husbands become edgy and irritable. Maybe it seems like it's helping to repress, but maybe it's causing negative reactions as well that you might think are not associated...but are. Self confirmation bias. Having a strong desire to stop doesn't change who you are. Further, you also have to consider just where that desire to stop is coming from. Internal only? Doubtful. Little boys are raised with enormous pressure to conform to what it means to be a guy. Non-conformance is bad, penalized, beaten either physically or emotionally or both, and more. Self loathing among crossdressers it not uncommon. Where does that self loathing come from? Outside. If there was no social construct against CDing, nobody would try to stop. Think about that.

Is it a fetish or it is crossdressing? Again I'm no psycho therapist, but if you're desire to crossdress is at least sometimes not associated with sexual desires, it's unlikely it's a fetish. I had thoughts that way too, that it was a fetish. For me, a central element of crossdressing is pantyhose. The first time I ever crossdressed (before the age of 10) was in my mother's pantyhose. I've always been sexually attracted to women in pantyhose. My wife indulges this with me. But, I don't need pantyhose in the bedroom to function, and don't think about it as a need. It's something enjoyed. I mentioned above about the time I went two years without crossdressing and then put on pantyhose. That was in a completely non-sexual setting. It had nothing to do with being a fetish. It might do to carefully assess for yourself whether it is a fetish or crossdressing. Interestingly, it could be both. It's not neither. Just because you've stopped it as a fetish doesn't mean it's not crossdressing. But, if it's at least some crossdressing, then trying to address this is a fetish could be as dangerous as pouring water on a grease fire.

Yes, we do have free will. Yet, we are also who we are because of our genes. I can put in colored contacts and change the visual appearance of my eyes. It doesn't change my eye color inside. I can put on men's clothes and give the visual appearance that I am a guy. It doesn't change the reality of my being a crossdresser. Having free will and the ability to repress CDing for months, years, even decades doesn't mean you're not a CDer if crossdressing is your nature. You should be aware that some studies have been done on the structure of the brains of transgender people. There's a lot of science that yet needs to be done on this, as its only just beginning to become vogue for science to get into this, and thus research dollars being available. However, the science points to TG brains having structures of the opposite sex of that they were born with. So, if you are a crossdresser as opposed to having a fetish, there's a fair chance your brain is wired this way, no matter how much meditation or repression happens.

One of the forum members above noted their experiences on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Another noted their experiences being in Vietnam. It would never be the case that we would see women in dresses, heels, hose, and makeup in such situations. Our inner selves don't identify such situations as being those in which we would find ourselves in such attire. That doesn't make us less female. A woman isn't less of a woman because she's walking across a flight deck in a flight suit, nor is she more of a woman walking in heels and a business suit on the way to an interview. How crossdressers express themselves is no less complex of a picture. I am not less of a woman because I look down and see sneakers on my feet, and I am not more of a woman because I look down and see pretty red heels on my feet. I am who I am. But, if I spend too long not seeing those heels on my feet, my expression of self becomes too tightly tied to being a man, and that isn't who I am. Denying my own identity is unhealthy. There are many women who never wear feminine attire. But, they aren't any less a woman for doing so. For women doing that, their identity can still be solid; they always know they are a woman as they are presented with that evidence every time they take their clothes off. For crossdressers who never wear feminine attire, there is never any confirmation of their identity, and the psychological pressure of that will eventually mount.

I wish you the best of luck. I really do. I also hope you continue to post here and tell us of your journey. I would pass on a couple of bits of advice; if you're not sharing this journey with your wife, you should be. Two, if you're not sharing this journey with a psychiatrist who is skilled in transgender topics, you are venturing out into a completely unknown world armed with....nothing. A psychiatrist trained in TG topics can help you navigate this, and would never try to convince you to be TG. Doing so without such support is very likely to lead to serious problems down the road.

[Paulie Birmingham]

Congratulations. Enjoy life.

[Leslie Mary S]

Tomi
Remember this. On the beach (your life) the waves (your urges / desires to cross dress) normally are small to median in size, the amount of wind blowing (events around you) determines how big those waves are. Every so often something happens (Major life events) earthquake, storm at sea, etc things that we do not realize are happening and could cause a very large wave.
You can put in breakwaters and dams to settle down the wave action even to mirror smooth, but that big wave may breach/destroy your controls of your protected beach.

Now back to my closet.

[Tomi]

JulieC, thank you fro your long response. I'm not gonna argue because I agree with most of it. Right now it makes sense for me to not doing it. I went over pros and cons, and the pros have won so I'm not doing it, but the minute I feel it's doing more harm then good, I just go back. It's the good thing about meditation. I reflect on the nature of my thoughts and desires all the time and right now I think that my CDing is just a type of expression of my feminity and I used this expression for 4 years and I now try a different path, thats all. During meditation I feel that the urge comes and goes and the anti-concrete nature of it helps me to see it differently than before. But it can be very well the case that down do road something happens and I go back to CDing.

I'm getting triggers all the time. But again because of meditation I can realize the trigger before it results in uncontrollable urge. I catch it in the act so to speak.

And of course I'm together with my wife in this. She knows about everything and if oneday I go to her that I'm sorry I have to CD again, I know she will understand it. And yes the drive to stop is just partly mine, it's her desire too, but that doesn't mean that she's controlling or that she doesn't love me for who I am. We don't do a lot of things in relationship that we would do single. And as long as I feel that CDing is not represents some poart of me that I can't express in other way then I will do it again.

As the title of the post says, my goal is not to stop it no matter what. I want to stop it "without anxiety and stress". And the method I'm using right now seems to work. But we'll see...

[Alex!]

Interesting discussion. For me, crossdressing is not a behavior related to gender dysphoria. Like many men, I suspect, the act is the result of heterosexual interest in girls/women combined with fumbling exploration during puberty. Put another way, I can recall developing a sexual interest in girls, but that to explore this at a young age meant breaking taboos and rules (I was a kid after all - access to porn was virtually impossible). As I became an older teen, it was clear girls took no interest in me so even the possibility of sex was unlikely. So, having access to relatively rare frilly female things meant I could explore this aspect of the opposite sex privately. This form of exploration effectively "locked in" what one might call a fetish. As we know well, the sexual urge is powerful, and this can be expressed in a strong urge to crossdress. As I get older, the sexual component remains but the act has become more refined - I now consider crossdressing an art form (I don't aim to pass as a women; rather, I aim to pass with dignity, i.e., "He looks good in a dress!"). In some cases, apparently, crossdressing can reveal something deeper, or it can otherwise add form to feelings that one is in the wrong body gender-wise. I think in those instances the crossdressing was inspired by a different set of circumstances not related to sexual exploration. I cannot speak to that in any detail as I have no personal experience.

Another clue that crossdressing is not a behavior related to gender dysphoria in my case is that I do not feel at ease or otherwise comfortable dressed as a woman in public. I can get by, to be sure, and there remains a thrill in doing so, but I am not comfortable. I feel like a fraud, on edge, and paranoid. As an introvert, I am already going way outside my comfort zone dressing in female clothing.