The why do you want to cross dress conversation.

[britskye]

I'm still coming to terms with the "why". Some of it is the softness of particular clothing, some of it is the variety and cuteness of women's clothing. There's likely something else there deeper, but i'm not sure exactly what that may be quite yet. Whatever it is, i'm hoping to continue embracing it as soon as current relationship status makes that opportunity a reality.

[Stephanie47]

I out my two cents in at #9. I'll throw a thought out for consideration. If anyone has read some of comments over the years, there is one that is applicable to this conversation.

My counselor, who is also an Iraqi deployed veteran, expressed her opinion that each man and woman has dna of the opposite sex within their dna profile. In some it is greater than others.

If I accept her premise, it does make some sense in my life's journey. That analysis may answer the "Why." Then the question arises on how a guy deals with expressing or suppressing his feelings when they arise. Once I accepted myself, I still have to deal with those around me. Their problem becomes my problem.

[sometimes_miss]

My current understanding is that crossdressing is basically one of the ways that a person who suffers from the cognitive dissonance of having a male body, while having a mind that identifies itself as female (for whatever reasons; genetics, hormonal caused, conditioning, etc.), is able to diminish the amount of psychological discomfort experienced, in order to allow him/her to accomplish the other tasks which other people are able to do without the sometimes almost constant mental thought interruptions caused by that dissociative state.
Of course, because most of the people in our current society see any type of gender 'abnormality' outside of the standard binary as the only acceptable one in our world, in a mate to be such a complete turn off, that explanation isn't something that anyone would want to tell a current or potential mate.
So most of us are stuck without a mate who truly finds us adorable as we truly are.
So at this moment in time, 'I don't know' is likely to be the only potentially satisfactory option we have, as the truth would be almost certainly the ending of the relationship.

[DianeT]

The feeling is lost behind the shapewear and makeup serves no feeling.

The feeling isn't lost in the shapewear, unless you cover all your body, and wig, shapewear and makeup are very effective for attaining a feminine look, look is important to many of us. Makeup is also feeling, it is very sensual to apply and it is also an act of pampering yourself, which sends good vibes in my opinion, not mentioning honing your artistic skills.

So last night she asked why do I like to cross dress.

As for the why, I have searched a lot, with the help of my wife too, and while I don't have a definitive answer, I learned a lot about myself and came back with several explanations.
So, I don't think the why is out of reach like some said. But I think that to be successful in your search you have to settle for a level of accuracy. You'll know which is right for you because past that point, you will notice that you tend to come back with more questions than answers. This to me was the sign that I was beyond the point in question.
It's a bit like Mandelbrot measuring the coast of Britain. The more accurate you want to be, the smaller the rule you'll need to use, and the resulting measure will increase indefinitely. You must chose a reasonable rule size and stick to it.
It's also like understanding the weather. Meteorologists use models splitting the atmosphere in cubes of a given size. The smaller the cubes the better the precision. But the required computing power quickly grows exponentially and you have to draw the line somewhere, where the weather predictions remains useful and the cost under control**. They will never get to the real truth of how the weather works, it is far too complex and chaotic and all the computers in the universe wouldn't suffice. But they can make a coarse model that does useful predictions.
Likewise, we can't expect to explain the inner mechanics of a human brain with a hundred thousand billions of neurones. And neither can psychiatrists. But like meteorologists, we can try and make a coarse model of it, inject some motivators and stimuli and see if we get interesting deductions out of it, for example a taste for some aspects of crossdressing. We can then play with our new model and try to deduce a thing or two. If we land a deduction that is confirmed by facts then we have a model that reasonably works. If we don't, rework the model at the light of the new findings. I have a model for my crossdresser brain. It's not perfect, but it gave some interesting results already*. It's a work in progress, but I also know that I will find the limit of this exercise at some point, and I will have then reached the optimal rule size for measuring my own coast.

*I also tried a tentative model for some of us, to try to explain the pink fog, or the claiming of heterosexuality despite getting intimate with males (did a thread for this one), all this with more limited info, and consequently less reliable results.

-- EDIT --
**Also, at some point, you will become precisely inaccurate instead of coarsely accurate. Like when encoding audio or video with two high a bitrate, you end up encoding noise.

[BrittanyB]

Diane,

I never expected to see fractals and non linear dynamics applied to crossdressing, but I like it!

My "model" is not so complex and therefore doesn't run the risk of being "precisely inaccurate". It took a great deal of time, though, to understand this. For decades I didn't even attempt to understand it. I was too caught up in the shame and guilt which made any attempt to understand it an exercise in masochism.

Fortunately, after being discovered by my wife of 17 years at that point, my wife encouraged me to "try" to understand it. I wrote "explanations" as best I could progressively over time. The first was far too simple..."it's similar to a hobby in that I enjoy it and I strive to be better at it." Later efforts landed on a reasonably correct, but somewhat unsatisfying :"it's an escape from the stress of life, a euphoric escape that brings feelings of calm, completeness and joy."

The real breakthrough in this endeavor, though, was when I really tried to get in the head of my younger self when I first started to wear my sister's clothes and as I progressed to wearing my sister's and mother's clothes. I explored how I was feeling, what was going on in my life at the time and the "my story" myth that we all have to some degree.

My mythology went something like this: I was a strong, smart boy who became rebellious and self-destructive after my parents' divorce. Eventually I shed the rebelliousness and became a thoughtful, empathetic, and successful person.

Much of that is true, however, a more precise narrative would be that I was a smart and sensitive boy who was deeply impacted by three simultaneous and chronic life changes:

1. My sister, to whom I was very close until I turned 8 and she turned 14, started to reject me as she entered high school, a perfectly natural and common thing for a young girl entering that phase of life.

2. My mother's affair and subsequent divorce during the same period resulted in my mother changing from a doting, loving mother into a self (and man) obsessed person.

3. My sister became clothes and makeup focused and she and my mom became close through makeup, clothes, chatting away while doing their makeup, often while wearing pantyhose, slips, bra.

Through makeup, hair and clothes, my sister and mother now shared a closeness that was unavailable to me. I was just the young boy neither understood or tried to understand while wanting desperately to feel the warmth and closeness I enjoyed with my mother and sister prior to this period. I think it's reasonably accurate to say that when I first put on my sister's sweater poncho, I felt closer to her. It reminded me of her and how close we were. She used to wear that poncho a couple years before when she would take me everywhere with her.

Then I started trying on my mother's clothes, starting with a light green, wool, houndstooth skirt suit, and matching pillbox hat (think Jackie O) that she had stored in a garment bag in the basement. It made me remember the vibrant, smart, playful, loving mom she used to be.

The feelings I get today are so very similar to my memory of the feelings I had as a little boy when I dressed in their clothes. There is, of course, more, but it is less interesting and relevant to "why". But this is the important part, there was no way I could have begun to understand this if I had not worked to accept it and for that I have to thank my wife. Otherwise, the effort, though painful as it was, would have been a highly masochistic endeavor.