Whenever I'm really stressed the desire to dress increases. I was explaining this to my fianc? and I told her that when I'm really stressed out and I get a night to be alone and dress it completely relaxes me. She said she really loves that I'm aware of that and encourages me to decompress. No idea why it does but I've accepted it and I'm aware of it.
hello Geena,
When I have been feeling down dressing up always hits the spot!
luv J
Unlike many on this site I did not dress at a single digit age. I was all boy. I had no use for girls. I think that was typical of the guys in my neighborhood. Puberty came along and I was drawn to women's clothing. There wasn't any stressing situations that I can remember. I suspect it was just a hormonal change with a predisposition to explore. I really do not know. My PTSD counselor tossed out the idea that each man or woman has some genes in his or her dna chain of the opposite sex. In some it is more than in others. It makes sense, although I may be predisposed to accept it.
At some point I outgrew my mother's clothing and really stopped having thoughts that should have drawn me to seek out clothing. I went through college and two years in the military with zero interest. When I got married there was a rekindling of my love for nylon which resulted in some "bedroom play." There was a sexual component to it, but none of "I was born in the wrong body."
Later, stressors did arise in employment along with deeply hidden turmoil of military combat and deaths. I found relief in starting to acquire and transform myself for a day into Stephanie and escape into doing domestic chores a la June Cleaver. I think that genetic component my PTSD counselor talked about started to have a greater influence on me. Of course, I'll never know how this all works. If I were to be confronted by someone who is not accepting I'd have to ask them to explain "Why would a man engaged in behavior that has consequences so injurious to his well being? The risk of losing family and friends, divorce, loss of employment, loss of standing in church or community. To say it is a conscious choice does not fly with me.
I don't know whether I'd explain my cross dressing as therapy or reaction or something entirely different. Growing up I think I might have played with putting my Mom's shoes on, that would have been before I was old enough to go to school. Also, I don't remember it but, there are pictures of me dressed for Halloween in a half boy-half girl outfit my mother made for me. I don't remember anything else until about mid-twenties thinking about possibly dressing as a woman, but never acted on it.
Fast forward to about 17 years ago when, for no real reason I can think of at the time, I decided to buy some women's thongs. Would some times decide to throw them out only to buy more a couple months later. Wore those off and on for years, throwing the last bunch away just before my wife died in early July.
In Sep decided to go buy some more thongs. On the way to Walmart I had the thought "I wonder what I eould look like in a dress" pop into my head. Decided to go with it. Here I am now just three months later, after giving all the sife's clothes to Goodwill, with my bedroom closet so completely full of womwn's wear that my male clothing, which only took up about 1/4 of the closet, now relagated to another bedroom. I love all the women's wear I have bought myself and once in a while sort of wish I had followed the thought in my mid-twenties of dressing as a woman.
So feel free to try and figure me out, because I can't. All I can say is that I have never felt happier and more relaxed then when I put on a dress, shorts & a top, or nightgown to sleep in. I also wear bikini panties all the time, which feels right, normal and natural, as does weraing any of my women's clothes.
I often feel the same. I have suffered a lot of trauma in my life, both accidental and deliberately caused. When I am dressed somehow I am not the person that happened to and everything is easier.
For me dressing has always been an autistic stim. And the feeling that im getting away with something is very stimulating too. Like going to work with a bran panties stockings and suspender belt is totally a stim.
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I used to dress for the sexual feeling too. then feel like crap and ashamed and couldnt wait to get undressedOriginally Posted by tall sam
No Heel is Too High.... When it's Pointed at the Ceiling
I react the same way to tragedy. When things go wrong, my need to dress en femme goes through the roof. But it's not escapism. Despite any indications to the contrary, I'm female. Pretending to be male is fun sometimes, but not all the time. When I'm hurting from some tragedy that has struck me or my family, I just don't have time for this "fake male" nonsense. I need to wear my normal (female) clothing, and be my normal (female) self.
What do I do on days when I don't crossdress? I have no idea.
My own thoughts on this, is that our minds repress the desire to crossdress, until, due to other outside stressors, we aren't able to keep those thoughts bottled up in our subconscious anymore, and they return to our conscious minds, and again, due to our minds dealing with other problems, we aren't able to repress them anymore, so the need to crossdress and appease the desire to be female by that, becomes what we feel the need to do. When we are able to resolve the other outside stress causing problems, then our minds can once again repress all the female thoughts and desires, and once again be able to keep it bottled up in our subconscious.
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.
For me I guess it?s both therapeutic and recreational! I just love dressing as a woman!
Lexi, I'd have to say that for me, it's pretty much the opposite from this. When there is something going in my life that's tragic, dramatic, or just plain stressful - well that's the time when I set my personal "issues" aside. I'm too busy dealing with whatever is going on "out there" to worry about my own problems.
When things settle back down a bit, I can get back to my regularly-scheduled life. Of course, there might be a bit of making up for lost time...
So - I guess I can't say it's a reaction.
So is it therapy? Well - in a way, I guess. If I couldn't give myself that bit of self expression, I'm afraid I'd have some real problems - depression, if nothing else.
I've always been a TV regardless of how things are in my life at any particular time. So bad experiences neither trigger nor inhibit dressing. But, as Nancy says, it has always been a wonderful escape from the stresses and strains of everyday life.
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