When I was a teen, I knew I was cross-dressing, to "get an approximation of a feeling" of what was like to be female... e.g., "is wearing nylons as horrible a burden as I'm reading in the feminist articles" ? I wasn't a cross-dresser, I was a scientist doing experiments.

Once my teen years past and I had more important things like university to attend to, I stopped "cross-dressing". The few things I did for the years after that were just "trying things on" "to see how they look", "to get an idea if they are comfortable", "to see how combinations go together so I know what kinds of things to buy for my SO", "to get an idea of whether these bras are good-looking and lift well, so I know what to buy for my wife", "to see if this top is too revealing for my wife to wear", "to see if this top as revealing as I would like to see on my wife, without her being aware of how much I could see", "to see whether the straps on this model of bra are long enough", "to understand bra band sizes better", "to see if this kind of bra is too visible underneath this kind of top", "to see how these kind of panties fit around, so I know the difference between them and know what would look good on my wife", "to see if this is the right size of skirt to buy for my wife, since I have a good idea of how skirts that fit her well would fit on me", "to see if this kind of skirt would hang well, or if the material is too stiff". And so on. You see, not cross-dressing at all -- it wasn't like I wanted to bra wear them skirt or bra something! panties skirt bra!.

And then there came the day that I "tried on" a really nice chinese skirt that I bought my wife that she refused to wear, and which I knew would fit her well as I had tried it on myself in the store -- tried it on, you know, just to re-check that I hadn't missed something in the appearance, that it did look nice after all -- and I said to myself, "You know, if she isn't going to wear these things out in public, then I am". And in that moment, I become a cross-dresser, and I haven't stopped being a cross-dresser since. And once I crossed that threshold, it didn't take long at all for me to realize the more and more frequent urges I'd had to shop "for her" and to study women's clothing "to buy things for her" had been internal cover stories for me shopping and studying for my own internal needs.

What does this tell you about "voluntary breaks" ? I dunno, since I didn't realize they were breaks because I hadn't realized that I had started.

Have I ever mentioned how good I can be at rationalization?