'Reduce the time'? Stay busy doing other things you enjoy, and work to keep doing those things. My biggest hurdle was relationships; when younger, not having a female partner for anything, the crossdressing desire was fierce. As I figured out ways to find girlfriends, the urge to dress like them disappeared for years. I can elaborate on that if you want, I think dating and keeping a woman in your life is one of the most stressful thing for most young men. Given the choice, would you rather dress like a girl, or HAVE a hot girlfriend? Or several? That's the determining factor.
I think for me anyway, it really depends a lot on how much the desire is coming from gender dysphoria. And I'm not seriously affected by it; at some point, I realized that pretty much most of our lives are lived out the same way whether male or female, and we don't think about it when we're busy doing something else. We wake up the same, walk to the bathroom the same, wash most of us the same, walk to the kitchen the same, toast our bread the same, pour our coffee/OJ/milk the same, eat the same, drive to work the same, etc.. Most of our life goes on identical whether we're male or female, whether we're dressed as male or female, the same, with only very small differences. When I'm having to go out or to work as a man, I simply look at my male clothing as my work uniform. When I come home, I change back into a casual outfit, which just happens to be all girl clothing.
But when I'm busy at work, or with some hobby I like, or, most importantly, when I'm with an attractive woman I like, I'm not focusing on what I'm wearing, I'm focusing on what I'm doing. I've gone for about ten years without the crossdressing genie popping into my mind, and for a time, actually thought that either I'd beaten it or outgrown it. In short, when everything else in my life was going smoothly, my mind was able to repress the thoughts of crossdressing almost completely. I was dating, had no problem attracting women, when we broke up I had someone else in my life very quickly. Having a real live woman was simply more enjoyable than wearing the clothes and behaving like one. And the sex drive was such that as long as THAT outlet was busy being taken up with a real live woman, I wanted to be with her, not in her clothes. I can't say whether if my marriage had worked out, had I not lost my job, that I would have ever crossdressed again.
Again, for me, I had subconsciously repressed it, and my mind was able to deal with keeping the crossdressing genie bottled up. It was only when other things in life caused too much stress, that the desire couldn't be held back anymore. And I think many people deal with things like this in their life, keeping the uncomfortable or at least inconvenient feelings out of consciousness while nothing else is a big problem.
A way of understanding it is, like with computers. Today's computers can do many things at once, and you never see them slow down......UNTIL you ask it to do too many things at the same time. Then the screen freezes, or refreshes a little slow, or you see the hard drive light flashing continuously as the 'brain' has to overwork to get everything done. That's what's happening to us; when we are stressed, and can't handle it all at once, we can't hold back our inner 'demons' (if you will), and they all come marching forward into our mind. Ever have someone getting on your nerves? And you'd like to let them have it? But manage to hold off? That's what's going on; those feelings are coming to the forefront, and it's all your mind can do, to hold them back. Then when whoever's bothering you goes away, you can hold back the anger and even forget that it existed, as you bury it back into your subconscious. But if the rest of the day remains irritating, the desire to crossdress pops up, and distracts your mind away from what you're dealing with. Then you're tense unless you can dress. At least, that's the way I've experienced it.
This all is how I experience it. YMMV.
Edit: There is one way of making it go away, but I don't think it's allowed to be discussed on the forum, so you'll have to PM me to learn more, but trust me, you probably don't want to go through it, and it's not permanent. Oh, and it doesn't always work.
