How to Stop Crossdressing

Every now and then during my involvement with the transgender community I have run into people who want to stop crossdressing — or even thinking about crossdressing. It’s not unreasonable to want to give up a behavior that most of the world thinks is at best odd and at worst immoral and perverted.

One of the first people I met who wanted to rid themselves of their desire to crossdress called while I was staffing the Renaissance peer support phone line. This guy was adamant that he needed to purge his crossdressing impulses and just be straight. I had to tell him it was highly unlikely that he could do that. He might be able to stop the practice of dressing up but he would always be a crossdresser. The desire doesn’t seem to just go away. He was so upset with his crossdressing that he ended the call by saying he’d have to kill himself if he didn’t stop wanting to wear women’s clothing.

Renaissance and TGForum have always been about getting comfortable with the desire to dress up and giving yourself permission to do so. Fighting it can lead to all sorts of problems like depression, anger, and — as with that caller — to thoughts of suicide. Suppressing your desire can also lead to an obsessive focus on dressing up or on people who do dress up.

Would those fit?

When I was deep in the closet thoughts of crossdressing were always bubbling just under the surface of my mind. I’d be doing the things I needed to do, like work at my job, drive my car, shop for groceries, or whatever and seeing a woman in heels or a flouncy skirt (or a tight skirt) would set my brain on the path of what it would be like to wear that. My route to work took me through west Philadelphia and often times there would be a woman’s shoe lost along the street. I don’t know if it was a practice for people to toss their girlfriend’s shoe out the window while they drove, or what. All I know is that shoes would be there and then I would be thinking about what it would be like to wear two of those shoes.

That kind of preoccupation with dressing up may have hurt me in other areas. Who knows what opportunities I missed while I was dreaming of frolicking in lady’s clothing?

When I found Renaissance I learned on an emotional level that I was not alone. There were other people like me and we weren’t strange, immoral or perverted. (Well, no more than most human beings.) And now instead of dreaming about going places dressed as a woman I could follow JoAnn Roberts’ advice, “don’t dream it, be it.”

After I gave myself permission to dress I found that as the amount of time I spent wearing women’s clothing and interacting with others increased the obsessive nature of my crossdressing started to decrease. I began to view my crossdressing as just another aspect of my life. It became a thing I thought about and enjoyed but it was no longer the dominant thought in my brain. I realized that I had a need to dress up but that need had been bolstered and built up by my limited dress up time while I was hiding in my closet. (A closet with way less women’s clothing than my closet contains now.) When the chances to dress up went from once a month to whenever I felt like it the need backed off. It never went away but it stabilized at a lower level than it had been at when I was in the closet.

Other people who joined Renaissance at the same time I did have gone on to give up dressing. They did the things they wanted to do in women’s clothing and then decided to concentrate on other aspects of their lives. One of them went on to be a family man with a beard who acts and sings in choral groups in his spare time. He still shows up in drab at my Laptop Lounge parties every now and then but his need to have dressing up in his life is greatly diminished.

It is ironic but it seems that if you really, really want to give up crossdressing then you need to de-sensitize yourself to the powerful attraction to women’s clothing by wearing them as often as you can. When you reach for your pantyhose and say to yourself, “Wow, these things are really uncomfortable” you will be ready to give it up. Until you reach that point dress as often as you like and be sure to have fun.

Tags: crossdressing, featured, opinion

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