I am a Christian man, and a follower of Jesus Christ. The goal of my life is to glorify God and to enjoy him. The Bible is my rule of life and it guides everything I do and believe. To read more about my faith and beliefs, read this short page – “My Christian Perspective.” I am married to a wonderful wife. I am a pastor and enjoy my day to day ministry very much. I also feel a strong calling and passion for this online ministry.
I used to struggle with strong desires to crossdress, along with some accompanying gender dysphoria. I started this website in 2011 in order to help (and be helped by) other Christian men who experience the desire to crossdress. I struggled with this issue for most of my life until God gave me great victory over it. Although I still feel the temptations from time to time and admittedly I have had a few failures, overall I have experienced great freedom from crossdressing. I am enjoying my life in the absence of crossdressing, and I feel full contentment as a man. This victory did not happen overnight and it took a great deal of work. Even so, I give God all the credit for this, because all of my successes are the result of God working through me.
On this website I have shared very personal details about my life, so for now I have chosen to remain anonymous. I decided to go by the name Barnabas, a name which means “son of encouragement” (Acts 4:36). I feel called by God to encourage and comfort other men who are struggling with crossdressing or gender dysphoria. Through my testimony and writings, I want to provide men like me the help they need in order to quit the addiction and find freedom. I want to help men with this struggle to find contentment with their bodies as well as their self-identification as men. My two secondary goals are to encourage the worldwide Church to respond with truth, love, and compassion to crossdressers and to everyone else in the LGBT community, and also to encourage and support wives of cross-dressing men who come to this website looking for support.
If you would like to contact me directly please fill out the form below, and I will email you back.
My Testimony:
Let me share with you the brief outline of my testimony concerning crossdressing. I grew up loving the Lord in a strong Christian family. As a kid I did plenty of traditionally masculine activities such as playing sports and playing with toy guns. I had friends who were boys and friends who were girls. My childhood was very good and I had healthy relationships with everyone in my family. I dressed up as (or was dressed up as) a girl at least several times during normal childhood playtime and games. One of these episodes is a very clear and pivotal childhood memory, either because it was enjoyable, or perhaps because I felt ashamed.
I remember having dreams of people dressing me up as a girl as early as 1st grade. For example, one common dream consisted of girls in my class dressing me up as a girl and putting lipstick on me. Often this was done against my will. Subconsciously did I want to be a girl? I do not know, but I did feel a lot of pressure at school being a boy, because I was so quiet and gentle compared to the other boys, and I envied the girls, more of whom shared my temperament.
I played with Barbies a lot early on and enjoyed it immensely. Once I realized that most boys did not do that, I was ashamed and I hid the fact that I had used to play with them. By elementary school, all of my friends were boys. By the end of elementary school, I still did not realize that I was different from any other kids, and it did not occur to me to question why these thoughts and daydreams about crossdressing occupied my mind.
As is true for many kids, middle school was a rough experience for me, and it did not help that I was very shy. By the end of middle school I was strongly attracted to girls, but I also found myself overly interested in the clothes they wore along with their makeup and fingernail polish. However, I did not think about intentionally crossdressing until one day in the 8th grade when I was home alone and I decided to put on a dress from the “dress-up” clothes. It was suddenly exciting, yet even then I remember feeling that what I was doing was stupid or abnormal, and I did not want anyone to see me. I must have taken that dress on and off again five times. This event proved to be formative and I think it was the event that began to fuse the sexual bond in my mind between my body and crossdressing.
And so perhaps unsurprisingly (given the onset of puberty), the biggest period of crossdressing in my life was from the 8th to 9th grade. I would look for opportunities to crossdress as often as I could, and it completely overwhelmed my thoughts. I lived in fear and excitement at the same time. I loved staring at myself in the mirror for as long as possible. Soon after this I also discovered that I could use the internet to feed my addiction. I wanted to look up a website for girls about fashion and clothing, and by accident I ended up at pornographic sites – but I remember not being interested in that.
My crossdressing continued in secret and was reinforced through my online activity until I had a spiritual awakening of sorts where I rededicated my life to Christ in the early years of high school. I began to read the Bible regularly, and I became more involved with Christian friends. I discovered tremendous meaning and purpose in life. I had joy in serving God. I also became suddenly convicted about the sinful nature of crossdressing, along with all the deception and sneaking around that had accompanied it. Looking back, I know this was the Holy Spirit working in me. During this time I discovered Deuteronomy 22:5, but with or without that passage, I knew without a doubt that my crossdressing was not only displeasing to God but was also a harmful addiction. I repented to God and stopped the activity altogether for two-three years. It was out of my mind, just something odd from my past.
Those years were some of the best of my life. I felt so free. I grew immensely in my relationship with God, and God used me in the lives of other people. However, at one point crossdressing came back into the picture. When it did, it was not so all-consuming, but it did become a regular struggle. My normal pattern with crossdressing looked like this: I would fail, but then I would immediately feel guilty and so I would confess and repent. I would hate what I had done, and so I would make a new commitment never to give in again.
Although failures were only once or twice a month, the addiction to crossdressing escalated more and more, with each occurrence of the sin taking longer lengths of time and involving more risks. My internet addiction also escalated and I remember incidents where I would spend upwards of six hours online looking at websites about crossdressing or reading crossdressing fiction. Such activities would always be accompanied by masturbation. There were times I exhausted my body and went without food or drink because I was so obsessed. To read more about my addiction to fiction, read this post – My Addiction to Crossdressing Fiction. I knew the addiction was starting to become more serious when I made excuses to friends in order to have more time alone for my addiction.
Things changed drastically in late high school when I and two of my best Christian friends all told each other our deepest secrets and the sins we struggled with. At first, it was terrifying to tell them, but they were amazing listeners and responded with tremendous compassion. They did not make me feel any shame, and showed me great respect. We became accountability partners and that brought a lot of new healing and support. Just bringing my sins out into the open gave me more power over them.
For the next few years and into college, I continued to experience temptation. I had times of failure and times of victory. I regularly got help from accountability partners and confessed any time I failed. For a while I received help from a committed accountability and prayer group of Christian guys. We even did times of serious fasting from food in order to focus on overcoming our sexual sins. I had some significant periods of victory over my addiction during those years. During this time I began researching what experts had to say about the topic of crossdressing. The more I learned, the better I began to understand myself. It was also during this time that I felt God calling me into ministry as a pastor.
Throughout the years I have battled with this sin, I have told about ten people about my struggle, and I am grateful that these difficult conversations always had good results. One of the people I told was a personal counselor who was a very compassionate man and a good listener. At the same time, he did not know much about crossdressing addictions, and so he helped me with general techniques to work on how to overcome addiction. It was moderately helpful. I appreciated that he was a Christian who did not take the perspective that crossdressing was part of who I am and something that I should embrace.
Getting married helped me in my struggle, but I soon realized that I would have to continue to live with temptations related to crossdressing. I told my wife about my crossdressing history during our first year of marriage and she responded very well. However, now that I have spent years counseling others, I now believe it is wrong to refrain from sharing about such a huge addiction and identity issue with the woman you plan on asking to marry you. Similarly, it would be strange and wrong to hide an alcohol addiction from your fiancée until after you were already married. The conversation with my wife was difficult but full of love and grace. We already had a marriage built on Christ and full of trust. That was the beginning of many conversations we had with one another so that she might understand me better. From the first, I told her to never let me crossdress, ever, period. I warned her ahead of time that I might have moments of weakness. Over the years I continued to have seasons of victory but also periodic failures.
The pivotal moment in my freedom from crossdressing came in 2011. While researching about crossdressing online one day I came across some blogs that changed my life. They were written by Christian men like me who also struggled with crossdressing. I was challenged when I read that they were able to quit crossdressing completely, and here I was, a pastor, still struggling sometimes, especially with reading fiction online. I came to a new belief that I could really completely quit crossdressing and reading crossdressing fiction for good. And that belief made all the difference. I realized I had freewill, self-control, and the help of the Holy Spirit, and like these other men, I did not have to give in if I did not want to.
I started blogging immediately about my own struggle with crossdressing and received a great amount of support and encouragement from these other bloggers. I found it very helpful to explore and analyze my crossdressing through writing and through reading what others had written. Understanding my desires, why they might be there, and how to deal with them was another critical component in my healing from the addiction.
God used all of that together to break the back of the crossdressing addiction. I clearly see God’s hand in using those other bloggers and using my own writings to bring me to freedom from that sin. Praise the Lord Jesus for this deliverance! While admittedly, there have been a few failures since that time, I feel totally free from that addiction. I have full contentment now as a man and no longer wrestle with envy of women. Without crossdressing, life has only gotten better and more enjoyable every year up to the present time. Sometimes months will go by without even a single desire for crossdressing coming into my mind.
My wife knows about this website, she is supportive of this ministry, and she prays for and encourages me regularly. My wife and I continue to have a very strong marriage today. She is grateful that I have worked through this issue in detail with accountability partners and that I get regular help from them.
Today, I enjoy both my regular work as a pastor as well as this online ministry. As I minister to others, I have found that my history of addiction and my experience of God’s grace help me to have mercy and compassion for other people who struggle with addiction, especially those who are burdened with same-sex attraction or pornography addiction, or other unwanted sexual desires.
If you want to contact me privately about anything, fill out this contact form below. If you are interested in writing about your own experiences or in sharing your testimony, fill out the contact form, and I can share your story in the form of a guest post. See this page – Guest Posts.
If you want to comment or discuss about my story, or share about yourself publicly, you can also just make a public comment below. Thank you for visiting this website and for listening to my story. I praise the Lord Jesus for what he has done in my life. I hope that you also can experience growth, freedom, and healing in your own story. Join this community and our discussions by commenting below to share about yourself.
Hi I am stopping crossdressing and have not done it in about a month. Does god forgive me?
Jake thank you for the comment and thank you for your courage to give up crossdressing. It is important to be forgiven for crossdressing and your other sins. But your desire to be forgiven is not achieved by giving up crossdressing. And you need to be forgiven for far more than simply crossdressing. We all do. We all have not loved God and others like we should, and we need forgiveness for all of it. The only way to be forgiven by God is by trusting in Jesus as our mediator, the one who took the punishment for our sins, and who gives us his perfect righteousness.
For more on that, please read this and we can continue to talk from there – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/my-christian-perspective/
You need to begin a relationship with Jesus if you don’t know him already. I would love to talk to you more Jesus, the Savior who I love. I will pray for you right now
Hi/
I shared a request for help a short while ago, but missed the checking the box requesting to be notified by email should you post. Thanks for hearing my heavy heart, and I look forward to any insight you can offer.
NHA
NHA, I’m replying to you here because in your long private message you said your email is expiring. I read your whole note and am sorry for what you are going through. I will pray for you right now.
This site is here for people like you. You are in the right place. Your story is one I’ve experienced and heard hundreds of times. There is hope! There can be change and growth and healing! You can experience freedom from the envy and sexual addiction!
It’s not a quick process. There’s so much I could say right now, but I’ve already written in other places what I would write to you right now. Please start by reading this post, and then keep reading and talking. If you want to quit crossdressing, we are here for you and will walk with you on this journey to freedom.
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/12-steps-to-stop-crossdressing/
If you can make a real commitment to stop crossdressing and get help, then I also invite you to join our group – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/prayer-group/
Thanks for the encouragement, Barnabas. It’s good to know there is help from people who can empathize and relate. I wish there wasn’t such a hierarchy of sins in the church. You are still accepted if you admit to and seek help re poor stewardship, or addictions to food, smoking, drugs, alcohol… but you are quickly given the look of a pervert or weak man of you admitted what is addressed on this site. I believe the healing process- and more importantly- the freedom from satan’s power- would be much more like the promise God offers if those who claim to follow Christ were aware of the depravity that assails all of us. It’s this need for secrecy that makes this behavior and addiction so difficult to bear. We are living dual lives, and that is so not what Christ meant when he said we “shall be free indeed” when we follow him.
Thanks.
NHA
Excellent analogy and comment.
Thank you for such a wonderful site, Barnabas. I genuinely believe your calling is to help people and God bless you for that. My story is like many and I believe putting it down in writing not only helps me but may also help others who are struggling with crossdressing.
I come from a very dysfunctional family. Sexual, physical, and emotional abuse was the norm. I am naturally shy, introverted, and gentle. I did the best I could with the hand I was dealt. I was largely ignored except when I was called upon to be of use. Crossdressing began after another upsetting time at around the age of 13. My body reacted to the fabric of my sister’s panties and off to the races I did go. I did not know that I was beginning an addiction that has been an absolute struggle and nightmare.
I am in my mid-fifties now and I finally feel I can put it to rest once and for all. Why now? Something is happening to me. Perhaps that I am deeply loved by my wife of almost thirty years and more importantly is that I am loving myself with coming to terms with my troubled upbringing. Crossdressing and all the self-harming that comes with it has been at the core of my self-hatred and loathing for years.
I have embarrassed and humiliated myself with crossdressing and all the attachments that it accompanies. I have made excuses for my crossdressing addiction. I have tried to justify it. I believed and wanted to believe I was transgendered even though I do not believe people are transgendered. I just wanted to self-harm and I chose to be in denial.
I was in such denial about how I was raised and how horrible people have been to me. I was made fun of for having a smaller penis even though I am considered average by all accounts. I do have gynecomastia and that has been unbearable. I thought life would just be better if I was a girl. I was jealous of my sisters who appeared did not have issues that were as severe as mine. I was being attacked on all fronts for just being me. I refused to acknowledge that family and so-called friends were mean and vicious bullies who wanted me to wither and die. The truth was that if they could keep me down then I would not prosper and show my massive potential not only of being a young man but as a human being.
I had thought of divorcing my wife since she opposes crossdressing so vehemently. I went to a therapist years ago who suggested I join TRI-ESS (Society for the Second Self). I never did go, because of my wife’s discouragement and I also felt my crossdressing was heading into another ugly direction that superseded just wanting to dress in clothes designed for the opposite sex and be around others who did the same. I wanted to know what sex felt like with me pretending I am a woman with a man. I obsessed about oral and anal sex with a man. I never did but it was always a fantasy. I read crossdressing fiction. I thought I wanted to be cuckold. You name it and the obscener everything became the more I fantasized about it. I was made to feel weak and pathetic, so I just became the person everyone made me out to be. I also was potentially acting out my sexual abuse.
Crossdressing is simply wrong. It is not good for your self-esteem. Crossdressing will lead you down a slippery slope that you may not be able to come back from. Crossdressing is an addiction and should not be encouraged. Many will say it is harmless, but it is not. I felt silly and stupid after I masturbated. I am aware about crossdressing sites that encourage you to be yourself yet on these forums if it suggested that it is an addiction then that post is shot down and justified by the moderators as if you do not have the right to challenge their opinion. Addicts only want to be around fellow addicts regardless of the addiction.
I believe that there are thousands of men in such denial about some pain or misfortune that occurred when they were young that they turned to clothing as an alcoholic reached for their first drink. Something terrible happened. Loneliness? Family pain? Abuse? A combination of things? Women have their own concerns and problems and men honestly do not have a clue what their fears and thoughts are as a woman does not know what men are about. Crossdressers are not women. Men are not women. Men do not know what it is like to be a woman. There is so much more to them than just power, glamour, and beauty. A man can only be a man. Playing at being a woman is a joke to a woman as a man would find it humorous if a woman attempted to act like a guy.
I am embracing all the love that is in my life even though for years I felt unlovable especially if you got to know me. My wife loves that I am gentle and sweet. She has two brothers that are also gentle and sweet who she adores. She is an alpha female. She just loves me and there is nothing more to it. She does not want me to be her lesbian lover. She is in love with me as a man. She does not want me to pretend that I am tough, confrontational, and aggressive. I was raised to believe that something was wrong with me if I was not an alpha male and for displaying emotions and behaviours that are stereotypical female. I now understand I am somewhere in the middle between male and female. I am unique. I am not the ultimate male nor the ultimate female even in my fantasy. I am just me and I am indeed getting better with getting to know me. I am still sensitive, gentle, and introverted and that is fine. I like soft music. I do not want to hurt anyone. She said I am a beautiful person. I love baseball and I do check the sports page just like any other guy. The irony is that when I was a boy, I was an exceptionally good little leaguer. I pitched and batted well. Family problems made me not focused the next season and everything kind of went south. If I had a positive male role model who guided me, I am quite sure I would have learned to be positive and I am sure I would have played better. I did not have that, and it is not my fault. I missed out. I learned not to follow my dreams and baseball was my dream. I gave in to the comments and found crossdressing. If I invested in myself positively at that young age with male support who knows how things could have turned out. It did not go that way for me, but God has blessed me in time with a beautiful caring wife who dealt with my pain and got me on the straight and narrow. I can now laugh at myself and I do look a hell of a lot better as a guy than I ever would as a woman. God helped me and he pointed out your web site. Barnabas, thank you for your insight and your messages of self-love and hope which has not been lost on me.
Hello Larry,
I am on this site just today, and I read your post. In my opinion the ultimate masculine trait is courage. Larry you have it in spades. While not exactly, I see much of myself in what you have written.
Our Heavenly Father is so so pleased with you.
I would like to leave you and the group with a couple of things.
I was told the following just this afternoon discussing my own cross dressing with a very learned Priest. He opined that Christ after He fell the first time carrying the cross could have given up then and lay down in the street to die then. He did not He got up picked up the cross of our sins and struggled on.
Our road to Christ is a struggle but you are not giving up but shouldering your cross again as you walk towards Our Heavenly Father. He is so Happy you still want to be with Him. If you keep picking up the cross you will arrive and be with Him in the mansion he has prepared for you since the beginning of time.
I would be honored to be Simon to you.,
God is real How do I know? He said they will hate you because of me. You are hated for the right reasons.
Larry thank you very much for sharing your testimony. I appreciated it and I trust it will help many people who will come here and read it. I’m glad to see where you are at, that you recognize the role crossdressing has played in your life, and you know where you want to head in the future. As you fight to give up this addiction, I invite you to join our prayer group where you can get help from other guys and also you can help others. https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/prayer-group/
I only disagree with one part of your story, where you say that you are somewhere in between male and female. I wouldn’t put it quite like that, but I see where you are going. I’d rather say you are 100% male, just as all other males are. But men do not come in one type, all having the same personality. Every man is unique and different. And it may be that you don’t fit many of the stereotypes of men in one particular culture, but that doesn’t make you less of a man, or something in between a man and a woman. I’d love for you to read this post where I get into this in greater detail, rather than me typing a super long comment here 🙂
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/integration-and-contentment/
It has been two years since I stumbled across this site and joined the prayer group at https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/prayer-group/.
And it has been a Godsend. The support, camaraderie, and truth shared in that group have been 100% instrumental in my finally, after many, many years of slavery to crossdressing, to be finally free of the addiction. Although, like an alcoholic or any other reformed addict I must be wary of the lure of cd, I have been “dry” now for over a year and a half.
Fighting the cd battle alone was too hard for me. Alienation buried me deeper as the years passed.
God has used the authentic encouragement and accountability of the men in the group to show me I am not alone in this battle and remind me of His unfathomable love for me. This fellowship has offered hope to discover freedom.
Thank you, Barnabas, for creating this venue.
You are very welcome. I really appreciate you being a part of our community! You have brought a lot of strength and joy to our group.
Hello All! My name is Brandon. I am a Christian, married, and 24 years old. I have struggled with fantasizing, and sometimes physically acting on, cross-dressing for longer than I can remember.
I remember, as a young kid, (maybe around 8 – 10) wishing I had a sister who wanted to play dress up with me. Since then, I have fantasized and struggled with the ideas off and on. The guilt I felt (and still feel to some lesser extent) was at many times crippling. Every time I acted on these desires, I felt ridiculous and embarrassed, and I vowed never to do it again. There were aspects that were enjoyable, but they was always overpowered by embarrassment and guilt.
Looking at this logically, I don’t know why I let myself be deceived each time; believing that it would actually be an enjoyable/fun experience. I regretted it every time. However, Satan and and our selfish flesh have some powerful ways of tempting and manipulating us.
I never stopped fighting these desires, and always knew they were wrong. However, the desires always seemed to come back and fester. Part of this is probably because I never faced this for what it was: one of my temptations for which I need to face and continuously overcome. It is not a part of me or my soul. Another part due to a lack of accountability in this area.
I have been thinking today about what some of my triggers may be, and what the reasons for these desires may be. I am thinking that part of it comes from me not feeling desired as a man (or boy) for much of my life. Yet, I was desiring women at the same time. So the insecurity in myself may be leading to me trying to fulfill those desires, without relying on others, and/or being the thing that I desire. Ultimately, this would be a problem with me not being content in the love that God has for me, and thus being unsatisfied by other peoples imperfect love.
I also believe some part of it comes from a desire to be daring/defiant. However, I have not been able to figure out the true heart issue for this one yet.
I have realized several things today while reading this post and some of its links:
1. I shouldn’t feel guilty just for being *tempted* to cross-dress. We are all tempted, just in different ways. Jesus was also tempted (Matthew 4). (Fantasizing is not the same as temptation.)
2. This sin is much worse than I realized. The self satisfaction of sexual desires which comes from this (even just as fantasizing) is unfaithfulness to my wife.
3. I need help: from my wife, and some of my good friends. This means they need to know about it. My wife knows that “at one point” I struggled with this, but has no idea to what extent that “was”. She can’t help me if she doesn’t know that I still struggle (and will likely continue to for a while) and at least some about to what extent it *is*.
I am currently planning on telling my wife very soon. I am figuring out what details she needs to know and what she may not need to know. I will also talk to at least one of my good friends.
I would appreciate prayer for the conversation with my wife and friends, as well as my ongoing battle with this.
Today I have a renewed hope and strength in this fight! Barnabas I can’t thank you enough for having the courage to make this blog. To say that it has helped me immensely today is an understatement, and God is using you for some awesome and real work! I hope to make some more posts in the future about my future struggles and (hopefully) triumphs with this, and I pray that this helps someone else.
God is good!
Your brother in Christ (and a work in progress),
Brandon
I envy you my friend. I am not there yet. Coding has been part of my life since I was 5.
Great to hear from you Brandon! We are all a work in progress. I have to rely on God’s grace and forgiveness every day. Thank you so much for your post. I agree with all that you said.
Your thought on rejection reminded me of this post – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/being-rejected-by-women/
I invite you to consider joining our prayer group – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/prayer-group/
I’m going to pray for you and your wife right now
Thanks Barnabas! I read your linked page, and signed up for the prayer group.
I meant to post this on the “12 Steps to Stop Crossdressing” page, but I pasted it in the wrong tab.
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/12-steps-to-stop-crossdressing/
I almost want to re-post it there because I think it will make more sense and have a higher change of being seen (especially in context). That page came up on a google search for “How do I stop crossdressing?”, and is how I first found this site.
Brandon, you can feel very free to post comments on my other posts as well!
You may also consider writing a guest post for this website in the future after we get more acquainted. https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/guest-posts/
Thankfully Barnabas , like you , when just mentally fantasizing aboud trans cd-ing for a day or two or three, it makes my feel physically sick over and over again , thats protection from the Holy Spirit .
Reformed
Sin is not good for us! Thanks Reformed for the comment. Sin affects us in holistic ways.
Hello Bernabe. First, I wish you that God gives you abundance of health and great blessings for you and your family. I am a 28 year old man, I got married at 24, I have struggled with crossdressing for a long time. This appeared to me when I was between 7 and 12 years old, up to that point it disappeared and reappeared at 18 years old. Currently I am in a constant struggle, I have battles every day against this temptation, I have talked with my wife that I like to do crossdressing (but only underwear), what I have not told her is that this torments me a lot, it fills me of guilt and sadness, even lately I find it difficult to smile and enjoy the simple things in life. I am a Christian Catholic, I usually confess to this sin every 15 days. I feel the worst and I don’t want to be a sad person anymore. Trying to stop this desire to put on women’s underwear costs me a lot, and I feel that every time I try not to do it the desire is stronger until I fall.
Greetings, thanks for your blog and your words, your brother in Faith greets you.
Goku, it’s great to hear from you! First of all, the cycle you find yourself in, is common. I’ve talked to so many guys who have went through that, and I did myself as well. But there is hope! You can break this cycle with God’s help! You can be free from this cycle.
Please read this post to get started – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/12-steps-to-stop-crossdressing/
I will pray for you right now
Hello brother,
First, Thank You.
I searched for ‘Christian counseling a crossdresser’ and found this site after not using the word ‘Christian’ and am fortunate the Holy Spirit inspired me to add Christian in my search. I feel it is a waste of time to not research this – or any topic – from a Christian perspective.
My grandson just posted a picture of his face and it looked like he was trying to look feminine. In am not a counselor – just a 75 year old Christian – for the last 50 years – and after reading the comments realized sexual temptations are not uncommon.
I have no idea how to counsel him – a 200 pound high school football player – and Christian young man who goes on missionary trips – and so I sought some helpful sites on the internet.
I expect, and have reasoned in my own thinking that sexual temptations are available because we are all sexual beings. Also one of the posts rightly talked about ‘the freedom from Satan’s power’ from which we are all struggling. I have even reasoned my own struggles came about because of our God-given sexuality – without adding the thought that sin permeates every fiber of our ‘saved’ body and we will struggle with sin until the Lord takes us home. So all that said, I will contact him and suggest he seek your site and all it has to help us overcome.
Thanks so much Bob. I would highly suggest rather than just sending the link to the site with him, you ask him to read some posts, or other articles or books together with him, and you can discuss them together. Or meet with him in person if possible. You could start by asking to hear more of his story, what he is feeling and experiencing, and go from there. Thank you for the appreciation.
Is being a Christian the only means for resolving issues with cross dressing?
I would not be where I am today having overcame crossdressing addiction if not for Jesus working in my life. But it’s certainly possible to stop crossdressing even if you are not a Christian. You can stop if you want to, sometimes it just takes some help from others, and some self-reflection, and a firm decision. Here is a post you can start with – https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/integration-and-contentment/
Hello Bernabe,
A pleasure to greet.
I wanted to tell you that I have not used women’s underwear for months, but every day I feel more and more repressed, I feel that it is not me, I am serious and I stay away from people.
In my marriage, my wife and I practically do not have sex (more or less every 2 months), and sometimes it leads me to think that I should go back to wearing women’s underwear to increase my sexual appetite and give myself the initiative in my marriage. .. But later I think that this could be a temptation of satanas … This is very difficult, I have already discussed it with my wife.
Once I was wearing women’s underwear, I don’t know if it was because of the ecstasy of the moment, but I heard the voice of my grandmother (who had passed away) telling me: “Don’t do that” … I don’t know how true this is. in other words, my subconscious. What could Bernabe do?
May God bless you, thank you for helping so many with your work.
Thanks for the comment Kenshin. Merry Christmas.
I’m sorry to hear about how you are feeling repressed and sad. I think it is unlikely that not wearing a certain kind of underwear is going to ruin your life and make you depressed. There must be more going on. Perhaps you could see a counselor or a pastor to talk about how you are feeling?
My guess is that it is it not the underwear which makes you happy and joyful. Rather, you probably have underlying issues causing you to feel depressed, and the underwear, and the sexual high it gives you, is a way to escape those feelings and not pay attention to them and deal with them. Perhaps part of your depression is because of the hardships in your marriage right now.
Could the two of you see a marriage counselor together to work on the marriage?
Hi Barnabas
While I don’t struggle with wanting to crossdess, I have the opposite addiction, I’m obsessed and turned on watching crossdresser and gay porn, esp. the former. I’m 62 year old single man who’s been a Christian for 42 years. It started when I was 15, a few months after my mother died, my father having previously died 3 years earlier. Started with looking at very soft porn magazines of women in underwear …progressing to naked women …then kesbuan sex reallycrealky excited me. Then in one of those magazines I saw snippet of 3 gay men engaging in oral sex and rimming and to my shock I found it excited me and made me want to look at gay pirn, whuch I eventually did and it really turned me on and made me scared I was becoming gay. Over the years when smart phones became available I was able to fully access any type if porn at my fingertips and my addiction deepened and I became more and more attracted to watching gay pirn and then crossdresser, sissy and femboy porn…..To cut a long story short, in the last 2 years it has got much worse as I engaged in gay phone sex and more recently live video sex with crossdresser, sissy and gay men and this has become really bad as I now regularly expose myself via phone video to other guys and crossdressers.
The weird thing is I’m only romantically ever been attracted to women and have only ever dated women, but recently afte chatting and exposing myself fully to other crossdresing guys who look and act so feminine I’m starting to have romantic feelings…I know what I do and say when I’m on live video calls is absolutely disgusting and wrong and against God, but there’s something so so incredibly broken in my soul, starting from a love vacuum/deprivation after losing my parents in my formative teenage years but then adding all this damage from watching and now engaging in porn over these past 47 years. I feel quite hopeless and genuinely fear God will turn me away saying “Depart from me you wicked dusgusting man, I never knew you”.
I’ve been to physiatrists, physiologists, Christian therapists, Leanne Payne Living Waters conference twice, received healing prayer, generational healing prayer, and have been praying fervently over the years, including praying & fasting, for God to heal me from this brokenness …..but He hasn’t answered this prayer, and I know just feel abandoned by God and that like it says in Romans 1 that maybe He has just given me over to these sinful desires and will judge me in the last day. I just don’t know how to come back from all this. I’m actually a decdnt kind fun guy yo all who know me, but there’s this other dark and shameful side that I turn into when I’m alone at night, and even sometimes during the day, like an animal. I just have too too much pain, regrets (mainly regrets I didn’t marry and have kids, esp a little daughter, as I’ve been terrible in staying with any one girlfriend for long as tgeinitial attraction wore off and I wanted someone new..another long story….) and nothing to satisfy my love longings in a pure normal natural way, so I eventually give into porn after a few days of feeling shame when the loneliness and pain/anxiety comes back…..
Anyway, not sure if you can relate to any of this as your attraction for putting on women’s clothes has different broken roots than mine
Hi John, I am very sorry for the pain you are going through. This is the destructive nature of addiction and the perversion of sexual immorality. It is painful, and yet because it’s an addiction, you keep going back to what causes you pain.
Let me say there is hope! You can overcome this. You can break this habit. You can heal from it.
One of the problems that I seem to discern is that you’ve done a lot of praying, and that is great. It’s the most important thing we can do. But you seem to be hoping that God takes your desire away. And he has not promised to do so in his Word. If you think you will only break this addiction when God takes the desire away, then you will keep waiting and keep failing. God wants us to learn how to overcome sinful temptations, he has not promised to take them away from us. It could very well be this is why you are not overcoming this.
In actuality, you need to repent from blaming God for your problem. Read what you wrote again. You make it sound like you keep failing because God has not delivered you from this desire. But you have it backwards. The sinful desire comes from within you. It’s not God’s fault. And he is not under obligation to take it away. Self-control is easy if you desire nothing. But of course the beauty of self-control is that you resist something even when part of you wants it.
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/healing-doesnt-mean-no-more-temptations/
Read this please.
I also think that you need to take concrete steps. Counseling is a good concrete step, but not enough by itself. You need accountability, and need help with temptations, most notably to start with an internet filter.
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/get-an-accountability-partner/
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/enjoy-freedom-get-an-internet-filter-now/
Also remember, there is nothing so bad that you have done that you are beyond God’s grace in Christ. Pour your heart to Christ, genuinely repent, and trust in his mercy. But real repentance also means doing what you have to do to put this sin to death. Time for real concrete action, not just wishful thinking hoping that the desires will change!
Are you ready for more concrete action steps? Let’s keep talking. I’m praying for you