I highly suggest the article – The Transvestic Career Path – by H. Taylor Buckner. It’s an old article and some people might take offense with some of the terms or way it is written. But I find it an extremely insightful article that fits very well with my experience and what I’ve read from so many blogs, forums, and people who have visited my website. There are a few things that are different from my experience, and a few things I might disagree with, but overall I found it very enlightening.

He talks about how a person develops crossdressing behaviors and much of it describes well my own development into a crossdresser. What was especially fitting for me were the common traits for crossdressers that he mentioned like: our failures in social expectations of masculinity, passivity, fear or intimidation of the opposite sex, and perfectionism. Do those traits fit you? There seems to be a certain personality type that is somewhat more predisposed to develop a crossdressing habit. Of course, there are exceptions, just like there are exceptions to what men are generally like and what women are generally like, but those generalities may give us a piece of the puzzle.

I think what is most interesting is what he says about the crossdresser developing an internal marriage, acting as both husband and wife. (I’ve written about this hereBecoming the woman my wife is not). And this internal false marriage provides both the sexual pleasure whenever it is wanted, and at least some broken forms of social nurturing, romance, interaction and even the giving and receiving of gifts. This provides the benefits of a real marriage, but without the work of a true relationship and without worry about failure. But I would add that this false marriage of the crossdresser also misses out on the true best most wonderful parts of a real marriage to a real woman. Crossdressing cannot provide the true kind of companionship and love and adventure of a real relationship with a wife. When I first read this article years ago, it was just an interesting theory. But since that time, I have read the stories of hundreds of crossdressers and seen this played out in their lives and in their divorces. Just read the stories of wives on the wives of crossdresser’s chat page here at my website. Crossdressers replace their wives through crossdressing. It is a very common path.

One of the few things I disagree with in the article is that he looks at the path of the transvestite (crossdresser) as fairly rigid and doesn’t think it progresses into homosexuality or transgenderism. But from my own research, I think many crossdressers do end up pursuing life as the opposite sex and become transsexuals. See this post – Book Recommendation – The Man who would be Queen. Most of these continue to have sexual attraction to women, but I’ve read stories of those who end up in relationships to men, or at least occasional sexual flings with men. At any rate, the internal marriage of many crossdressers ends by divorcing his wife, and living as a woman, thus being with the false woman forever. The female persona seems to finally overcome and replace the male persona in many cases.

The author also doesn’t seem to leave much hope for successful change and healing for a person once this crossdressing has already gained a foothold in that person’s life. But that is something that as you know, I disagree with very much. There is always hope. Many have found freedom already, and we can have it as well! And even if the desires for that internal marriage of crossdressing never completely go away, we can find peace and wholeness in real relationships instead, whether we are married or not.