At the beginning of my marriage, sex was new and exciting and I never had any problems being stimulated and focused on my wife. But the deep nature of sin and of crossdressing addiction in particular reared it’s head over time. At times, CD thoughts would come into my head during sex. I always felt rotten and incredibly guilty about such times.
The healing I’ve experienced over the years from crossdressing addiction has been a gradual and a long process. The process of change happens so slowly that you don’t easily notice all the significant changes. As an example, one day you wake up and realize you haven’t had a single temptation in months!
One of the most concrete aspects of healing from my past addiction is that my marriage bed became pure. No more did crossdressing thoughts enter my head during those intimate times. It feels so good and pure and holy (and pleasurable) to simply think about my wife and not any other filth. This is one of the fruits of freedom from crossdressing addiction. You must all learn to discipline your minds as well as your actions. Thank you Lord for what you have done. The process of sanctification and change is slow, but if we are willing to keep at it, change happens, through the power and strength and guidance of the Holy Spirit at work in us. I hope the same change can happen for all of you.
How? I find I can’t get excited without these thoughts. I realize the importance of keeping marriage bed pure, but without those thoughts sex just doesn’t work anymore for me. I have prayed, I have been through Celebrate Recovery 12-step, and I have stopped masturbating- have almost 2 years “sobriety” from things like masturbating, reading CD stories, looking at things online. But I still can’t seem to have successful sex with my wife without those thoughts. Every once in a great while I can manage it, which is why I haven’t given up completely, but these times seem to be getting further and further apart rather than more frequent. I am just now starting to look over your site, so maybe this email is too soon- but I would appreciate any guidance. Thank you for making this site. Hopeful.
Good to hear from you Ron, sorry for this trouble you are having. I think there is great hope. The first thing to do, is to relax while having sex, and not worry about the outcome. This might necessitate some honest conversations with your wife. The more stressed you are about the outcome, and about having things “work” without those thoughts, the less likely you will be to succeed. I suggest you just enjoy being with her, enjoy touching her, and have good conversations. If the first few times only end up being times of intimacy together being naked, and times of foreplay like touching and kissing, be okay with that. Don’t let yourselves get frustrated by that. But keep on setting those times aside, and over time I think things will improve a lot and you will be able to be stimulated by her. Just say “no” to those CD thoughts period. The more you give in, the more they will become entrenched in your mind.
You may also need to break out of the normal routine. Talk with your wife about other things that you would find pleasurable during intimacy together, that are not sinful.
I am convinced that for people like you those thoughts are unnecessary. Your CD addiction sounds like most of the guys here, that it is primarily sexual. You are turned on by CD, by the image of a fake woman. Meaning you are still heterosexual, so you are still turned on by women. You might not be as excited or thrilled as by the thought of crossdressing, because your body has become so used to that route, but your body still knows how to be turned on by women.
A lot of porn addicts have destroyed their ability to be turned on by real women in sex. But the reality is that there is hope. They testify of processes of recovery that allow them now to be turned on to real women. Why don’t you start by reading this post of mine and especially the links at the bottom of the post to the Your Brain on Porn site.
https://healingfromcrossdressing.org/unconditioning/
There is hope, you can change!
This is something I am struggling with as well. I’ve been married for 7 months and before that I was never involved in the bedroom with someone. I am blessed I never masturbated while cross dressing or looking up the subject but I still aloud myself to get excited as a teenager and now I’m dealing with the consequences.
My journey was strange because from the age of 12-17 I would allow myself to get excited from CD but I would stop myself from taking it too far. I then went basically 5 years where it still was a temptation but I would refuse to allow myself to look anything up or do any actions and as a result it was almost completely gone. During this time I wasn’t really in a relationship with a women for longer than a month but I felt that when the time came I would have fight the dragon again. When I started dating my wife it came back because even though I was being celibate, my body had linked being aroused to CD. I worked to get through it but I knew until I got married I wasn’t dealing with it in its entirety. It was hard at the start of my marriage because for so many years on and off I had excited myself and then made myself calm down. Well now it was a good thing to get excited but so much of it was linked to something that wasn’t my wife.
This is something I am still working through and I guess I just wanted to share my experience for support. My wife knows about it and the nice thing is through patience we can help me be aroused in the way God intended it to be. I just have to work to overcome it with my wife day by day and as I overcome it our bedroom life gets better.
Jared, your experience is similar to mine in many ways. It is so good that you have shared with your wife. It’s not good to keep secrets like this. So well done with that, and it’s good that you can work together. You are newly married, and so your body is learning new sexual habits. I have great hope for you that if you continue to resist giving in to crossdressing and crossdressing fantasy, you will learn to more and more appreciate being aroused by your wife instead of crossdressing. Think about how porn addiction works. People get addicted to porn to the point where they can’t get aroused by a real woman like they used to be able to do. Our body can learn new sexual habits and patterns of arousal to a certain extent. You already love your wife and are aroused by her. Just keep going as you are, and your body will get used to that being your good, holy, and pleasurable sexual outlet.
Don’t freak out when cd thoughts come. Just acknowledge them and then dismiss them. And refocus your attention on your wife.
Barnabas thank you very much for this article. 7 months after my previous comment I have seen a great improvement keeping the bed pure. It has been hard but the work to become aroused from my wife has both worked and been such a benefit. It will takes time to recover I’ve seen within myself it can happen.