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.
I am really struggling with the fact that I want my wife to wear makeup or sexy lingerie, even heels if possible, polish nails, the more femenine objects she uses the more I feel aroused, but the less she uses, the less I feel interested.
I stopped the crossdressign habit 7 years ago, but have noticed that still I am tempted to femenine objects and porn most of the times related to femenine objects, I want to see women with lipstick, with lingerie, with heels, eventhough I am avoiding to search for videos and images of travestites having sex which is something I used to do a lot, still I feel tempted to search for heterosexual content but always of women using femenine stuff, not very interested in naked women at all.
So with my wife, this is happening a lot, not feel very intersted in sex if she is not using something “femenine”, at least lipstick, or at least a pretty bra. And also, if she is using a femenine outfit I really drive crazy for having sex with her, to the point that if she doesn’t accept I really feel frustrated and bad mood, or I would go and masturbate imagining having sex with her and enjoying her with that femenine outfit.
See, she has been accepting to put lipstick, she has been using bra everytime because she is nursing our son, so she needs to use nursing bra all the time, although I get her pretty bras from Victoria Secret, she was using some boring ones before, but I wonder how impure it is to be so fixated in her to use femenine stuff, I know there should be a balance, I don’t think it is like never asking her at all to use sexy lingerie for me, or to avoid having sex with her if she is looking great, I don’t think is about having her completely naked and no make up every time, but I guess the opposite side, to force her to always have something femenine on in order to get aroused should be also a disorder.
I feel like I changed my crossdressing habits with her, instad of me dressing, I want her to be dressed, believe me if I could get her to dress and put makeup exactly the way I would like, that would really make me very happy, that kind of desire is all the time in my mind. Actually for my birthday I asked her as a gift to do makeup, eye shadow, lashes, lipstich, everything, putting sexy lingerie, stocking and heels and made me so happy, my frustration is that for more I want to extend the moment it only last 30 mins maximum, and then it all is over, I have to wait until the next year to have her dressing the way I want, cannot get her to dress as I want every single time and that frustrates me, sometimes I ask her to dress 1 or 2 things, maximum 3, like a bra, a panty and lipstick for not to bother her much, sometimes she accept to put it, sometimes she’ll do only 2 or nothing, but even if she does still I would like the heels, etc.
I get pretty aroused if I see her bra left in the bed, or if she leaves her lipstick there in the bathroom, so I know something is going wrong, everything is about femenine things, I don’t have crossdressing thoughts while having sex with her, but I really feel aroused by the femenine objects she uses and that’s all I think when I have sex with her. Things like how veryful she looks with this bra! oh God this bra is so beautiful, look at the lace, look at the pretty strippes, look at that soft pink color…
So… man! in some way I feel like I have improved because I don’t feel like I wearing the bra, not even a thought of it, but still is a lot about the bra, in my wife though, but very focused in the objects.
I feel like a pervert, all my life I’ve been so obsessed with femenine stuff, I feel like I haven’t improved at all, just changed the “model” to dress, or is that ok?, what is the balance?, God created women, God created them with the desire to make themself beautiful, but I am really struggling with a balance.
Sometimes I question a lot how fake a woman can be with all those stuff on which by the way drives me crazy, but then… all of that is just an illusion, all of that is fake, what is a real woman?, at least phisically, is the real woman just the way she wakes up? no makeup, no brushing hair not even brushing teeth?, or is the real woman the same in all stages: without makeup, with makeup, naked or dressed, confortable or sexy clothing, maybe is about learning to enjoy them in all the phases and not to focus only in one. Specially for us who are married already, because when you are dating they always look nice, but once married, most of the times you’ll see them “natural”, and that is kind of disappointing, specially if you have a housewife. My wife used to get ready everyday when she was working, but since we had our baby she left the job and focused in the baby, and I like to have her at home, but she never gets ready, so… its challenging.
Please share any thoughts, how to have a balance, what to do? am I wrong? am I right?, most likely some parts are going to be good some wrong, but to have opinions help to have a better perspective, right now I feel so frustated not to being able to address this topic to anyone.
I wonder if normal men even enjoy or have desire for their wifes using lipstick or mascara or heels, or lingerie, or stocking, or they don’t even care… I feel like a pervert because I am so obsesed with those things, I want them so much.
For now I am planning to submit myself to a 21 day process of not asking her to dress anything special, have sex with her totally naked, avoid having sex with her when she is using makeup of perfume, which most of the times she does get ready for churhc and looks pretty nice, before I would make sure I can have sex with her sundays, but now I’ll do the opposite, I started yesterday, I already avoided having sex with her, I let her go and remove her makeup, remove her pretty clothing and change to her pajamas and will ask her to have sex today since today is not wearing any femenine at all. I’ll get her be totally naked and will try to focus only on her, I’ll do this strategy for the next 3 weeks and from them I’ll see what next steps to take. Please share any ideas. I will avoid any visual contact with any of her makeup, lingerie, heels, etc. Of course avoid everything online or any other resource. Give me ideas if possible, anything helps.
Joe I hear your struggle and feel your frustration. I can relate. And many of the other guys here can relate too. First of all, I affirm and applaud your desire to become more healthy in this area. I commented on your previous comment as well, but let me share some more here as well.
I think it is not wrong for women to adorn themselves, and I think it is not wrong for men to appreciate that adornment. In general, this is common to men, not only crossdressers. Men desire women to smell nice (perfume), desire clothing that makes their body look beautiful or sexy, and most I think tend to enjoy minimal makeup that accentuates certain facial features. Even the Bible seems to support this. While there are commands about women not putting too much emphasis on their appearance and adornments, you can see all kinds of examples in the Bible of makeup, jewelry, fine clothing, etc. Even in the analogy of Christ and the Church, the Church is talked about as a finely dressed bride. Another interesting verse is that at the end of the book of Job, when Job has new children, one of the daughters is named after an eye cosmetic.
Okay, that said. You and I both know that are obsessions with the female objects goes far beyond that of normal men. For regular men, the adornments make the woman attractive, but they still can’t wait to get her undressed when it comes time for sex. For you, instead of naked sex being the fulfillment of your anticipation, it becomes a let-down. That means there is a problem. For other men, they are letting the clothes, jewelry, and makeup accentuate the woman, so that they are even more attracted to the woman….. For you, you are attracted to the objects, apart from the woman. That is why the objects alone stimulate you, even when apart from your wife.
So recognize that you have a problem and make a commitment to changing it. Our sexuality is not static as people make it out to be. We can change. There is hope! That’s why people can become porn addicts. Their brain chemistry slowly changes through the pornography until they become addicts and can no longer be turned on sexually by their wives. But likewise, recovering porn addicts are slowly able to rewire the brain again so that they learn how to be turned on to their wives again. You can experience change too!
I recommend when having sex to consciously turn your focus to your wife, as a whole person, and enjoy how she is dressed or made up, but try to let those fade into the background, and focus on her, look into her eyes. Enjoy her as a whole person. Consciously force yourself to try to do this. Remember in the moment, she is not a dress up doll, she is not a model, she is not an object of lust, she is your wife, and you are bonding and becoming one flesh.
Rather than fasting for a number of days of talking to your wife about how she dresses, I recommend making yourself a rule that you will never talk about it at all ever again, unless she asks you a specific question on her dress. Maybe normal men can do so, but not you, not me. I made such a commitment to myself and it has been incredibly helpful and healing over the years, such that I don’t have the kind of problem you have anymore. If this seems too extreme, then you could limit yourself to only comments of this nature – letting her know if there is an article of clothing that she has that you really find unattractive and you just want to let her know (but still give her freedom to wear it whenever she wants). And you could let her know that when having sex, it’s nice if she wears something nice, anything, just as long as its not her normal pjs that she wears every night. But I would either force yourself to stop manipulating her dress completely, never making any comments, or limiting yourself to the two above comments.
Sex might be less exciting at first without quenching your lust for objects, but you will learn to still appreciate it, and in the end, sex will be even more exciting, because it will be about becoming one flesh with your wife, loving her as a person, and experiencing her. In the end it will be a far deeper experience than just you quenching your lust for objects.
Here is another thought. When you have sex with your wife in a meaningful way, you feel satisfied, and can relax and enjoy it, and then enjoy it again in another day or week. Our lust for objects is sexual addiction, which is a very different animal. The more you try to fulfill your lust for those objects, the more you want them even more, and you are never satisfied, to the point that you want your wife to wear those things all the time and where you can’t focus on much else or have a clear mind. Don’t feel the sexual addiction. Feed the healthy marriage.