In this post, I’d like to briefly share a simple strategy for fighting temptation to crossdress. I have in mind the experience of the majority of the guys in my recovery group. Most of these men are married, and they have already purged their female clothing. But they sometimes stumble when they see their wife’s clothing laying out or hanging in the closet. A man may be tempted to secretly put on his wife’s clothing, but it could also be that he knows he couldn’t fit such clothing but the clothing still arouses crossdressing temptation or fantasy or cross-gender longing in his mind. Here is the strategy:

1. Consciously look at female clothes as simply pieces of fabric.
2. Imagine your wife wearing those clothes.
3. Think about how the clothes accentuate the look of your wife herself and her body, rather than focusing on the clothes with your wife’s body only being a prop.

1. The first step is to try to look at the clothes and female accessories objectively, the way a normal man would see such clothes. Whether it’s your wife’s clothes in the closet, or women’s clothing in a department store, or women’s clothing in an online advertisement, intentionally go through a mental exercise of reframing the clothing in your mind. Notice how the clothes, when not on a female body, are empty, shapeless, just lumps of fabric. Notice how misshapen they are when not on a real female body. Notice the holes that a female body would fill. We are so used to fetishizing and lusting after these articles of clothing that it’s really helpful to purposefully and objectively relook at them again to realize that they are only pieces of fabric sewn together. That’s all they are. Apart from a female body, they are nothing. They are empty husks. You would see a lipstick on the counter and see it is simply as a red dye rather than as a magical object of sexual lust. Over time, as you keep relearning new thought patterns when looking at these items, you are able to have lesser draw to those items. You are in a way reconditioning yourself.

2. If you are married, next is to reconceptualize those clothes by thinking about your wife wearing them. I suppose this can still work for those who are unmarried. You could instead think of your girlfriend wearing them. Or you could think of a generic woman, who doesn’t really exist except in your mind, wearing those clothes. Now the clothes or makeup or female accessories are in the proper context of being on a female body. You are shifting the image of a man in a dress to a woman in a dress. You are associating those clothes with women, where they belong. Hopefully you are already seeing in your mind your wife’s beauty while she is wearing those clothes, or that lipstick, or those shoes.

3. Unfortunately most of us will not be able to stop there. If we stop at step #2, we may still fetishize the clothing and feminine objects and lust after them. Then our wife or girlfriend becomes simply a prop to display the clothes. Her face and body fade to the background while we fixate on the objects covering her body. Obviously if we fall into this, then the thought exercise will have failed, and we will still be viewing the clothing in the wrong way. In fact, if we are not careful, the thought exercise could only serve to fixate on the clothing even more and cause us to be more tempted.

So the third step is to see how the clothes cover the the specific parts of your wife’s body. See how the tightness there and there would fit nicely and snugly on your wife’s torso. Think about how the hemline of the dress would look over your wife’s beautiful legs. Think about how the lipstick would add nice color to your wife’s mouth on her beautiful face, with her killer smile. As must as possible, try to picture your wife as a whole person where she becomes primary in your mind and the clothes are secondary, only adding to her beauty rather than replacing her as what is beautiful. Think of a photograph where one part close up is in focus and the background is more fuzzy. That’s what this should be like. In your mind’s eye, your wife’s face should be what is primary, and the dress she is wearing and jewelry and whatever else, should be what is more blurry and fuzzy. Those things should add to her beauty, but in your mind’s eye, your wife, her, her personhood, her identity, is the primary focus, not the specific object of clothing.

This might seem almost too simple to actually work, but let me tell you, it has helped me. I can be around my wife’s clothing in the house and not have it disrupt my day or cause me mental strain. Of course, I’m not yet like a normal man. I can’t completely transform my thinking 100%. Silky lingerie or a beautiful dress still are objects that call for my attention and can threaten to arouse my lusts. But overall this technique has worked to reduce much of the magic of these items of clothing. It not only diffuses temptation in the moment, but over time it reduces the number of times I even feel tempted.

I think it’s similar to the way that we as men train our minds and thoughts so as not to lust after other women who are not our wives. That retraining follows a similar process. You notice a beautiful woman and you intentionally think about how to stop your mind from going further into lusting. You train yourself to notice her beauty, acknowledge it to yourself, but then move on with your day without thinking about her appearance further. You retrain your mind to think of her as a sister, a woman made in the image of God, someone made for another man to enjoy, but not you. In a healthy man, he is able to see his wife’s beauty and be turned on, and see other beautiful women at work and church and wherever he goes, as colleagues and sisters and not as objects of lust.

In the same way, we can retrain ourselves. When we are at work and see women wearing high heels, we can notice how it makes them beautiful and then move on with our day, rather than allowing ourselves to be turned on or attracted to the heels themselves. When we see a woman at church wearing a beautiful dress, we consciously think about how it makes her beautiful, and appreciate that her husband gets to enjoy her beauty, and we move on with our day, rather than fixating on the dress itself. Sometimes I will actually turn it into a prayer. I will say something to God like, “God, I am noticing her right now as a beautiful woman wearing a beautiful dress. Thank you for making women, and for the beauty of femininity and female clothing that enriches this world. Bless that woman and her family.” Then I move on with my day.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5 – 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.