In our fight against crossdressing, honesty is more important than sobriety. This is something that I stress with my accountability partners, even those who struggle with other things besides crossdressing. You can’t help yourself or get help from others unless you are first honest. You could maybe say that healing from crossdressing begins with honesty.
When we fail, we can tell our wives, tell our accountability partners, and be forgiven, and then get back up off the ground and continue the fight again. But if we lie, or even just fail to confess our crossdressing to others, it remains a secret sin, and it gains power. Every time we are honest about it and confess, it loses power.
I have experienced the power of honesty in my fight against crossdressing. Some of the most powerful moments in my life, both in my fight against crossdressing, and in building life-long intimate relationships, were the times when I told people about my crossdressing. Besides telling my wife, I’ve told at least nine other people. It took a lot of courage every time I shared, but every time it was so worth it. Every time I received forgiveness and understanding and compassion, and every time I helped others to widen their view of the world and people. Every time I shared, it made crossdressing lose its power of deception. It made it easy to resist afterwards.
For any of you who have not told your wives, I encourage you to do so. If you tell her and come from a position of wanting help to fight it, it will go over much better than if she catches you doing it or discovers it in another way. Then she’ll brood on it without understanding what’s really going on and it will be much worse. Also, I would argue that keeping it a secret from her is unfaithfulness. Part of marriage is being open about things we are struggling with. For more help on telling people read this post – How do I tell my wife, a friend, or a pastor about my crossdressing?
Crossdressing is so easy to rationalize much of the time. We might make a commitment to resist it, but then rationalize doing it for reasons that don’t actually make any sense, but seem to in our own minds. But then telling somebody about our failure afterwards helps us to sort through all those lies. Each time you confess, crossdressing loses its power again.
Here are some Scripture passages to back this up –
1 John 1:5-10
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
Part of living in the light is not hiding in the darkness of deception. Honesty is the beginning. Also it’s hard to get a more beautiful verse than verse 9. We are assured of complete forgiveness.
Hebrews 4:12-13
12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
God already knows everything we do and eventually other people will too when we die. So we might as well tell others now and get help.
Proverbs 28:13
He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.
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