For most of us who crossdressed in the past, there was some conditioning going on. We desired to crossdress, but the more we engaged in it, the more we desired it. We got some sexual pleasure from crossdressing at first, but the more we crossdressed, the more pleasure we got. We conditioned our bodies to be used to it. We trained our bodies to respond to the stimuli in a certain way. My friend, Ikthys, has a wonderfully helpful post about it that you can read – “Conditioning.” He describes the conditioning process really well, so I won’t spend time on that, because you should read what he wrote.
What I’d like to talk about is trying to undo the conditioning in our attempt to fight against our crossdressing addictions or desires. There are many ways one could tried to uncondition the feelings and pleasures that we have learned to associate and experience with crossdressing. We could do so through punishments, rewards, through working on our thought processes, and I’m sure there are many other ways. I think there is a place for these self-treatments.
But what I want to briefly comment on is one idea of unconditioning that in my opinion is dangerous and counterproductive. This is the idea of purposely still engaging in crossdressing but refusing to give in to masturbation. The theory behind this would be to disassociate crossdressing from sexual pleasure and therefore diminish the desires to crossdress as a whole. When I was younger, I tried doing this. But ultimately those endeavors ended in failure. I would rationalize that I was crossdressing in order to try this type of unconditioning, so that ultimately I could stop crossdressing. Really I knew that it was wrong and unhealthy for me, but I clearly suppressed those thoughts. Since I was trying to disconnect crossdressing from sexual pleasure I would crossdress and then try to do normal work, daily activities, or video games. The plan was to not let myself look in the mirror or masturbate. But let me tell you, you can still have sexual pleasure without masturbating, and I did every time. In fact, because I was holding off on the masturbation, I ended up crossdressing for even longer periods and having even more pleasure. And then I would get to a breaking point and masturbate by the end of the session anyway.
So what was supposedly a way to fight crossdressing turned into something that poured gasoline on my addiction. It was extremely pleasurable. Please don’t give in to the same rationalizations that I did. This is not how to approach unconditioning. I’d also like to add that even if you somehow disassociated your crossdressing from sexual pleasure, it could still just as easily remain or turn into an addiction not based on sexual pleasure, and that can still be just as sinful and problematic as the sexual addiction. There are plenty of men crossdressing out there that are addicted to crossdressing, even though it is not based on sexual pleasure and masturbation. And there are plenty of men who started out crossdressing as a sexual addiction, and now the sexual component seems to be gone but they are still addicted to crossdressing.
As I’ve written about before, the important thing is to resist the temptations, not to eliminate the temptations. Sure, it’s good to work on ways to lessen the temptations, and work on ways to uncondition ourselves to crossdressing, but overall the most important thing is to resist the temptations. So I would highly suggest quitting crossdressing cold-turkey, completely. Doing so will lessen the strength of crossdressing, and the temptation to crossdress, slowly month by month year by year. And if you are having sex with your spouse, your body will be learning to associate sexual pleasure with your spouse more and more, and less and less with crossdressing. This is the best approach to unconditioning.
At times many years ago I also experimented with rewards and punishments, given to myself. This was done through guidance and discussion with accountability partners. It can be as simple as going without video games each time you fail, or getting a gift certificate to your favorite restaurant after three months of no failures. These techniques are not a dramatic solution to addiction, but they don’t hurt either. They can be a little piece of the unconditioning process.
I can testify that unconditioning will happen as a passive process over the years if you continue to resist crossdressing and stop giving in. But the unconditioning process may never be complete. Such a strong history of sexual pleasure connected to one activity is hard to undo. We might have periodic sexual desire for crossdressing until we die. Yet we should not be without hope. Just because unconditioning will not happen perfectly and completely, it does not entail that there will be no change at all. Porn addicts have to go through the same process of unconditioning their mind and body to porn. It’s a tough process because our brains have already wired themselves to our addictions, but our brains can also change again as we recover from addiction. Many have testified to this!
Don’t take my word for it. Read more about brain studies here – Your Brain on Porn Relevant Research and Your Brain on Porn Rebooting Basics
And read these amazing testimonies of people who have experienced change in their conditioning, leaning to desire porn less, and their wives instead – Rebooting Accounts
I was/am one of the men addicted to crossdressing with out sexual outlet. This was actually a deliberate action on my part many years ago. I would like to say that it was to try and stop CD but actually I had realised that Masturbation significantly shortened my CD session, so I stopped masturbating when actually crossdressed. I have a vivid imagination and fantasised myself as a victim being forced to crossdress in all sorts of scenarios and I would masturbate to these fantasies when unable to physically crossdress This of course eventually led me onto wanting to dress all the time and even though married sometimes went weeks wearing womens underwear, including bras with out my wife noticing. Am I proud of this, at the time I actually was and the prospect of getting caught was in its self a turn on. I have until recently as stated in other posts been slipping down the same slope. I now look back at both periods with guilt, shame and regret.
Having gone cold turkey in recent weeks I am currently finding it hard and glad that I purged. I realise how easily I conditioned myself to CD without masturbation, so I am now realising that, that conditioning was easy because it feed into my desires. It is much harder to swim against the internal tide!
Unfortunately that is all too true for most of us here. We reinforced the sexual connection to crossdressing by repeatedly giving in over and over until now it seems to be so much a part of us that it is hard to go back. But I do believe change is possible. I have experienced it myself, and some of the guys in our prayer group have now gone years without crossdressing. I really hope you can experience this same change. It’s a gradual road, and you can’t expect a quick reduction in desire, but real long term change is possible.
Hi Keith. I resonate with your experience. For me, it started with just the simple sensation of something I am not: the silky, thin, delicate feel of a woman’s clothing against my skin, erotic compared to the boring, clumsy clothes of boys and men.
Then I wanted a little more. Longer. All day. Sampling jewelry, then a touch of makeup. I too fantasized about my wife discovering me and embracing cd into our lives. Didn’t happen, and I realized her feelings were not anywhere close to what I’d fantasized.
Still, I began to believe that being a woman was a much more desirable life than being a man. We’re boring compared to the way a woman can feel. Even if a man were to “make himself beautiful” as woman are able, well, it. just. doesn’t. work. A man in the delicate, sexy look of women doesn’t appeal whatsoever. We just can’t replicate what makes a woman a woman.
Of course, like you, I felt guilty about it. If my desire was fine, why did I hide it? Why did I keep the desire and the cd a secret? Why not just come down to a family dinner party dressed as I truly desired?
Then I began to step aside from my imaginary perception of what being a woman was about and I looked and listened to how women felt about the things that I perceived as being wondrously feminine. To a women, what I considered erotic and feminine were merely clothes, and often uncomfortable at that.
I also realized that most women are not living the sexy, erotically feminine life that I imagined in cd. They were often plain when it came to dress- read: comfortable- and were focused on the task of living, pursuing things much more valuable than their appearance. They were raising families, serving others, pursuing careers, traveling, achieving athletic goals, writing, and more. On short, they were making a difference in their worlds with their choices and their actions.
I realized my perception of what a woman is was far different than a woman’s perception of herself. Yes, some woman are all about their appearance. But they are not the ones that are written about, they are not the women that mothers tell their daughters to model their lives after.
I began to see how shallow my cd experience was. What a waste of the day! Of my life! Sheesh. I began to see that it was equivalent to desiring to be a leopard or a giraffe or a dog. You get my point. It was silly, and I didn’t want to live my day or my life being or doing something shallow and ridiculous.
At that point, having a more objective perception of my behavior, I began to realize that my cd behavior was a manifestation of my appreciation for the beautiful uniqueness of what a woman was. She was not me, thank God. She was very much the opposite. Instead of wanting to be what I was not, nor could ever be, why not marvel at and celebrate those differences? Why not cherish the differences in the relationships I had? Be it wife, girlfriend, friends that are female, relatives- why not admire them being women and me complementing their natural behavior with my behavior as a man?
That brought me to dig deeper in understanding and exploring who I am as a man. What were my interests? What are my needs? How might I grow, be challenged, develop my character, interests, talents? Writing daily in a journal helped me to sort these things out in a private Q&A manner. It’s been insightful and a whole lot more satisfying than my imaginary cd forays ever were.
Keith, I find myself in quite a similar predicament where I reinforced the sexual component to the dressing, which both strengthened it and made me develop more elaborate, “forced” fantasies. In turn, I agree wholeheartedly with what Barnabas says in response to you.
Quite similarly, those who struggle with pornography addiction will turn to harder and harder material in order to get that same gratification. There have been stories after stories that I’ve heard in my social circles where a man turned to gay porn, child porn, or even sex trafficking due to his addiction to pornography. I myself have also experienced this increase (certainly not to any of the aforementioned pornography) as my addiction has increased. Things I had no idea of that did not pique my sexual interest now do, simply because I allowed myself to get further into the addiction, even though there is nothing appealing about them.
There have also been stories about men, such as ourselves, eventually changing their sex because of their dressing.
However, I’ve noticed that once I can look at things from an objective standpoint, the things that piqued my excitement aren’t deserving. I can’t watch pornography without thinking of my girlfriend now, and I cannot dress actively without thinking of the men who changed their sex. So, in my experience, from a psychological perspective, changing your mindset and how you view it is crucial. And, once that occurs, the change starts to become gradual, as Barnabas said.