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Lately I have been in a "Mental swirl" of sorts, where I know what I want to do and wear, but WILL NOT allow myself to even remotely go there... It has been almost 2 months since I last dressed and that lasted about 5 minutes... My wife (who is supportive) asked me for a list of things that I would like to wear or try, but I cannot even bring myself to do that.. I have all these feelings of shame and quilt that I cannot get around.. This is not like me. I am a "WHO CARES WHAT THE WORLD THINKS" kind of person, so this is really knocking me around...

I find that I don't even want to discuss it with my wife, who is trying very very hard to help me.. Wich I know is unfair to her..

Has anyone else been threw this or is going threw this?? And how or what helped you to resolve it???

I told my wife a few months ago, and find it hard to talk to her. I have pondered this in some detail and is basicly comes down to that I kept it a secret from everybody in the world for so long, that it is ingrained in me to not talk about it. I do have shame and guilt also about it, and I hope that will fade in time. It is a slow process, but in time I think I will be able to openly talk about it with my wife, who I do want to talk about the subject with. We do talk a little about the subject of CDing, but it is almost always about something she read on her SO group, and the stupid thing the CD'r did (generally non-CD related).

Jenney

Hi Jean-P! I don´t have feelings of shame and quilt but I sometimes have 2-3 week periods when I totally lose my interest in crossdressing. After 15 years of dressing I still don´t know why this happens. Now I´m fully dressed and it feels great but this is the first time for about 2 weeks. Today at work I suddenly felt the urge and once I came home I immediately shaved my body and went to my wardrobe. By trial and error I´ve also learned not dress if I don´t feel like it.
I´m afraid there isn´t much anyone can do to help you. As you must´ve heard so many times crossdressing is totally OK and as long as you stay home when dressed you don´t have to worry what the rest of the world thinks either. I sincerely hope you´ll get over the quilt and be able to enjoy CDing. May the force be with ya!

Joanna

I find that I don't even want to discuss it with my wife, who is trying very very hard to help me.. Wich I know is unfair to her..

Has anyone else been threw this or is going threw this?? And how or what helped you to resolve it???

Jean,

I bet you don't realize how many of us wish we HAD the problem of being able to discuss it with our wives! I know I'd jump on the chance to openly discuss it in a civil manner if mine would do so.

Dixie

Hi Jean,

Yes, I went through that. After I told my wife I didn't dress for quite a bit. At times I would get upset because she wouldn't leave the house. Although she knew it was still a secret for me. I had come out to her, but I hadn't come out to her mentally. I'm not sure that makes sense. When I say I didn't come out to her mentally I mean I was still hanging on to my secret, I was still very shy about her seeing me, I felt guilty that she had a husband like me, etc. There were times when I wouldn't know what to do or how to dress too. I thought after I told her it was going to get so much easier to dress when I wanted to, but I felt bad for her and I had a pity party for me too.

I'm not sure if this is a cycle of growth or not, but it sounds similar to what I went through and I've read about others going through this.

I hope it helped reading that I can relate. Whenever someone posts like you and Jenney did in threads like this it always helps me. Even now it still helps. It's so weird that it happened to someone or is happening to someone else, but it feels comforting in a way. Ok, I'm weird and now I'll hush.

Ok, I fibbed.. I am not going to hush just yet. I want to tell you that over time the guilt is gone and like Joanna I dress when the urge hits.

Beauty

Jean-P wrote:I have all these feelings of shame and quilt that I cannot get around

I think guilt and shame tend eventually to create a backlash or rebellion. A better motivation is a belief that CDing is basically unproductive.

Lately I have been in a "Mental swirl" of sorts, where I know what I want to do and wear, but WILL NOT allow myself to even remotely go there...

I try to avoid aggressive suppression, for fear of backlash. For example, I do not feel any guilt or shame about *fantasy*, and regard that as a reasonable compromise.

I find that I don't even want to discuss it with my wife... Wich I know is unfair to her..

I don't see it as necessarily unfair. Sometimes it's enough to say, "Honey, because I love you I'm trying to work out this problem, but some things a man needs to do alone."

[And how or what helped you to resolve it???

1. Motivate change by means other than guilt and shame.
2. One idea I have tried is to CD occassionally on a 'preventive' basis--i.e., to say, "Okay, I'll crossdress for 1 hour today, just to get it out of my system for the week." The advantage with that is that it puts CDing under control of your "higher self," so that it isn't disruptive (e.g., the 'mental swirl' you refer to). I think the agitation, confusion and upsetedness are more a problem than the CDing itself.
3. Meditation, even just a few minutes of paying attention to your breath, can be really helpful. Try simple 'rectangular breathing': breathe in (4 secs), hold (4 secs), breathe out (4 secs), pause before next inhale (4 secs).

Finally, I try to understand that the specific *feelings* are which I seek to obtain by CDing. I believe these feelings, as opposed to the CDing itself, are a valuable part of the personality and should be understood. Then the key is to find ways to experience the feelings without CDing.

Cathy

Jean-P wrote:Lately I have been in a "Mental swirl" of sorts, where I know what I want to do and wear, but WILL NOT allow myself to even remotely go there...

Hi Jean P--
That part of the post is the puzzling part, to me. Unless the "knowing" is something new and untried, I'm surprised that you aren't able to use Cathy's "take an hour and get it out of your system" approach.

It comes to me that maybe you sense that your feelings about CDing are heading in a new direction, and dressing again is going to set off this new pattern. That would make more sense to me, sitting here reading your post.

My own experience is that there can be changes in the reasons for dressing, and they aren't always comfortable changes when they first appear. So we tend to put off dressing during those times, because we're caught in the middle between two ways of looking at it.

One of my own examples is when I was no longer happy with wigs and the way they made me look, but also did not want to give up the tricks I'd learned how to do with wig caps. There were advantages to growing my hair long, but it was not an easy change. So for a time I continued to wear wigs, but I knew that I wasn't happy with them any more. It put me in conflict for a while, and then I stopped the wig use, and moved on to styling my hair. (I still use wigs for performing, since that's an exaggerated version of my girl self)


Having your spouse know about this doesn't automatically take away all the guilt, but it does get it out of the territory you seem to be describing.
What I'm trying to say is: guilt alone doesn't seem to cover what I'm reading here.
So that's my own perspective on it, for what it's worth.