Guilt-based purging is ineffective because it denies the attraction of crossdressing. To stop crossdressing, a crossdresser needs to believe that he will experience more happiness by *not* crossdressing. Only then will he desire to stop.

Most crossdressers know about purging, when a crossdresser, feeling guilty, throws out all his female clothes, wigs, makeup, etc.

While a common thing, crossdressers also generally say that purging doesn't work--eventually the urge returns, and one ends up buying new female things. It becomes an expensive exercise in futility.

Economics aside, I think there is good reason to be skeptical about purging. In fact, I think it is an inherently ineffective way to stop crossdressing.

For one thing, if you oppose a habit like crossdressing with a lot of energy, it seems like the habit can take that energy and become stronger. I don't understand the exact dynamics, but it does seem to work like that.

But more fundamentally, purging evades the root cause of crossdressing.

Crossdressing is done because it feels good. It is a rational choice. The crossdresser asks: Is the pleasure of crossdressing worth (a) the monetary cost, (b) the risk of embarrassment, and (c) the occasional guilt?

And the answer is a resounding YES! The pleasure is worth it. That is what is goes on in the crossdresser's mind.

Purging denies this rational choice aspect. It merely tries to veto the choice by ultimatum: Never mind what you want, it's wrong and that's that!

That is bound to backfire because it denies that crossdressing was determined by our "self-interest calculus" to be good. Purging is basically a lie, with the crossdresser saying "I will not do what in fact I really want to do."

To be honest, when I did a major purge, I still felt like I wanted to, and would, return to crossdressing. The feelings were too sublime to abandon. I was still attached to it.

I felt guilt, so I purged and ceased the behavior, but by no means let go of the desire. So it was inevitable that after a while I would resume crossdressing.

The Alternative

The issue thus is what the crossdresser has to gain by stopping.

For one thing, a crossdresser looks inward to gratify his need for nearness to female beauty, grace, and feminine "energy." In so doing, he invests less time seeking and experiencing these things with actual females. Indeed, for some reason, he has perhaps stopped looking to females for these things.

However well the crossdresser might express femininity himself, it is not as good as the real thing--it is detached from deep, beautiful, timeless dance between men and women, which is tied up with the important business of perpetuating the species.

An advantage of not crossdressing is that ideally the crossdresser can pursue this dimension of life in connection with real women--where there is a potential for much greater beauty, meaning and happiness.

A second obvious problem of crossdressing is isolation. Crossdressers are isolated because there is a huge area to their life that they do not share with most people. And even in their male mode, there is a tendency to anxiety and inhibitedness due their "secret."

So a second possible benefit of not crossdressing is a fuller involvement with other people. Hopefully, by spending less time on crossdressing and associated fantasies, the man would spend more time with other people, and derive more pleasure from relating to other people than from his self-relationship.

If these considerations are to actually impact crossdressing, the crossdresser must do more than accept them intellectually; he must see them as "experientially" true. Only then will he have a desire to change which is stronger than the desire to crossdress.