ive been flirting with cding and wam for well over 10 years on and off, and have enjoyed and satisfied my urge for it. However in the last 2 years i have wanted to more and crave it more than ever before. In the last couple of years my life has hit a few bumps being it a new job that hasn't gone the way i would of hoped, a social life drying up and covid restrictions effecting all of us, plus the fact that i haven't been able to do an form of wamming for nearly 5 years. I have been trying to get my head around the reasons i have been craving this more and more? I have been wondering has anyone out there found that cding was an escape from the life they live and to escape reality. It would be great to hear what others have to say

There's at least a certain amount of escapism to everything fun. That may be the definitive line between crossdressing and transgender. In crossdressing, you dress to try on a fun new identity, while a transgender person chooses to live that identity as their primary. So one is escaping reality and the other is embracing their reality.

For me, I like having a character to play. Once I've given that character an ego, I can put them in a wam scenario that humiliates them for comic effect. The more I invest in that character, the more I can amp up that humiliation, but I never put in so much as to make them my reality, so it stays in the realm of fun escapism.

I certainly enjoy the cross dress mess scenarios ,originally i done it for my own enjoyment and it,s how i would like a woman to dress if she was in a slapstick scene, so i suppose i,m then feeling what a woman would be feeling as i mess the clothing.
Enjoy expressing your inner desires it,s probably a part of you that you cannot change anyway.
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Do I crossdress to escape reality? No I don't, in fact when going through a rough patch I lose interest in doing it amongst a whole bunch of other things. I have multiple different reasons why I crossdress (though for the sake of brevity won't go into them as that is besides the question asked though I will be happy to talk about it here if requested if it would help) but none of them are to do with escaping reality and to be fair not all are about having fun either.

I also disagree with a notion raised in this thread that everything fun involves a degree of escapism. Firstly to quote from Dr. K of Healthy Gamer's 12 Rules For Life, "Life is like a sandbox game," it isn't meant to anything, it is whatever you decide to make of it. We have the ability to shape our own reality sure external things like the pandemic can complicate our ability to do so but whether we choose to work around it, wait it out and resume at the right time or let it derail everything completely is up to us.

Reality will be as boring or as fun as we choose to make it. For example a couple that needs to clean the home can either deal with it by arguing whose turn it is or they could agree to a rota/division of appropriate tasks or they could do Rock, Paper, Scissors each time with the loser dressing up as a French Maid to do the cleaning whilst the winner gets to distract them with spanking paddle, ticklish feather duster or a remote control vibrating sex toy. Each option deals with the reality of needing to clean the home the arguing deals with it destructively, the agreeing to rota/division of tasks deals with it constructively but in a sensible/boring way whilst the last option is also a constructive strategy but trades efficiency in for some fun. Which option we choose shapes our reality and how fun it is.

Escapism itself often tends to be a coping strategy for stress, trauma, abuse or other mental health issues. However coping strategies simply are a way for the mind to continue to endure whatever is bothering it. It rarely if at all deals with the underlying issues that makes the person wish to escape their reality. Think for example of the alcoholic that drinks heavily because they hate their job. It may take their mind of it whilst drinking but spending all one's spare time either drinking or drunk does not leave them in a mental state or with the time to find a different job they might enjoy. Instead whilst the drinking may alleviate their short term unhappiness it ensures the cycle of suffering is continued over the longer term.

(And because this above paragraph triggers a content warning to clarify the example of alcoholism escaping reality is meant as an example of damaging mental health - not a promotion of it).

I personally believe that if someone feels the need to escape from themselves and their reality to be able to have any fun that it is probably a sign they are either carrying around an unhealthy self-limiting belief that prevents them having fun without having to get out of their own mind or that there may be a personality issue at play. The most common self-limiting belief that prevents people having fun being a believe that as an adult they are meant to sensible and serious all the time. Which frankly is false. Emotional maturity means being to take personal responsibility (for things like creating one's own reality), being able to manage one's own emotions (like not letting the fear of standing out prevent one from having fun) and being able to relate to people in a healthy way (by using communication to seek a shared understanding). None of this means one should not have fun. Sure there are occasionally times when attempting to have fun may be inappropriate indeed some fun activities depend on knowing when to take things seriously. For instance I used to do a lot of whitewater and surf kayaking (before I moved to London) but being able to enjoy the fun side of it you had to be able to take the safety side of it seriously. But when there is not a good reason for things to be taken seriously then there is no reason why you can't have a little fun with what you are doing. Hell back before entertainment media was a thing, being able to have fun with music, games, stories and so forth was seen as a necessary skill for adults to pass leisure time as we couldn't devolve creating our entertainment to third party companies.

But anyway to return to the OP's question about wanting to crossdress more. I won't be able to give exact answers as things vary from person to person and you'll need to work out what rings true or not for you so I'm just going to make some general points.

Firstly "more," is a little ambiguous. More could mean wanting to do the same sort of crossdressing you've always been doing more frequently than you used to. More could also mean dressing as frequently as you used to but going from just wanting to wear panties and hosiery to wanting a more complete transformation. More could also be the parameters of when you wish to dress may have expanded for example if previously you only wished to dress during WAM activities but now you're getting urges to dress in non-WAM capacities. Or it could be a combination of all of them.

The distinction between each of these is important as they could each have different reasons for those changes and whilst I suspect from the context you used "more" to mean the first meaning of doing the same thing more frequently I'll briefly touch on possible reasons for each of them in case it helps anyone.

So for "More" meaning doing the same thing more frequently.
We shouldn't forget the impact the pandemic and things like lockdowns and restrictions have had. Many things many of us enjoyed have gone for long periods unavailable to us. It may be that you've been wanting to dress more as it was one of the few things you enjoyed still available to you during the restrictions and it was filling the void left by the other things that have been unavailable.

The thing to keep in mind about doing the same enjoyable thing over and over again is the Law of Diminishing Returns. If you keep doing the same thing frequently over a short time period you will find the amount of enjoyment you get from each time you do it drops. (For example think how much you enjoy your favourite meal, now if you were to eat it every meal with no other food or drink would you still enjoy it as much by the 10th meal as you did when you started? No eventually you'd get sick of it. To continue enjoying it as much as always you need sufficient time to miss your favourite meal to fully appreciate it when you have it again. However if you make any one thing you enjoy the single or one of the very few sources of pleasure in your life then each time you return to it for more pleasure but get less enjoyment than last time means you keep returning to it more frequently than last time. This is how the cycle of addiction begins anything we enjoy can become addictive if we overindulge it at the expense of other sources of enjoyment. Given the frequency in which people with addiction cite their addiction as their way of escapism there may be a bit of this going on.

Whilst we often associate addiction with things that are harmful that it is best for an addict to eliminate outright there is nothing inherently wrong or harmful about crossdressing. It isn't the dressing itself that is the issue here, the issue is compulsively pursuing it at the expense of all other things you might enjoy. As such the objective here is not to try eliminate the dressing (such suppression itself would be even more unhealthy) but to manage/moderate how often you do it such that sometimes when you get the urge you may need to consciously force yourself to do something else that you enjoy (or once enjoyed whilst pursuing one pleasure compulsively one may forget things they once enjoyed but can re-find them again) so as to diversify your sources of enjoyment and pleasure. In the long run it will mean each become more enjoyable each time you partake in them. Essentially it boils down to "variety is the spice of life."

Given the desire for escapism I would recommend trying to get some therapeutic help to work out what you wish to escape from and what you might be able to do to solve that issue. Whilst as I say there is nothing wrong with dressing it may also help if it is becoming an addiction causing distress and you're unable to diversify your interests yourself.

So for "more" meaning your dressing is evolving into wanting to wear certain items you previously didn't or you want to dress more outside of a wamming thing or expand in another area.
This may be a sign that there are other reasons why you wish to dress than just the ones you've personally been believing up until this point. Because crossdressing is often shrouded in a lot of social disapproval it can be quite easy use rationalisations to minimise desires and reassure any potential fears one might have.
For example someone that fears being outed as a crossdresser but has unconscious desires to crossdress but in particular likes the look and feel of panties the most could wind up convincing themselves they are only just a panty fetishist thereby giving an outlet to their strongest desires whilst suppressing the other desires. This can work for a period of time as they're giving an outlet to their strongest desire but the other underlying ones eventually build up. To give an idea of how this might work in a non-dressing/fetish example let's take food. Let's say you're getting hungry and you suddenly have an urge to have a pizza however you know you've things in the fridge that need eating today instead. You can satisfy your greater urge (the hunger) with the food in the fridge and temporarily put the pizza out of the mind for a bit having satisfied the hunger but the craving for pizza may pop up repeatedly over the ensuing days until you have the pizza. Similar thing here satisfying one thing may make the desire for something else being denied lesser but not eliminate it completely.

Now it may be that either your desires for things you were previously been denying have got stronger or that the reasons you were denying your other subconscious desires have been slowly relenting over time. Either way I don't think this is something to worry about but something to embrace as you learning more about yourself that previously you'd been denying out of fears or reasons you may now be overcoming. (Unfortunately the issues of gender have become hopeless politicised with various sides disingenuously taking a complex subject to try bend things to their own political ends and I'm not going to wade into that or the differences between crossdressing and transgender as it is complex and not as clear cut as the extremes of either political side would like and I have no desire to waste my time arguing with either of them.) However just because there may be other underlying reasons to wanting to dress they do not necessarily mean they are a desire to transition fully or to become trans but then again there might that desire as some people do decide to transition late in life having repressed those wishes their entire life. The other reasons you might have wishing to dress will be unique to you and there can be many different reasons to want to dress even just recreationally.

And finally I should finish by saying that if the "more" was meant to be both an increase in frequency dressing and a change in the nature of the dressing it may simply be that the increased frequency of dressing is being driven by the fact you are now exploring multiple different reasons for dressing both the thing you originally enjoyed and now a new thing and so the increased frequency of dressing is a product of doing more things whilst dressed. This is distinct from my earlier bit on "more" for frequency possibly turning into or being addiction related in that the earlier example was simply doing the exact thing you were doing before (without any changes to the nature of your dressing) but just more frequently.

Anyway I'm going to shut up now as I've blabbered far too long and need to get on with a few things. Hope some of it was helpful to someone.

I often get dressed up like Mrs Bee, I even manage a convincing Chicago accent!