Had an interesting discussion with my SO.

[Lee Andrews]

It all started with me spending $400 of my sizeable tax return. I told her I was going to do it but it still came off as "sneaky", her words.
The reason I gave was she hates my crossdressing now and I can see it in her eyes whenever she sees something not male on my body. I get it and try not to let her see any part of Lee and or bring up the topic. So I didn't want to go into details of my purchases.
I told her that's why it wasn't discussed on my part. Her hate of it now and this was her text reply....
"I don't like it..its annoying.....my life is a prison because of it.... But I cant change it..."
I wish I didn't do this but I can't stop.....

P.S. This is the first sizeable amount of money I've spend on Lee since 2008 other than an occasional Walmart $15 blouse or skirt.

[SamanthaSometimes]

Financial "discussions " are frequent in marriage. Perhaps it's not so much about the CD as you ascribe? Would she have the same feelings if the purchase would have been for something else like tools or something unrelated to CD? BTW - I completely understand your logic of not being completely forthcoming about your purchase ahead of time. Isn't that what DADT means?

[CountessVF]

Clearly this is an DADT situation. If you went with your buddies for an offshore deep sea fishing trip it'd cost a lot more than $400. She also probably wouldn't be there for that, but somehow I'm guessing that'd be ok. I don't see how her life's a prison when you're not begging her to be involved. And as long as you're maintaining fidelity I don't see how she should get to tell you how to spend your tax return.

[Melissa_59]

She says her "life is a prison"? Really?

Color me puzzled.

[Teresa]

Lee,
I feel I haven't spent much on my CDing but when you add the little buys together it is a bit of a shock My wife has no idea what I've spent, I think she assumes I'm using all her things ! I don't like keeping it from her but we are playing by their rules !
I wouldn't dare say I was going to spend a large amount , it only opens up the question why do you need it and where are going to wear it ?

I felt I was in solitary confinement before I came out to my wife, not the other way round ! I guess her comment is based on people knowing and her feeling ashamed so she doesn't want to show her face ! I pointed out to my wife the statistics of men who do dress so why feel so bad when perhaps the next door neighbour or your postman etc. could be doing it !

[Beverley Sims]

There is one common deception partners carry out and that is the cost of personal purchases.

The biggest lies are told in this area.

[Lee Andrews]

Me too Melissa....
Going to guess the secrecy of it all? I'd love her to explain it more. Maybe I do too much of Lee even in hiding? I wear Haines woman's Boybriefs everyday. Nothing frilly. Toes are usually painted all winter and tights as long johns. She knows it but doesn't see it generally. She's always worried I'll be found out and scared what that will do to my reputation. She loves me to death, that I know. Her mind is in a bad place these days. Her mom is recovering from ovarian cancer and we had to take her dad into the hospital four weeks ago for lung cancer. He's still there and might not ever come home. She is the only sibling close enough to help out. It was just interesting seeing her thoughts on this whole thing.
Countess; If I did spend it all on tools I don't think I'd be in as much crap. Our relationship is one of pooled resources, I have no problem with that. I'd be living in a cardboard box if I was left to my own devices. It has worked for us for 25 years. I don't spend any money on myself other than smokes and coffee everyday. So it's not like I'm deep in the pink fog or the blue one either.

[CountessVF]

Wait, now there's a blue fog too? Jk

I understand the prison comment a little better knowing you have daily elements of your dress that if found could change your communities perception of you and your wife. You might be comfortable with that risk, she clearly is not. There's her prison, a prison of risk. She very well might be more accepting on the whole if your daily actives didn't put you at risk. Accidents do happen.

[cheryl reeves]

i do hate to say this but you should have told your wife before you spent 400 dollars on yourself..question is did you give her 400 to spend on herself? me and my wife pool our resources too but if i spend 20 dollars on cheryl,she gets to spend 20 on herself..

[Barbara Black]

My situation is pretty much DADT as well. She prefers not to see, and I avoid confronting her with it most of the time. She also feels the pressure of being in a prison, however, I believe her fear is mainly how it will affect her if I am discovered. She has always been paranoid about being seen in the wrong light by other people, whether it is the wrong clothes, and mostly, without makeup. My dressing is just a continuation of this fear, aside from the obvious dislike of it as far as her husband is concerned.
But, a week ago she suggested that I could go out (after dark) wearing my skirt in the car, that no one would notice it anyway. I was shocked! So I guess there is still hope for change.

[Lee Andrews]

i do hate to say this but you should have told your wife before you spent 400 dollars on yourself..question is did you give her 400 to spend on herself? me and my wife pool our resources too but if i spend 20 dollars on cheryl,she gets to spend 20 on herself..

She knew I was going to, I couldn't keep that a secret if I wanted to. She is going skydiving in May and that's around $400 so it's not like it's all for me and the rest is going to pay off some stuff and projects around the house for both of us. As she said, she's annoyed with it and I guess spending my portion on Lee just hammers it home.

I would love to get this out in the open but I am also realistic knowing my family and friends would have a hard time picturing this 6'3" burly construction worker in heels, hose and a skirt. I would imagine some would disown me.
The more I think about it this morning, the more I see the "prison" comment reflected in our lives. We have a secret because of circumstances, that must be locked up, guarded and never let it see the light of day. I don't like it but I understand it.
It is nice to talk or type in this case with those that know where I'm coming from.Thanks everyone.

[cheryl reeves]

i stand 6' look like a mnt man when i do grow my beard out,im strong as a ox and look like a femmine butch when dressd as cheryl,when some see me dressed they keep comments to themselves. so i know where your coming from.

[CountessVF]

Sounds a bit like Cheryl could give the beat down en femme. Probably got bricks in hur purse.

Are you comfortable with her risking health and life for a cheap thrill with skydiving? If it's all about risk....

[Lee Andrews]

She's a big girl Countess. I personally don't understand the need to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. Do I have those 'what if's' running through my head? Sure do. But I'm not one to put my foot down, so to speak. Might ask her to up her life insurance though. Lol
I guess in my own way I take risks everyday with my Lee side. I wouldn't need bricks in my purse if it came down to it.

[Suzie Petersen]

Lee,

I understand your frustration with this. I'm sure that, if you had the choice, you would rather have fully disclosed what you were going to spend money on and would probably have loved involving your wife in the selection of whatever it was you bought.
On one hand being forced to keep it hidden, and on the other, being criticized for not being "sneaky", is an unreasonable dilemma.

I can also see this from your wife's perspective! The thing with a DADT relationship is that everything is left up to the imagination for the wife. She doesnt know where this is going and she can easily develop a deep irrational fear of what the future holds for her. She needs safety and predictability in her life and you are doing things she feel is putting that in danger. Whatever you tell her, she will interpret on her own based on her fear and what she might hear in the media etc.
Anything you do, related to the dressing, enforces the fear and keeps her unhappy and when you live like that, it can be hard to find joy in anything at all. Again, it is often irrational but for the person suffering, this is very serious and very real.

She is also under a lot of stress currently, with her parents health issues. She might be building a fear composite of her loosing both her parents soon and you being found out or leaving her or something like that. She might be afraid of suddenly being alone! She might actually already feel she is alone!

I dont think you should read too much into the word "prison". It is likely just a metaphor for her feelings of fear and unhappiness. As I said above, your dressing, however insignificant it might seem to you, might be completely overshadowing her life and might make her feel locked in with no control of her own happiness.

Sounds like you are implementing a little Lee everyday and although she doesn't see it, she knows. That's enough actually! To her, you are dressing as a woman all the time! So .. what is coming next? Transition?

It is not easy to find a way out of a hole like that for you two. It might require external help from a mitigation or counselor type to help the communication along.
Would you be able to cut back on the daily female items and have better separation between Lee and your guy side? Let her know that you are there for her as the man she married most of the time but then now and then, maybe with a defined time or frequency, you let Lee shine through? I think a lot of wifes who are uncomfortable with this, prefer clear distinction between the two sides instead of the blending and overlapping situation.

Hugs
Suzie

[Rhanda]

You sound like a winner to me. Construction workers make good husbands. Look at me! LOL Some even make good wives these days.

The fact that you had a large tax return shows that you have been able to provide well. I think this is one of the things that keeps your marriage going. You can't win an argument reminding her of this. Be a good guy and tell her that you will go sky diving with her. After all there is no sense in her being the only one with messy panties.

I hope you will have a good laugh with this.

Rhanda

[Lee Andrews]

Very thoughtful post, Suzie. This whole thread is becoming something to mill over for myself.
Didn't think I was being selfish but it is beginning to look like I am.

Hell no Rhanda, I get dizzy on a six foot ladder.

[Lorileah]

If you went with your buddies for an offshore deep sea fishing trip it'd cost a lot more than $400. She also probably wouldn't be there for that, but somehow I'm guessing that'd be ok.

and you would more likely be wrong as it is time away from her with persons she may not agree with doing things she believes you are doing that she isn't supposed to know.

I don't see how she should get to tell you how to spend your tax return.

There is this little thing called partnership in a marriage. Where, at least on money or big decisions, you discuss it and then follow through. The OP knew this wasn't going to end well, yet they did it. In some marriages there is "My money, your money and our money" Most it is "Our" money. Even if it isn't, that person you wake up next to each day, they are part of your life and you should share. Otherwise it is a business arrangement not a marriage.

I don't understand why people would do things to pressure a good marriage to maybe end up single again. Trust me, having someone beside you is far better than being alone and making it harder for someone to walk beside you just confounds me

[Suzie Petersen]

Lee,

Didn't think I was being selfish but it is beginning to look like I am.

I dont think it is a simple as that really. You could turn that around and say she is being selfish by wanting security regardless of what you need, but that would also not be fair.

It is a matter of finding a balance where both feel safe with each other and still allow each other freedom to do things that make them happy. This can be difficult to achieve if one partners needs are in direct conflict with the others view of the world, for lack of a better word. The solution then might be finding a compromise or a level of acceptable moderation.

Also, we change through life and our needs change with it. As we get older, many realize a deeper dependency on our partner. Little things, which years ago could be brushed away as irrelevant, suddenly become a big deal. Your wife might be battling a lot of inner turmoil where your dressing is not the main thing, but the fact that you do it makes it more difficult for her to open up about the other things. This again makes the dressing a bigger problem that it should have been.

Btw, I agree with Lorileah that a marriage is supposed to be a partnership. It is supposed to be about together, not about yours and mine.

We a all complicated beings and it can be very labor intensive to make life simple

- Suzie

[Lee Andrews]

Well I'm happy to say this topic is generally the only one that raises serious tension in our lives lately. As I type she called and asked what I want for dinner and how to fix her dads TV as if our earlier conversation never happened. All happy and I love you's.
I don't know.... Guess she just needed to tell me how she felt on this subject and moved on. She'll never tell me to stop but I can do things different to lessen Lee's impact.
I love her, she still loves me and I should count my lucky stars I get to express myself as much as I do. Some sisters would love to be in my heels.

Thank you everyone for their input. It has been an enlightening day.

[kimdl93]

If she feels her life isa prison simply because of your evidently furtive dressing, then it's time that the two of you had a talk. Given the tone of her comments, I'd advise moderation by a gender savy, but otherwise unbiased third party.

[Leslie Langford]

Lee, call me "old school", but this is too intimate, delicate, and personal a subject to be discussed via text. I know that the younger generation lives and dies (literally...texting and driving don't mix very well) by their smartphones, but the more "mature" among us still have an attention span and often feel the need to articulate our thoughts in more than 140 characters as permitted by Twitter.

I "get" DADT, have dealt with this myself during 44 years of marriage, and for many of us here, our crossdressing is the proverbial "elephant in the room" which refuses to go away - ever. So, we make do as best we can. But I will say this...while it's taken me years to shake off the guilt associated with my crossdressing and to accept myself for the person that I am, part of that process has also involved looking at this whole DADT thing through a far more critical lens.

Here's the thing - I'm not the person I was 40, 30, or even 20 years ago, nor is society the same as it was back then. When I was much younger, our ilk was considered to consist of "weirdos", creeps, and perverts - in short, "transvestites", with all of the associated negative and fetishistic connotations that entails - and perhaps only a slight step up from voyeurs and child molesters in most peoples' eyes. That was the mental image my wife was confronted with way back when she first discovered my crossdressing (accidentally, BTW, which didn't help), and that is what stuck with her for all these years.

Fortunately, with the "sexual revolution" of the 1960's, the advent of feminism, the growing acceptance (nay, almost mandated "embrace") of diversity in today's world, not to mention the various LGBT rights movements, the explosion of the Internet, and all of the information freely available on it, there is no more excuse to demonize "our kind' anymore. Far more is now known about transgenderism than ever before, we are widely recognized as being just about the last minority who are still fair game in some quarters for discrimination, bullying, and derogatory and demeaning jokes, and even Barack Obama acknowledged as much in one of his recent U.S. State of the Union addresses. Laws are being passed everywhere in the Western world to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity along with sexual orientation, the practitioners of "conversion" (a.k.a. "reparative") therapy are being widely discredited and sent packing, and hardly a day goes by nowadays without some newspaper article, magazine story or television news report appearing that deals with transgender issues. In short, far from living on the fringes anymore, we are very much the "in thing" these days. The "muggles" are starting to "get" what we are (and what we are not), and confusion and apprehension towards us is starting to morph into understanding and sympathy.

Clearly, your wife has not kept up with the times, otherwise her attitude towards your crossdressing would surely have softened by now. But lest I be accused of preaching here, let me assure you that I have dealt with much the same situation during the course of most of my own marriage. My solution was to finally "grow a pair", refuse to be subjected to this ongoing guilt trip, and no longer accept the associated manipulation. Yes, our wives didn't sign up for this (neither did we, BTW), but unlike us they also have a choice - they can either make their peace with it or else get out of Dodge if our crossdressing really is too much for them to bear.

You claim that your wife loves you and that is what is keeping her in the marriage despite her discomfort with your crossdressing. Equally clearly - like my wife - she has also added up all the pros and cons and decided that this was the only significant "for worse" part of the marriage vows that she made way back when, and that there are a whole lot of other, more serious "for worses" out there that she doesn't have to contend with, unlike a lot her other married friends.

You sound as if you have many other redeeming features that any woman would be proud to call her own, so give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for that. But having said that, maybe you wife also needs to get a bit more attention and reassurance from you than she is currently receiving because of your pre-occupation with your crossdressing, and you may need to re-calibrate here to get your marriage back on track.

You can do this, but your wife also needs to meet you half-way here, and frankly - once you have had a good talk with her to clear the air and re-jig the marriage dynamic - your wife quite simply needs to STFU if you two are ever to live in harmony over this.

[Tina_gm]

Hi. To me, this sounds like a typical moment where our S/O's are just not dealing well with it that moment. I do think though, that perhaps if you were to spend that amount of money for your dressing, you could have also dropped a similar amount strictly for your wife. It might have balanced it out just a bit.

As for the prison comment, that is likely due to the secrecy aspect of it. Women especially need someone they can talk to about anything and everything. In this circumstance, she has no one. My wife has similar issues with the secrecy part, and has only told two people. What she got out of talking to one of them, was that there was still more anger than she originally thought. Anger of the usual sort, that I did not disclose this to her, did not have a choice or a chance to deal with it on her terms. Regardless of how much we may try to keep it away from our S/O's (if that is the agreement) They will still likely feel they are not able to deal with it on their own terms, if a reveal came after the commitment and especially after marriage.

Add to other stresses in life, and it can become like a perfect storm situation. Personally, I would revisit things like wearing women's panties, or briefs. Tights and polished toenails on a routine basis. She doesn't see it much, but that is sort of because you are not going to show her yourself much in underwear, or with your shoes and socks off. She also will not want to look much either. That too, as trivial as it may sound, may lead to a prison type of mindset. She and you feels a need to not walk around in underwear or barefoot much, which is very un typical of married couples. Especially for the reason why. perhaps make it a point to have her see you in mens underwear, and toes without polish on them.

[Stephanie47]

I think your wife is trying to say that she is in a mental prison, isolated from discussing your cross dressing with others. A secret is best kept by one person. Since she is not accepting and is fearful of public reaction to being "outed," she has imprisoned herself. I'm in the same situation. My wife does not want to engage in any cross dressing conversations and definitely does not want to see Stephanie. That's fine with me.

As to the finances....I'm sure there are many many couples who argue over spending. In fact his morning on the MSN news page there is a list of eight reason why couples get divorced. One is finances. If a husband and wife are dead broke, then clothes buying for a cross dresser and sky diving for anyone would seem to be an extravagance that needs to be avoided. If I were you I'd tell my wife at the end of the day, I still would have $400 of clothing hanging in the closet, and, she'd have nothing but a memory. Please tell her to check her life insurance policy as to paying off if the chute does not deploy correctly.

My wife runs amok with the credit card at fabric stores and thrift shops looking for bargains. I spent substantially less on my femme clothes than she spends on her "stuff." She never checks the credit card bill. She'd be too embarrassed at the amount of money she spends. Of course, we do not have any debts and are very comfortable.

I would suggest you and your wife sit down and discuss the cross dressing issue. You can still be in the closet, but, throwing barbs is a violation of DADT.

[Dana44]

There are a lot of comments and support here. I wanted to add, communication is the most important to work this out. She may feel isolated. Perhaps point her to this site where she can talk to other SO's. I think all SO hate it when they find out, yet you are the same person no matter how you are dressed. Communication is the most important. I had to talk to my SO for a good time before she became more comfortable. Now she is supportive and we need that in our relationship. Now we plan a night out every couple weeks.