Telling your partner - what are the odds of success?

[Tina_gm]

Stats won't really help you. A general stat of someone disclosing CDing, while maintaining most of their life as the man their wife married, AND she tends to be more on the liberal side anyway, AND, there are no other drastic changes you make in personality after the reveal, AND you are extremely unselfish about CDing, AND, you are straightforward about your CDing from the reveal on, AND you had a strong marriage at the time of the reveal, the odds are in your favor that she will stay with you. Although I would not put them as high as 99%. With each of the ands I mentioned, plus numerous other variables that I didn't, which are not followed, the odds go down, quickly.

[cheryl reeves]

i revealed who i was when i first got back together with angie after a 5 yr brk,at first she thought it was a lingerie fetish for i convinced her it was,that is til 99 when i messed up and during our big talk i fully revealed it all,she freaked me out and accepted all of it,except my fem name which is said no to and told me my fem name was going to be cheryl reeves only and no more using teresa,that was fine with me..im blessed to have a wonderful wife anf going on 27 yrs of marriage,i wouldnt want it any other way.

[AllieSF]

I agree with that, but with some huge caveats. Crossdressing initially starts out as "just a thing" but when partners see how important it is for a lot of us, even to the point they consider obsessive, it becomes a giant "thing" that causes tension. There was a thread earlier in which GGs could post anonymously how they really felt about their partners' crossdressing, and it wasn't pretty.

Although most partners will stay, the relationship will forever be altered after the big reveal, and not usually for the better.

You make a very good point. I agree that with a "strong" relationship where open communication and two level headed souls involved, the chances (odds/probability), of success should go up. To 98% staying in the marriage and 75% acceptance, I am not sure, because that sounds way overly optimistic. Back up data would be helpful. Back up data that is probably very hard to obtain from such a secret part of most people's lives. There are a lot of reasons that people may stay around after the big reveal. Some are because for the wife of a MtF TG/CD it is hard to start over when they are in that prime phase of their adult lives with economic security, close friends and neighbors, growing children and all the rest. Many women that would prefer to not be with a TG/CD husband stay because of their current secure life style situation.

Another factor to consider is that since in the USA more than 50% of marriages fail for whatever reasons, that pool of "strong" marriage relationships is probably way less than 50% of the total married population, putting the successful reveals in a less than 50% range, especially considering that many couples stayed married for reasons other than love, eg. financial security, worries about what others will think if they divorce, staying together for the kids, etc. So, that percentage of married couples who can actually weather the big reveal could be well under 50%. Who knows in reality, because the data so far has not been produced nor studied in any significant way, as far as I have seen here on this site. Anyone know of relevant studies on this?

[Sarah Louise]

One of the things about this site is everyone is so supportive and I really appreciate your thoughts about this question not necessarily helping me. However, I didn't intend this post to be about me or anyone else in making a decision whether or not to tell based on the statistics of our members. It's just a genuine question wondering how successful the reveal had been by those who had gone down that route. Hopefully, if you're reading this you can respond to another thread started by AnnaMayy. I'd really appreciate it.

On the subject of statistics, while not fool-proof, they can go some way to revealing the actual picture. For example, a health insurer insuring an employer's medical insurance will look at the claims made through that employer's plan and come up with a price from there. While they will try and refine it by looking at gender split, age, occupation etc, the starting point is always the number of claims made and the bigger the control group, the closer they can get to the likely figure. I don't see too many insurers going out of business!

Blimey, I'm talking about insurance on a cross-dressing forum.

[Samantha Clark]

As I attempted to point out earlier in this thread, statistics only apply when events are repeated frequently. Statistics and probabilities don't apply to events that only occur once.

I only can some out to my SO once, not repeatedly, so statistics won't tell me anything helpful about my reveal (which went OK BTW). Insurance companies deal in a large number of events, and can play the odds based on average experience. That experience cannot predict an individual event. Think of flipping a coin. We know the odds of heads is 50/50, right? But that is the case only if we flip the coin many times. If we flip the coin only once, then the probability of heads is either 100% or 0%. Same with coming out to an SO: the odds of success are either 100% or 0%.

[Confucius]

A survey of crossdresser's wives was taken earlier at another site.

Wives attitudes toward crossdressing:
Most positive (“embrace it”): 11%
Accept with some negative feelings: 23%
Tolerated with both positive and negative feelings: 22%
Not accept: 17%
Dislike intensely: 18%
Strongly dislike 9%
Putting aside crossdressing, 55% rated their husband as excellent or superior.

[LeslieSD]

It is true that statistics reflect things that are done repeatedly. But even if we were to do it only once, it is still very helpful to consult a reliable statics before doing it, especially if the choice might have serious consequences. For example, if statistics shows going to a college right after high school will increase your chance of success significantly than not going to college right after high school. In that case, we will want to go to college. It is not saying that not going will for sure make one a failure, but the chances are different there.

It seems to me that the OPs numbers are about in the ball part right. A 10% will go bad, and a 10% will be the envy of everyone. T he rest of us is nicely distributed in the middle.

[Dianne S]

Statistics and probabilities don't apply to events that only occur once.

I don't think that analogy quite fits. While you may have told your SO only once, the event "crossdresser tells SO" is repeated many times a day, I would guess. So it is meaningful to talk about probabilities as long as you understand the limitations... probabilities are useful to gauge the reactions of SOs in general, but not for any particular SO.

A better way to put it is that probabilities are useful to describe the behavior of large numbers of events. Carbon dating is very accurate because we know to high accuracy the half-life of carbon-14... but we have no idea whether a particular carbon-14 atom is going to decay into nitrogen now or 1000 years from now.

Getting back on-topic...

How many guys would be supportive of their wives binding their breasts, gluing on fake mustaches and packing their pants? How many would want to go out on the town with their wives like that? And how many would enthusiastically buy men's clothes for their wives?

I thought so.

So if your SO tolerates your CDing, consider yourself lucky. And don't have unrealistic expectations about the reveal.

[Samantha Clark]

I don't think that analogy quite fits. [snip]

A better way to put it is that probabilities are useful to describe the behavior of large numbers of events. Carbon dating is very accurate because we know to high accuracy the half-life of carbon-14... but we have no idea whether a particular carbon-14 atom is going to decay into nitrogen now or 1000 years from now.

Exactly my point. You can't predict a single carbon atom but you can predict an aggregate of many carbon atoms. A single carbon atom may not decay EVER. It is only the aggregate of many carbon atoms that the average applies. So this DOES fit. Sorry but you are quite wrong.

[Pat]

It is true that statistics reflect things that are done repeatedly. But even if we were to do it only once, it is still very helpful to consult a reliable statics before doing it, especially if the choice might have serious consequences.

Again, I think this discussion is confounding statistics and probabilities. Statistics (in this situation) sort the OUTCOMES of events. You can survey the forum and find that, say, 10% are in strongly accepting relationships. As my old stats teacher used to say, statistics were invented because people don't want to believe they're unlucky.

Probabilities are the chances of achieving a particular outcome. Imagine I'm going to bare my soul to my SO about my crossdressing. Is my chance of her being strongly supportive of me 10%? No. Your chance of achieving that particular outcome has no relation whatsoever to the (made up) statistic that 10% of crossdresser relationships are strongly supportive.

If you're playing backgammon and you need to roll a 1-1 to win, it's easy to calculate the probability -- it's 1 out of 36. If you roll the dice and get a bad result and your partner agrees to let you do it over you might roll next time and get that 1-1. If you're going to tell your SO that you're a crossdresser, there are no random elements in play -- there are no probabilities. It's not like telling her on Tuesday is going to get a significantly better result than telling her on Wednesday.

[HerWife1110]

Everything worked out for my wife and I. Honesty and communication are key to any healthy relationship. I've found that secrets and deception are more detrimental than most truths.
My wife underestimated me. I wish that she had given me the benefit of the doubt and had come out to me sooner. Our lives would have been much easier and happier if she had.

[Erika Lyne]

Going back to your figures I would guess I fall into the 25% that disapproves but relationship continues but then that's only my assumption because I'm in a DADT situation but not supportive or neutral but more tolerates ! Sorry to add an extra sub-section !

I'm with Teresa on this one. I would add a sub section or another section for "Tolerates." My wife is very supportive and will say she fully supports me but I consider it that she "tolerates" my dressing. She has limits, soft and hard limits...a "limit" means not fully "accepting" in my eyes. This kind of warrants a separate category since there can be a big separation between "fully accepts" and "knows but is DADT."

Just my 2 cents. If it were a formal survey, then yes, A for me " Fully Accepting" especially since we talk frequently and I can dress at home when ever the circumstances are right and her limits are not violated.

Great thread,
-E

[sometimes_miss]

I had a very long winded response to this, but it comes down to this: I don't know about the odds in today's world. But when I was in therapy back in the 90's with my ex, our psychologist tolc me that most relationships don't survive when the woman finds out her husband is a crossdresser, as it can drastically change the dynamics of the relationship. Things may have changed; but if you're looking to figure out your chances, there's no way to know, because how a woman feels about sexuality in general, and how she feels about it when it's actually HER mate that she's talking about, are two very different things.