So very sad for you Jessica, hopefully you will look back on this one day from a much happier place.
Telling the SO can be the best outcome for some marriages, but for others it can be a disaster.
So very sad for you Jessica, hopefully you will look back on this one day from a much happier place.
Telling the SO can be the best outcome for some marriages, but for others it can be a disaster.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
Jessica, so sorry to hear what's happened. I'm facing the dilema of telling or not, I know I should, but yours is a cautionary tale.
Here today, gone tomorrow....
I am interested to hear why you think you should tell and why you have not so far.Originally Posted by DIANEF
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
H Becky, I was all set to do the big reveal to my wife, was waiting for my son to leave home and when my wife and I decide on our future once there's just the two of us, that was the time. However, I have seen a number of stories recently where things havn't gone well, Jessicas' story being a case in point. I have a lot to lose and little to gain if we did split for any reason. Fact is I just don't know how my wife would react to finding out my secret. W've been together 30 years and got this far reasonably happily. I know I should tell, but I look at what we have and the thought of losing it all is frankly terrifying. She might be okay with it, she might just think I'm a monster, I really can't predict which. So, right now my mind is in turmoil and I'm not sure what to do. Hope my ramblings answer your question.
Diane.
Here today, gone tomorrow....
After telling my wife a year or so ago for me it remains very positive. When shopping online for clothes she now offers the computer to me in case I want to order anything (girlie). She is completely chilled about it and I think she feels finds my vulnerability about CDing, and honesty about my feelings, quite attractive. We have a trip planned to London early next year. I have asked how she'd feel about us going out together for one night with me dressed. I asked her to think about before making any decision but would respect a no answer if she wants a traditional weekend away. The point being my success has always been about being totally considerate to her feelings and for the dressing to be a small and good part of our otherwise normal traditional lives. In the bedroom she's fine with my dressing too. But no make up/wig for sex. My advice is definitely to try to introduce it gradually (e.g. lingerie) to gauge her feelings rather than a big reveal. If ok with underwear or whatever then that will provide any indication as to her attitude / openess to such issues. If you are a poor husband / partner then I doubt any SO would be delighted with such a disclosure. I had the awful dilemma as to open up or not, I just regret I didn't do so earlier. We are closer now as a result.
To those who disagree and say telling nearly cost you your marriage, your spouses have every right to be hurt, angry, and want to leave, your cding should have been discussed before you got married, they have every right to know exactly who they were marrying, so they could choose whether or not they wanted to continue the relationship. sorry but that has and always been my stance on marriage. Total openness, and honesty. Me and my wife even wrote that into our vows 20,years ago. Just my 2 cents.
That's fine for some, but for others, the urge to crossdress has come later in life after we have been married for some time. It doesn't work to make a blanket statement or "rule" for everyone.
Sorry, but that's a one sided blind statement. There are any number of reasons you may wish to keep this from your SO. It doesn't mean you aren't being honest, rude or whatever you'd like to call it. I told my wife after around 10 years of marriage. We are happy and we are very much still together. CDing isn't discussed and we are very DADT. There are many reasons I didn't tell her which are personal to our circumstances. There are also many times I've wanted to tell her but our current outcome is probably the best that I could have hoped for. The reason I say that is because I know my wife more than anyone else does - and that includes anyone on this forum. Sorry to be harsh about it and I'm not singling you out Jane, but there is a general feeling on here that telling your SO is a 'must'. It isn't and only you can decide if your relationship can cope with what is almost certainly going to be a change in direction for you both.
I believe that's a fair statement, but we should recognize that a secret like that, if it does come to light outside the context of a proactive disclosure ("Honey, we need to talk about something..."), it is likely to be even more traumatic or destructive. For that reason, I would always suggest early disclosure, even if, like many of us, it has only become a thing after many years in the relationship. In other words, I believe that honesty is the better bet, but a gamble it will always be.
Reading this thread, it's not that I have anything to chip in, I just wanted to say that I feel sorry for everyone of you who has had such a bad experience telling your wifes.
I can't even imagine how you must have felt hurt when she said that... I'm really sorry for that.
My opinion is that the keys are 1) whether how much do you think your wife loves in your personality, not your physical attractiveness; Basically how close you and your wife are doing a lot of things together. And 2) when you disclose CDing, you need to show total honesty and tell her the reasons why you're so afraid of telling this to your wife earlier (mostly we're all scared of SO not able to accept this) so she understands from your perspective, then make an apology to her for having kept secret for so long and show how much you love her back regardless of your CDing hobby so that your wife knows everything's still the same. Basically be considerate of your wife feeling, and also let your wife knows your suffering feeling in the past too so she can connect to your sadness and could sympathize with you. (It may sound like an excuse but I think it's only fair for both you and your wife to have to be considerate with each other. If your wife is not considerate about your feeling then I think she's not a good wife for you to be honest.)
I honestly don't know what I would do if I start CDing after the marriage. But because from reading many opinions here, I had come to my own conclusion that it's for the best of me and my GF to talk about this before the marriage. When I decided to tell my GF I knew that my GF would likely be able to accept me for who I truly am because she's not really attracted to just my physical appearance but my personality too. We are so close that we do almost everything together like best friends. I knew how much we love each other and I assumed she know too and that's the whole reason I was betting on telling her my CDing. It's like a last trial test for our relationship to test how strong our loves are (and it ends well).
Just my 2 cents
- Bonnie
Jane firstly as others have said for most of us things change when I got married I did not have Becky, i did not feel any strong urges to dress etc... the fact that I had occasionally put on an item of female clothing was of little relevance at that time. Things changed almost 20 years after marriage, suddenly telling isn't THAT simple.
Secondly as you put it so well, to you and your wife CLEARLY total openness and honesty is paramount. For other couples perhaps that is less important. Perhaps respect of the others feelings ranks higher than openness for some and perhaps sparing her the pain of knowing something that will upset her for little gain is more important.
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Kelly, surely it depends on each couple's unique dynamic? Perhaps for some having 30 years of blissful ignorance followed by the trauma of discovery is a better option than a lifetime of disappointment? Not saying either is better I am saying not everyone is the same.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
Hi Becky, I can SOOOoo empathise with you on this, I'm in exactly the same situation, I outlined this in a previous post earlier this year.
Hope all goes well for you
Hugs
Abbey x
OMG!! Owning my femininity .... and I LOVE it!
Yes, but... This assumes that honesty will result in "thirty years of disappointment". As I said, it's a gamble. For me, knowing who I was made sharing it with my then-new girlfriend, as soon as things turned serious, an easy choice. Not easy to actually say, OMG no, but clearly the only way to go. If Kelly had come along only last year, the calculus would be substantially different.
kelly, I don't assume "30 years of disappointment" I know. When you spend your life with someone you get to know them pretty well and you can be fairly confident of knowing what their response will be to this kind of thing.
Telling a girlfriend at the get go no matter how much you may love them is a low risk option, what is the worst thing that can happen? they dump you. When this kind of feelings develop later and you have vested years into a marriage and children etc etc the stakes are a LOT higher and a LOT more caution is required as the worst case scenario is a lot worse.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
This is part of what I have been saying. I am just adding that in such a scenario, one must factor in the delta between damage done by "Honey, we need to talk about something," and an inadvertent discovery.
There is also the direct relationship between taking risks and the likelihood of being discovered. I know of at least 2 girls who took some serious risks and of course got caught. On reflection both actually outed themselves.
Easy to say, but I take very few risks and as such i believe the chances of an inadvertent discovery are low. Of couse there is always a chance like any risk reward scenario.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
Becky- please clarify something,
Are you Loking for advice on how or should, you tell your wife, or justification for hiding it from her?
Good question Jane, neither, let me explain...
I posted the OP to get some good discussion going that is clearly on a pretty relevant topic. I have been at this 'game' so to speak for a long time, read a lot of books and articles and spoken to many many others in our world and spent countless hours thinking about my life with regards to gender. I was hoping (and got) a whole range of opinions and we generated some great conversations.
I am very comfortable with my decision to date and do not need to justify it to anyone. No one knows my relationship with my wife better than I do, particularly people on an internet forum who have never met us. I posted my story knowing some would judge me and I am perfectly ok with that.
I like to think of myself as an intelligent thinking person and as such was very interested in hearing other people's views and of course some of the posts made me think and challenged my thoughts on the topic, which is again part of why i posted in the first place.
I may be wrong but I am feeling a bit of negativity from you about my decision based on your various posts in this thread. Clearly to you honesty is a bedrock of your marriage (as you said you actually put it in your vows) and clearly that is what is important to you and your wife. But please don't judge my marriage by your standards, I put my wife's happiness ABOVE honesty for the sake of being honest.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
Thank you for clarifying your op for me
If by negativity you mean I disagree with you (or anyone's) decision to keep it from there spouse, then you are correct, I do not agree with that decision, but that's your decision to make not mine. I do not judge you or anyone or their relationships, because I am not perfect nor is my marriage and I don't want people judging me or my marriage. You wanted a discussion, and I gave my opinion based on my values, and that is all. If I came across any other way I apologize as that was not my intention. I was raised that, it is better to be upset with the truth, than to be made happy with a lie. I know that not everyone agrees with that and that is ok, that is what makes for a great discussion
Jane, all cool luckily we are all different, the world would be very boring if we were all the same. I think I may have mentioned earlier in the thread that my wife has actually said that she does not see why in a healthy marriage either party can have some secrets. Naturally she is not talking about affairs or anything that breaks the marriage vows but she (as do i) do believe that somethings are best left unsaid.
Now of course that opens me up to the charge that Becky is highly relevant and therefore is not in the category of a secret, which whilst is a valid point I am of the view that whilst Becky is of course highly relevant to me, sharing that information will not enhance my wife's life one iota.
I also for the record want to add that I am not saying I will never tell my wife, I am saying that I won't tell my wife unless my 'T' feelings change.
Last edited by Becky Blue; 12-04-2016 at 09:52 PM.
A.K.A Rebecca & Bec
Jane,
As others have said it just isn't as easy as that, it's not making excuses we all have different circumstances !
I feel it's wrong to brow beat other CDers with the honesty issue, it nearly cost me my life so piling on the guilt over something we can't change inside is not right.
I've also made the point before that our partners haven't always been totally honest with us, I'm not saying it's a tit for tat argument . When your wife /partner says they just want the man she married sometimes we may have to bite our tongue but also may like the woman we married , I appreciate to say that is going to hurt her more , so we allow ourselves to be treated like punch bags . Entering marriage shouldn't mean giving up our rights .
I read somewhere that if you* make decisions by flipping a coin an odd number of times and you don't like the outcome, you wanted the other option to happen in your conscious. This can likely lead to you creating extra rounds or back-up steps that will either cancel out the outcome and make you flip again or be 'extra' unlikely to follow the outcome's decision.
- Even when we put our minds to doing something that we deem 'scary' the flight mode behavior can take over in multiple ways by simply having us nervously avoid the person to us sitting down with them to watch tv which we usually never do and then say nothing anyways. And we regret opening our mouths in random intervals, like we were holding our breathe the whole time, to eventually not say anything. --- or at least that has been me a few times.
While chatting with us to help/distract/delay you from this decision I would recommend coming up with two similar situations about other things. (for example your predicament is whether you should say more to your wife considering you told/mentioned her stuff from your original post. Situation 1) a man's family is starving, should he steal bread, even though it is wrong? Situation 2) A catholic man is dying and if he wants to get into heaven he must confess his sins and be forgiven, but he is a paralyzed john doe victim with no access to communicate to others (and it's ridiculous but he can't get forgiveness without actually talking with a priest supposedly). Withholding any recovery can he get into heaven? WITH THESE cliche... and stupid examples, you could work with each one on the ups/downs/grey areas on the answer. The closer you get to a finite answer with every possibility the more clear your reasoning with telling your wife should be.)
----- I just thought of calculus and taking the limit to find out of the answer converges or diverges <---- Ex. Taking the limit as n goes from 1 to infinity of the equation (23n^3+2n^2+1)/(4n^3) = 23/4, eventually you would find that out through math. You went through infinite reasoning and solutions to come to a simple conclusion of 23/4 or for your 'solution' it would become either yes I should tell her fully or no I should keep it hidden (there is also conditional convergence or absolute (like i should tell her some or I should tell her all)).
My suggestions here are brow beating similarly hard questions and through them coming up with hopefully a finite solution instead of spinning in circles. They could also make your wiser in the end too with all the critical thinking you were doing.
Last edited by EffyJaspers; 12-05-2016 at 04:03 AM. Reason: spelling errors
I gave my opinion and that is all maybe you should read my reply #97.
I am not piling on guilt, if you feel guilty that is on you not me.
Also what "rights" are you referring to
Jane,
Maybe you should have made it clear that your reply fitted your personal circumstances.
I used the word right to mean it was incorrect not a violation of someone's rights.
As for your statement about being forthright with the truth and not misleading someone with a lie, you can tell the truth with tact and not with a sledghammer !
Yes it can be a difficult decision at times, you can hurt someone by not teling them something and you still hurt them by doing so. Speaking from my own personal situation but I'm sure others may agree , I know I'm in a no win situation . If I hadn't come out to my wife at all and the first thing to find out was I am going out to meet others socially dressed as a woman, I'm sure it would have given her a heart attack. At the same time because of DADT I can only go so far with the truth I guess that's the situation Becky is in.
Becky,
Just to remind me does your wife know nothing of your dressing or are you in a DADT situation ? I ask because does she have some of the truth but you are withholding details that you feel will upset her too much ?
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