.. deep down in their hearts?
I "get" that for many women, a partner's desire to crossdress can be very upsetting. Their rigid socialization as to what male and female roles "should" be, perhaps strongly-held, fundamentalist religious beliefs, the Pandora's Box of trust issues concerning other areas that gets opened up when the CDer finally reveals himself after many years - or even worse, when the wife or SO stumbles onto that fact accidentally - often makes it very hard for them to accept that side of us.
And so begins the long descent into DADT for those couples who still want to keep the marriage or relationship intact, despite the fact that the wives or SO's prefer to dwell on the banks of "de-Nile" after the big reveal...
But it occurs to me that this unyielding opposition to our crossdressing - especially if it means never talking about it again, forcing us underground, making us hide our female clothes from their eyes, refusing to meet the "other girl" or even seeing pictures of her to validate her existence - all of these things must be indicative of more deep-seated issues.
To put it bluntly, these wives and SO's must be control freaks at heart.
My wife prides herself in being assertive, opinionated, and no-body's fool. But she is also very rigid in many other aspects of her life, is a stickler for "following the rules", and has considerable disdain for others who are more free-spirited and willing to follow their hearts and be themselves regardless of what others might think (such as crossdressers - no surprise there). In her mind, these types of people are self-indulgent slackers who need a dose of tough love to get them back onto the straight and narrow. And of course, as she gets older, my wife gets more and more set in her ways...
I, on the other hand, have begun to embrace "Leslie" fully in the last few years and have allowed her to blossom while still trying to adhere as much as possible to my wife's DADT strictures as a way of preserving domestic harmony. And so, we have a classic case of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, and the outcome is often not pretty.
So my question to the other ladies here on this forum who are laboring under similar circumstances comes down to:
"Are your wives and SO's equally controlling in all other aspects of their (and your) lives, and has their strong aversion to your crossdressing less to to with that activity itself, and more to do with exercising their control over something that they simply do not agree with, and that their opinions must prevail at all costs?"
It would be interesting to see how my situation (perception?) compares with that of others here...