Wife wants out...

[NicoleWest37]

My wife wants out now after 26 years! I understand her feelings in part but really think that to blame me and crossdressing at this point is unfair! She did not know when we married cause I like a lot thought that love would cure my crossdressing but of course it did not and my wife found me crossdressing 3 months into our marraige. Since that time every few years we have a big blow up and I tell her I'm sorry but this is who I am and it does not change and we have maintained a dadt policy which I'm fine with. We will be fine for a period and then she gets angry and starts blaming me for her misery. Well now we are living apart only because of our work location and having two separate homes and mortgages. Now she told me she wants out and blames me and crossdressing. My question is when I've told her for twenty plus years that this is who I am and it is not something I can change and she has chosen to stay for all these years why does she get to blame me for ruining our marriage ? Doesn't staying and choosing to stay in someway equal consent? She may not have liked her choices and may be unhappy with her choice but can I be held accountable because she choose to stay knowing what and who I am for as I mentioned 20 plus years!

[LadyPilot]

I feel for you Nicole. I guess the main question is "are you happy", I was in a 17+ year marriage that in hindsight I felt was loveless the whole time. When I was miserable dressing was the only thing that made me happy. Divorce sucks whether you been married 26 minutes or 26 years. You both deserve to be happy. My ex has made me very cynical so I do apologize if I am stepping out of bounds. If you and your wife really wants things to work out then you both will have to go out of your way to make it happen. If it is one-sided then it is really hard to fix. No matter what life is to short to be unhappy. Hugs.

[Jenniferathome]

No one ends a marriage over cross dressing alone. It serves a convenient excuse but clearly your marriage is not on solid footing. Is your marriage worth fighting for? If yes, see a therapist, together.

[Stephanie47]

I suspect there may be more than cross dressing as the cause of marital breakup. Living physically apart; emotionally apart; two houses with mortgages; two jobs... What do you and her have in common now? Cross dressing always seems like the convenient crutch when things go wrong. Fifty percent of first marriages fail. More than fifty percent of second marriages fail. And, there are many marriages that have failed except for the legal business to make it official. Not every guy is a cross dresser. Look deeper than cross dressing. You may find some other issues.

[DanaR]

I would agree that this seems like a convenient excuse. You might have to some deep discussions to figure out what the real problem might be.

[jillleanne]

Have you asked her the same questions yet? Time to sit with her, alone, and start talking. A DADT relationship works completely against the principles of a truly great loving relationship that is based on open communication and trust. I do hope you both can resolve this as best possible for both of you to achieve happiness in your lives. No one should be expected to live in a relationship without happiness.

[Meghan]

I am sorry she is hurting you like this. She sounds like a hypocrite to me.
I know I sound like a broken record (to some on here that have read my posts), but perhaps 'her' misery is caused from Peri-MEANO-pause?

I admit I have caused many of our problems because of MY misery from this "I didn't ask for this" HELL.

I wish you the best.

Hugs,
Snow

Snow,

My wife is also going through Peri, it's intense and even though I think I am prepared for everything, it can still get dicey sometimes. She rapid cycles and it's hard to determine the rules of engagement in the middle of an incident. However, we both know and discuss these things before they happen, which helps prepare us both to ride out the Peri events.

We both do everything to remember these events will too shall pass, and I try my best not to do anything to add intensity to the situations, and that usually gets us through.

Meghan

[Kathy4ever]

I'm with the thinking it is the excuse she wants to use. It is easier that way.You did say she didn't like you crossdressing so maybe she finally said enough is enough. Remember that most people want admit it is they have a fault but have to blame others for their unhappiness.

[Kate Simmons]

It's always much easier to blame someone else for things that happen. I have been blamed for "breaking up" my family(because of CDing) for years now but it takes two to "tango". What most people don't realize until it's too late is that things could be much worse, which in many cases, they end up being when a partner chooses to bail.:)

[Kaz]

26 years is not an untypical time for a split anyway... at least in the UK. Do you have kids? Are they now grown up and how would this affect them? I suspect that this is a reason to express what she wants for other reasons... 26 years is a long time. Some people want to do something different in their 'third age'. My wife has discussed this a lot. She keeps saying she would like her own place and her own life (our kids have now technically left home - although the youngest is back for a (hopefully) short while). She still wants to be close friends and we have the family to share - she just wants her own life, and who could begrudge her that?

She started talking like this some years ago and we are still living together...

[NicoleWest37]

We do have two kids she said the only reason she stayed was for the kids. But crossdressing is an easy thing to point to when you simply want out. She blames me for choosing to crossdress and that this is just a consequence of my choice to do so. Again I never let her see this side of me and she knows little about me as Nicole other than the cloths she has seen or other female stuff in the house ( I.e. soaps, lotions and shaving items) otherwise I present a typical male persona. I know she does not like it and it may be she finally had enough but to say you stayed for the kids is simply untrue. We would have done the kids a favor by splitting a long time ago and not drag them through our misery! My wife stayed because it was her best choice at the time she made choices to keep staying in the relationship. My problem is at some point if you continue to stay knowing the situation how can you come back and say I'm leaving because you did what you said you would do? Leaving three months into a relationship because you found out that your husband is a crossdresser is understandable, but not after investing 26 years of knowing full well who and what your husband is! I agree with the idea that it's easy to point a finger at me and say I'm the reason but I was just needing to hear from others who are going through or have been through a similar situation.

[ElleduSud]

No one ends a marriage over cross dressing alone.

Do you have statistics to support this? If so, please share your reference materials.

I am confident that many relationships end for no other reason than cross dressing. If that wasn't a genuine risk, then we wouldn't have wives learning of this secret behavior 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20+ years AFTER the marriage. We wouldn't see so many posts from young singles asking how to find a woman who will participate in their crossdressing. We wouldn't have so many genetic women join this forum as SOs of a MTF, to see that they quit posting after 25-30 threads, and when you search for their last post it is inevitably "I can't take this anymore".

"If gender - whether it be expression, role or full identity - was not such an all encompassing definition of exactly who we are, then the incongruence of mis-matched physical body and internal identity would not create the highest suicide rates of studied disorders." That is not a one-way street. When you pop out of the closet, dressed to the nines, in wig, makeup, breast forms and waist cincher it is equally difficult for your SO to live with the incongruence of your appearance and behavior as a woman when the gender that she fell in love with was a man.

Maybe, now that the wife of the OP no longer has to live with all the background noise of hidden crossdressing, she realizes how much more at peace she feels. And she has finally accepted his crossdressing, meaning that she acknowledges that he dresses up in women's clothes and tries to act like a woman and runs around in public trying get people to treat him like a woman. And she accepts that this behavior, which causes her so much sadness, confusion, shame and pain, is never going to end. And she makes what, in the end, turns out to be a much easier decision than she had feared, for the past 20 years, to end the marriage.

She wants the peace more than she wants the constant incongruence.

[Raychel]

I think it is safe to say that the crossdressing is not the real issue here. There is no way she would have stuck around for 26 years and dealt with it if it was that much of a deal breaker.
I am sure that in the end you will find out that there was other things going thru her mind

I hope all works out well for you. :hugs:

[mikiSJ]

I wish you well Nicole. I agree with most above who say the CDing issue was maybe the easy way to say "I want out!", and it also appears she has made the decision to go.

Protect yourself! Emotionally and financially.

[Cheryl T]

It might just be easier for her to use this as the reason rather than face the things that are really at the core of her disenchantment.

[MsRenee]

I agree with most of the girls here. Theres has to be another reason for her wanting to leave. It just cant be because you dress hun,that sounds like a lame excuse on her side. Id try and maybe sit down with a counselor and try and find out the real reason behind her choice.Like they say the truth shall set you free. I know I tried to stop long ago but found out it put me down not being able to dress and I know how you felt about stopping for her love. Its a compromise on dressing as I accept you and you accept me.I hope everything works out for you girl and wish you two the best life has to offer you both.
Renee

[kimdl93]

I would stop feeling guilty after all these years. Sometimes relationships change. She may feel the need to affix blame, thereby relieving her of responsibility. Let her out on whatever terms work best for you..don't give away the farm out of misplaced guilt. Then move on to better things.

[Angela Campbell]

This is not a sudden thing at all. Two houses and two mortgages, jobs far apart....the two of you have been growing apart for a while and these things are the symptom of that. You are not living apart because you have two houses and jobs far apart, you have the two houses and jobs far apart because you do not have a close marriage. My wife told me last summer she was thinking about getting an apartment and I told her if that is what she wants I would help her, and I did. Within a week of her moving out I filed for a divorce. We are still friends but there is no union there to save.

My first marriage lasted over 20 years. It is funny but after 20 years we were not the same two people we were when we got married. With time people change and sometimes it is difficult to let go.

[TxKimberly]

Afraid that I can't offer an objective reply to this since I am in a similar position myself as far as my wife's attitude about me. I told her about two weeks after we were married (25 years ago), and there have been countless times in the last few years when she has made it clear that every thing she is unhappy about is my fault.
Supposedly she loved camping and hiking before we were married, and it is all my fault that she hasn't done either in 20 years.
It is also my fault that she has no friends. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that she chooses to spend her entire day sitting at the PC surfing the WWW and never leaves the house to do anything where she might actually have the chance to meet people.
Did I mention that I can offer an objective reply? Sigh . . .

[Foxglove]

I am confident that many relationships end for no other reason than cross dressing.

I'd go along with this. I see no reason to believe that no relationship would end over CDing alone. If we're asked to believe that none ever do, I'd want to see some data on that.


Maybe, now that the wife of the OP no longer has to live with all the background noise of hidden crossdressing, she realizes how much more at peace she feels. And she has finally accepted his crossdressing, meaning that she acknowledges that he dresses up in women's clothes and tries to act like a woman and runs around in public trying get people to treat him like a woman. And she accepts that this behavior, which causes her so much sadness, confusion, shame and pain, is never going to end. And she makes what, in the end, turns out to be a much easier decision than she had feared, for the past 20 years, to end the marriage.

She wants the peace more than she wants the constant incongruence.

I'd also go along with this as a possibility. For 26 years she had reasons to put up with Nicole's CDing. Now those reasons are gone, so she wants out. For me, that's a perfectly plausible scenario.

I have to admit I'm a bit baffled as to how others on this thread can assert that the woman must have other reasons for wanting out of the marriage. I myself would find it hard to read the mind of someone I'd never even met.

What's the motive for asserting that she must have other reasons than Nicole's CDing? Is that a way of exonerating Nicole--by asserting that her CDing had nothing to do with it?

Assume that what the wife is saying is true--that Nicole's CDing has everything to do with it. Does that mean Nicole is to blame? No. If you're trans, you're trans, and nobody can tell you to stop being trans any more than they can tell a woman to stop being a woman or tell a man to stop being a man. Nicole's not at fault for being trans. So assume the wife is being upfront about this: there's still no blame attaching to Nicole.

[Sally24]

If she knew within months then you are off the proverbial hook. Unless you already had kids on the way at that point, she was free to leave. Anything beyond that was her choice. I find that frequently women will voice a problem but their true issue is with something else. I just think she is unhappy and thinks that this will make things instantly better. We all know that one issue problems are frequently about MANY things. If your discussions with her don't offer anything hopeful then it's my guess that she isn't interested in saving the marriage.

[Lorileah]

My question is ... why does she get to blame me for ruining our marriage ?

She doesn't get to, she just did it because she thinks she needs to blame you for something. It is likely it is something with her over something with you but she cannot blame herself, after all she probably believes that if you had done everything she ever wanted, everything would be rainbows and unicorns. You cannot be responsible for her happiness no more than she can be for yours. If she decides she is unhappy, you cannot do any thing but sit back and watch her self destruct. Your other option is to self destruct with her then there will be two unhappy people in the world. A wise woman once told me "Love don't leave". And that is true. If she wants out, and you don't think there is love anymore, let her go.
Doesn't staying and choosing to stay in someway equal consent? Sort of like if your neighbor uses your property to get to their backyard for 20 years they get the easement? No, you knew she didn't like it from the start. That is why DADT doesn't work, it is just a scab that she can open over and over and then it never heals.
She may not have liked her choices and may be unhappy with her choice but can I be held accountable because she choose to stay knowing what and who I am for as I mentioned 20 plus years! No, you cannot be responsible for her choices. She is theoretically an adult and she has free will so she chose to be miserable. This is very similar to what I say for telling early except it is you who has the investment here and she is destroying it. You can do no more than be upfront early. Then as I say, she got to make her choice. She chose to stay. Why? Who knows? But my far away guess is she has issues with her own self confidence.

One more piece of unsolicited advice. If she leaves, don't take her back. It will just happen over and over and over. That doesn't mean you cannot be compassionate, just remember she will break your heart again and it will hurt just as bad the next time. It seems time to part ways, for at least YOUR sanity

[MssHyde]

I'm sorry for you. i went through something very similar with my first wife. 20 years of marriage.

in court and to the kids she made me sound like a monster. I had a heart attack from the stress and hurt from it all.

you need to take care of you! then take care of the details

[Stephanie47]

I will agree with Elle to the extent one exception negates the general rule. That's to say, of course there are women who will bail as the knowledge the husband cross dresses. She may not have even seen him attired. Just the knowledge he engages in this "perversion," in her mind. Some women for religious reasons/scripture or strict adherence to societal norms and customs cannot tolerate cross dressing.

How many women tolerate sexual infidelity in their marriage? How many women toss their husbands when the first affair becomes known? The second? The third? I would conjecture a wife will find sexual infidelity more 'normal' than cross dressing.

Nicole has posted, in my opinion, it is not truly a DADT situation. If she see the constant reminders of his cross dressing, e.g., shaving and lotions in the bathroom, clothing, etc, is it really DADT? Yes, if she now lives in a "cross dressing free zone" ,she may feel general relief. Of course, if the wife is concerned about a cross dresser's out of the home activities, exposing her to the ridicule of violation of societal norms, then that is an issue.

It would appear ground rules were not established in the beginning. If one truly knows their spouse and acknowledges her non acceptance of his cross dressing, then the rules really do not have to be etched in stone. After many years of marriage I know what my wife will 'tolerate' or 'accept.' She knows I cross dress in her absence during the day. I do not leave any vestige of my cross dressing out to remind her. I do not shave my legs. I do not leave (or have) body lotions. On weekends I truly look like a male who needs a makeover, i.e., hosed down, need of a shave, and wardrobe change.

My wife knows my positive attributes and concern for her outweigh any concerns for cross dressing.


No one ends a marriage over cross dressing alone.

In my case I think my wife and I are incapable of living apart, let alone separate/divorce due to cross dressing. I think there is an issue of a failure to establish acceptable boundaries in this relationship.

I've seen women dumped their husbands because they paid more attention to their hunting dogs, logging truck, muscle car, fishing, sports' buddies, than the women they married. A woman is not an item of sexual convenience. She is a partner in life.

[RADER]

Nicole;
I wish you well, but please get a good Lawyer. She is using Cross Dressing as a scape goat.
It is an easy issue to hang all the laundry on to get what she wants in the divorce settlement.
Please get a good lawyer, he should be able to turn her excuse against her, seeing that she
knew about your dressing for a very long time.
Wishing you all the best; I have been there my self with my first wife.
Rader

[Jenniferathome]

No one ends a marriage over cross dressing alone. It serves a convenient excuse but clearly your marriage is not on solid footing. Is your marriage worth fighting for? If yes, see a therapist, together.

Do you have statistics to support this? If so, please share your reference materials.

Of course there are no statistics on this. And yet, here is how I KNOW this to be true. You want to believe that a marriage, perfect in all ways, except this one aspect, is cast aside for only this. If so, how strong was the foundation to begin with? A marriage can only be weak if there are other issues plaguing it or if it never had solid foundation to begin with. It is really that simple.

[chrismy]

No one ends a marriage over cross dressing alone. It serves a convenient excuse but clearly your marriage is not on solid footing. Is your marriage worth fighting for? If yes, see a therapist, together.

simplistic platitudes

[Kelly Smith]

Of course there are no statistics on this. And yet, here is how I KNOW this to be true. You want to believe that a marriage, perfect in all ways, except this one aspect, is cast aside for only this. If so, how strong was the foundation to begin with? A marriage can only be weak if there are other issues plaguing it or if it never had solid foundation to begin with. It is really that simple.


Sensible insight.

[cindy777]

Very sorry to hear about you and your wife, it seems that your crossdressing may have bothered her, but using this as the main reason she wants out seems a little misplaced. Having dressed in front of my wife for over 16 years, she never supported it but tolerated it and when she found a photo of me on the computer was the last straw and she flipped. She was afraid our daughters would see the picture of me dressed like a woman. BTW my make up skills have greatly improved.
Seriously thought she wanted a divorce when she found this picture of me, she does not like me crossdressing but this is only one part of me as with you. My wife and I do love and like each other and as eveyone else we have our ups and downs, as well as, both our outlaws cause us a little grief, but that is life.
As many of us on this site live thru this life with many similar situations that most people don't deal with it, my heart goes out to you and your wife. After you spend that much time together there are so many strong emotionaly charged topics that some times get blown out of proportion.
What ever the result of the situation you presently find yourself in, be sure to take care of yourself, do not beat yourself up with guilt and most importantly try to be happy in your own way.

Hugs
Cindy

[Foxglove]

Of course there are no statistics on this. And yet, here is how I KNOW this to be true.

Jennifer, sorry, but if you have no evidence, you have no KNOWLEDGE. You have a BELIEF, which is a very different thing. It's like saying, "I can't prove that I have a eternal soul, but I KNOW I do." If you know something is true, you can show that it's true.


You want to believe that a marriage, perfect in all ways, except this one aspect, is cast aside for only this. If so, how strong was the foundation to begin with? A marriage can only be weak if there are other issues plaguing it or if it never had solid foundation to begin with. It is really that simple.

Here you're not demonstrating that something is true. You're demonstrating why you think it could be true. You're getting the cart before the horse. You should first show that something is true before you go explaining why it is. You can only say that "no marriage falls apart over CDing alone" when you have examined every marriage that's ever fallen apart and showed that in no case was CDing the reason for it. And that's a pretty tall order.

We need to remember that just because something seems logical doesn't mean that it's true. Human logic is often faulty.

The fact is that many transpeople lose family and friends over this one issue alone. Some people simply cannot endure TGism. They instinctively don't like it, and they make no effort to try and accept it. And there are SO's who simply cannot endure it. They don't want to be married to a man who CD's.

Whenever someone insists on believing something when they have no evidence, no solid reason to believe it, I start asking myself why they want to believe what they do. On this thread, people are trying to say that a marriage couldn't fall apart over CDing alone. Are we trying to exonerate ourselves? If the wife walks out, it can't be for the CDing alone. She must have other reasons that she doesn't want to admit. She's trying to use CDing as an excuse. She's not being honest. She's to blame for things that she doesn't want to own up to. Therefore, it isn't my fault.

We don't need this justification of ourselves. If a marriage falls apart over CDing alone, we're still not to blame. We are what we are. If a given woman can't accept that, then she can't accept it. And it doesn't necessarily mean that either party is at fault.

"Qui s'excuse, s'accuse": "He who defends himself, accuses himself." Let's stop defending ourselves on this issue. No defense is necessary.

Annabelle

[ReineD]

My question is when I've told her for twenty plus years that this is who I am and it is not something I can change and she has chosen to stay for all these years why does she get to blame me for ruining our marriage ?

DADT can mean many things. Did the two of you ever try to find a compromise, or did you tell her this is who you are and proceed to dress? When you told her this is who you are, did you try to find other resources to help her understand this? Did you try marital counseling, not to get her to be involved with the CDing, but to get her to understand more about your need to be gender non-conforming, or to work on both your communication styles?

What is so sad, yet unfortunately frequent, is a CDer who feels he must hide purchases, hide outings, dress in secret, so as to spare his non-accepting wife from grief. In the meantime she knows that he is hiding and she constructs all kinds of stories about it (he loves to CD more than he loves her, he has a fetish, he wants to be with men, etc), because they are not really talking about it. Or, he goes ahead and does what he wants, thinking it is his wife's job to come to terms with it by herself while she tells herself that he doesn't care how she feels. I don't know if this is your situation or not, but if you've lived like this for 20 years it is not surprising that your wife can no longer deal with it. The blowups every few years were a pretty strong indication of how she was feeling about it all along. She says it is because of the CDing but what she really means is that she can no longer live feeling so disconnected from her husband. And your current long-distance relationship is not helping matters, in fact, she may be relieved over not having to deal on a daily basis with the distance that she feels exists in your relationship. You thought the DADT was good. She obviously didn't feel this way even though she tried, by staying in the marriage all those years.

I don't know how to resolve the impasse that exists when a wife hates the idea that her husband CDs. The standard advice is that they should never lose sight of the fact that their relationship is the priority, they should each feel loved by the other above all else, they should recognize that they are on a different page but actively work towards a compromise that works for both of them, and they should talk, talk, talk, and then talk some more until each partner is fully at peace with where the other is at ... even if the CDing is not shared.

DADT is seldom a long-term solution that works, unless the husband has the full support of his wife, in other words she knows at the bottom of her heart that he needs to do this and she is willing to give him the time and space without judging him or building resentment, and without constructing her own stories about what it all means. This doesn't happen without a great deal of communication.

I think this is what Jennifer meant: there was a clear lack of communication in this marriage as is evidenced by the inevitable fallout (resentment and broken trust) over the DADT approach. Had there been clear and thorough communication from the beginning, and had you both fully realized your impasse earlier, you might have spared yourselves twenty odd years of unhappy marriage.

[Mollyanne]

Do you have statistics to support this? If so, please share your reference materials.

I am confident that many relationships end for no other reason than cross dressing. If that wasn't a genuine risk, then we wouldn't have wives learning of this secret behavior 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20+ years AFTER the marriage. We wouldn't see so many posts from young singles asking how to find a woman who will participate in their crossdressing. We wouldn't have so many genetic women join this forum as SOs of a MTF, to see that they quit posting after 25-30 threads, and when you search for their last post it is inevitably "I can't take this anymore".

"If gender - whether it be expression, role or full identity - was not such an all encompassing definition of exactly who we are, then the incongruence of mis-matched physical body and internal identity would not create the highest suicide rates of studied disorders." That is not a one-way street. When you pop out of the closet, dressed to the nines, in wig, makeup, breast forms and waist cincher it is equally difficult for your SO to live with the incongruence of your appearance and behavior as a woman when the gender that she fell in love with was a man.

Maybe, now that the wife of the OP no longer has to live with all the background noise of hidden crossdressing, she realizes how much more at peace she feels. And she has finally accepted his crossdressing, meaning that she acknowledges that he dresses up in women's clothes and tries to act like a woman and runs around in public trying get people to treat him like a woman. And she accepts that this behavior, which causes her so much sadness, confusion, shame and pain, is never going to end. And she makes what, in the end, turns out to be a much easier decision than she had feared, for the past 20 years, to end the marriage.

She wants the peace more than she wants the constant incongruence.

I'm going to inject my personal thoughts after reading and re-reading your answer, this retort of yours injects a clinical answer to a problem that may have or not have a definitive answer. You are assuming many things that also may not be true IE: coming out of the closet FULLY dressed and flaunting the fact that "you" are a woman and want to be treated as such. For many of us that is NOT the case. This syndrome of crossdressing is not something that is wanted or applied for, but it is something that we have to live with. To date, there is NO answer as to why we have it. You also have failed to mention that there are suicides by the crossdresser because they fell ashamed, rejected or that there is something "wrong" with them. Again, this is NOT the case but it is made to feel that the person is held responsible.
Should your "clinical" answer be backed up by published data, please allude to it.

Molly

PS: And yes, I crossdress!!!!!

[NicoleWest37]

Well Ladies I do appreciate all the imput on my situation and I know there are no simple answers. Comunication has been a problem, but you can't communicate with someone who will not open up. My wife has always internalized everything ever since her Dad died at age 11 and rarely will open up about her true emotions. Our dadt policy was not brokered or negotiated and no ground rules were set because she simply wouldn't discuss it. I am not one to get dressed and venture out and no one but me has ever known this side of me other than those here whom I seek out as confidants because you know and understand the situations I face. I can't tell you how much the Internet has helped me deal with the guilt and feelings of being all alone I had for so many years. I'm almost 50 now and I've been dressing since 4 or 5 or at least consumed with the thoughts of dressing. My wife found out about my dressing shortly after a game of dress up she initiated for fun! We did talk some about my feelings and needs to express this part of me and over the next few years I was able to explore this part of me somewhat openly with her consent. But then we had our first child and things changed and my wife began to become adament that crossdressing was wrong and I should quit and of course we all know you never quit you simply are forced to hide or repress those feelings and desires. So after a few slip ups and my wife found out I was still doing things pertaining to crossdressing she figured out I was not going to quit and so dadt became our unspoken policy. All of that happened in the first 5 years of marriage and since that time we do not discuss crossdressing other than when she and I will have a blow up and I tell her I'm sorry about the pain and tell her if I could change I would but that it will never go away! The best she could hope for is I could be better at hiding it. Now that may be painting the picture a little sqewed in her favor because I don't think it was that drastic on her intolerance because one year after a blowup and some more discussion she bought Nicole a Christmas present of make up and other girls items, and I have worn panties 24/7 and shaved my body completely for the last 15 years. I have a complete closet for Nicole and nothing but her stuff fills my dresser. So it is not like she has been totally intolerant of my dressing, but I know she wishes I didn't do it and that is why I never have let her see me completely dressed and other than seeing me in panties with my body shaved and painted toenails is as bad as it gets for her to have to see. I know that a lot of you have dealt with similar situations where you wife was semi tolerant to totally intolerant of your need to dress, so that is why I posted about my wife's sudden decision that enough is enough and wants out. Thanks for the imput!