Honesty is the best policy and sometimes creates a mess...if you have hope to offer

[St. Eve]

Morning y'all

Ok, so after 35 years of 99.8% totally secret CDing and then 6 years of abstinence, I have been coming out...

My SO and I made agreements with a therapist that included me buying clothes and having up to three days a month for full CD time as long as she never saw the clothes and had no connection with my CD experiences. We agreed it was time for me to really get to know who I am and come to peace with it. This is supposed to be my first month (August) even though we could only find one day on the schedule...I am scheduled for that day in a couple of weeks.

So, off I go buying clothes last week. I begin to underdress, and as I share the experiences here and with close friends and my therapist (because of my commitment to no more secrets) I get the feedback from you all and my therapist that I need to talk to my SO about it.

I tend to be very therapy compliant, so when my therapist tells me how important it is to have the conversation, I go right home after therapy and have the conversation: I ask for clarification of boundaries - "if I am going to keep you out of the loop on my dressing, do you need it to be ONLY on the agreed days (this month the agreed day,) or, as long as it is away from you, are you ok with other times or places or underdressing."

This conversation turns into a total huge mess. I feel so much compassion for my SO - I am checking things off my bucket list, she is feeling huge amounts of fear, confusion, grief and sadness.....I tell her I do not need any answers, only that she consider the questions with her therapists support and get back to me.....

One thing positive that came out of the conversation: in the midst of the pain, she asked me for the website that offers support for spouses!! I showed her the spouses support threads here and I have my fingers crossed she will want to share in this community and get support.

I am so glad for y'all, I know I need to go SLOW and to keep everything above board. It is just damn hard right now.....
I feel like some of the bondage of decades of secrecy and shame is breaking free inside me and my SO feels like decades of future bondage are wrapping themselves around her. She feels tons of guilt and shame for not being as open and flexible about my expression of life as she wants to be. AND she has to be in her truth and I WANT her to be in her truth as much as I want to be in mine - just damn hard when our truths are so far apart....



Thanks for listening, I have to keep sharing about it or I will close back up, or, even worse, go back to entitled, secretly go back to "secretly do what ever the hell I damn want" mode. There has got to be a middle. If you have found some sort of middle, please feel free to post experience, strength and hope....

Peace
St. Eve

[BLUE ORCHID]

Hi St. Eve, I hope that it works out for both of you.:daydreaming:

Now that you are out to your:love:wife the ball is in her court now
go slow and just don't overwhelm her with this program.:hugs:

[kinkyboots]

Since i came out to my wife I've tried to put the gene back in the bottle twice out of guilt. And neither time resulted into anything good.
before letting my wife know it was always fear of discovery that kept my other side locked up, but afterwards fear of rejection messed me up, so i would stop communicating about CDing try to mentality box up the girl side and just be a man. Oh boy, don't do that. Two breakdowns later it still feels raw thinking about it.
one of the easiest ways I've kept conversations going is with humor, like when my wife is browsing clothes on eBay, i wait until she drinking some tea and look over her shoulder and say i wouldn't be caught dead in that. I usually get a good reaction.
another way is to actually show some interest in her shopping, my wife loves the fact that i actually have an opinion on different fashions now.
Or treat her to some home spa. Do her nails (fun!) And hair. After a while she might be okay in letting you try makeup on her.
true non of this stuff is you dressing, but it makes her feel better about this side of you; bridging some of the gap and keeping communication lines open.

[kimdl93]

Being therapy compliant is a good thing. But I rather doubt that your therapist would have advised quite the same approach to continuing a constructive dialogue with your wife. Next therapy session, ask you therapist to help you work on more effective communications skills.

[Dana44]

St.eve, Take it slow and be very complementary for her. My SO appreciates complements and it really helps. Make her feel special and communicate with her. The fact that it is out of the bag. She is deeply thinking. Communication is the most important right now and do complement her a lot.

[Teresa]

St.Eve,
This all sounds so familiar, you get to the point where whatever you do isn't the right thing , once your partner has built that wall there's not much that will shift it !

I went for general counselling the more I opened up and talked the bigger the chasm became with my wife , as she wouldn't attend joint therapy it became more difficult not to make her out to be the one causing the problems. It wasn't my intention, she told me it's now my problem to sort out but it's very difficult when you're still in DADT situation .
Your therapist tried to get you to discuss boundaries , to have certain days set aside but that's still onesided , it's not a good feeling that your wife has to find an excuse to vacate the house and feel uneasy about coming back through her own front door ! These are all short term compromises part of you has a need that you can do nothing about and yet you have to treat it as if it's something you can turn off and on like a tap, it doesn't work like that. My CDing feelings are with me 24/7 I've spent most of my life trying to suppress them to try and please everyone else after all these years it's mentally crippling me.
I'm about to start gender counselling in the hope that I can get some answers to the feelings that just won't go away, I would like to think in the process I can openly discuss the the outcome, the truth has to be accepted at some point by everyone, boundaries may not be much help to me in that case .

[sometimes_miss]

One thing that I have to warn you about, is that there are a number of support groups out there for SO's of crossdressers. And some of them have numerous ex wives who will tell your wife the worst possible scenario, and how it's inevitable that you will transition, that you are just fooling yourself, etc. etc. etc.. Make sure that your wife writes down her concerns and brings it up with your therapist. Otherwise you may be in for a never ending nightmare. Been there, done that, got the divorce decree to prove it.

[St. Eve]

Hi Y'all

Thanks so much for the support and the critical feedback and the warnings and the affirmation. I love community because it is ALL available.
I certainly know I am not alone and that is the most important thing!!

The outcome....we had a very good negotiation, truth telling session that ended with a connected hug. I learned a few years ago that in true negotiation with a spouse, both people walk away with an "I can live with that attitude." If one walks away happy and one doesn't, it means the negotiation was skewed to one side and not fair. If both walk away happy, it wasn't really negotiating, it was just a discussion about flexible positions. If both walk away angry, then the negotiation was a failure.....

So, here is what I walked away with. New boundary: when in her presence I will not be wearing anything but male clothes. When not in her presence, I choose what makes me most happy. We both can live with that. We agreed to another check in on Sept 1 to see how this agreement is working.

I was able to hear her - that she does not trust women and that her trusted husband may be becoming a woman. She was able to hear me, when I wear women's clothes - even if they are under my drab clothes and no one sees them but me, I feel a sense of internal affirmation of my deep feminine that has always been there. Like I am somehow showing up for all of my being in a way I have not found before.....

That is what I have for now. I retire for the evening with some peace and hope. Also with deep compassion for what she is going through.....

Peace
St. Eve

I feel great relief and hope in the possibility