danniUK
01-27-2025, 02:57 PM
Apologies, this will be a long post!
I want to say thank you to everyone who posts regularly here on this site. This week marks a year since I joined, when I discovered a community of wonderful people who couldn't have been more welcoming, after I'd spent a few months "alone" feeling like I was some kind of freak.
When I joined I hadn't long told my wife that the bedroom croasdressing that she's always been aware of had become something more, or maybe had always been something more and I'd spent decades trying to suppress it, to deny it was anything more than just "sex with stockings". It'd been a revelation, one of those "how did I not see it until now?" moments, that dressing was something that just made me deeply happy.
I'd just bought my very first dress and "real" bra (from a proper online shop that sells actual bras and not some ?3 pretend piece of fabric from ebay), having spent years accumulating only cheap underwear in my "dressing up box" in the wardrobe.
I've loved talking to you girls, people just like me in so many ways. I was surprised to discover that so many of us became CDers by the same path - dressing in the bedroom which became more that just that. Surprised to discover the vast majority of us are straight (I'd assumed a lot would be bisexual like me). And was surprised to discover just how much I wanted to join in with this community I'd found.
I'd started by being terrified of being "found out", though I really wanted a profile picture that was "me" - so I dressed in the newest additions to my wardrobe: leggins, a tight top and a simple bolero, and took some pictures. Of course at this point I knew nothing about the application of makeup and despite owning a wig that I bought 10 years earlier with my wife "just for fun" I didn't have decent hair. It was easy for me to combine this with my fear of being caught and use one of those "face apps" to feminise my appearance and let me create a real-looking avatar pic.
I was thrilled, it was "me" although completely hidden. The joy in looking at the picture seemed to errode my fears, and as time went on I started to fear less. I took more pictures just for my own fun. I'd bought some basic makeup and started experimenting with the help of YouTube videos, and I was more and more pleased with the results. I actually looked feminine! And it gave me such a warm feeling inside.
So I finally felt brave enough to post a real pic to the forum, dressed with makeup and a new wig. Well, posted to the "GM Forum" section which has restricted membership and therefore fewer eyes on me - and couldn't have hoped for a more supportive response. I think it was less than a week later that I posted what is now my favourite pic - makeup, short blonde wig and the new cat-eye prescription glasses that I'd treated myself to - to the "Clothing, shopping and beauty" forum. I then made it my (still current) profile picture.
I'd spent my whole life looking in the mirror and thinking "meh" at what I saw. Now I look in the mirror and for the first time in my life I love what I see! The face looking back at me can be so pretty! And not just the face. Tall and skinny with little body hair, I was never the most masculine guy. But damn, if only I had some more curves and maybe a more toned tummy I could have the female body people drool over! Is that terribly narcissistic? Maybe, but what I'm trying to say is that for the first time in my life I look in the mirror and love what I see. It just took looking with a different frame of reference and 40 years to get there.
Well I couldn't do much about the curves besides buying shapewear, but I started regularly exercising - for the first time in my life - and nine months on I love looking at myself in the mirror before I get into bed a night and seeing my toned belly.
As the year's moved on I've accumulated a decent makeup kit, wigs, a new underwear drawer and a well stocked wardrobe with everything I've always wanted from leggins to blouses and tight-tops, skirts, girlie jeans (I love high waist *and* lowriders!) and faux leather trousers, dresses both long and short, some that flow and some that hug.
Well I say "everything I've always wanted"; there's always more clothes to buy, right :)
And as the year's moved on my fear of being discovered has become something else, what I can only describe as pride - in who I am. I've come to realise that life's too short to not be who you really are around the people you love - and infact that's how I've phrased it when I've told some of the people that I've told about my crossdressing this year: my sister and a few of my closest friends have seen that favourite pic of mine now.
It's been quite a year! And I honestly have never felt happier.
And it started in earnest when I signed up here and found you lovely ladies, who helped me understand that I wasn't a freak. I was just... me.
Thank you, ladies :love:
I want to say thank you to everyone who posts regularly here on this site. This week marks a year since I joined, when I discovered a community of wonderful people who couldn't have been more welcoming, after I'd spent a few months "alone" feeling like I was some kind of freak.
When I joined I hadn't long told my wife that the bedroom croasdressing that she's always been aware of had become something more, or maybe had always been something more and I'd spent decades trying to suppress it, to deny it was anything more than just "sex with stockings". It'd been a revelation, one of those "how did I not see it until now?" moments, that dressing was something that just made me deeply happy.
I'd just bought my very first dress and "real" bra (from a proper online shop that sells actual bras and not some ?3 pretend piece of fabric from ebay), having spent years accumulating only cheap underwear in my "dressing up box" in the wardrobe.
I've loved talking to you girls, people just like me in so many ways. I was surprised to discover that so many of us became CDers by the same path - dressing in the bedroom which became more that just that. Surprised to discover the vast majority of us are straight (I'd assumed a lot would be bisexual like me). And was surprised to discover just how much I wanted to join in with this community I'd found.
I'd started by being terrified of being "found out", though I really wanted a profile picture that was "me" - so I dressed in the newest additions to my wardrobe: leggins, a tight top and a simple bolero, and took some pictures. Of course at this point I knew nothing about the application of makeup and despite owning a wig that I bought 10 years earlier with my wife "just for fun" I didn't have decent hair. It was easy for me to combine this with my fear of being caught and use one of those "face apps" to feminise my appearance and let me create a real-looking avatar pic.
I was thrilled, it was "me" although completely hidden. The joy in looking at the picture seemed to errode my fears, and as time went on I started to fear less. I took more pictures just for my own fun. I'd bought some basic makeup and started experimenting with the help of YouTube videos, and I was more and more pleased with the results. I actually looked feminine! And it gave me such a warm feeling inside.
So I finally felt brave enough to post a real pic to the forum, dressed with makeup and a new wig. Well, posted to the "GM Forum" section which has restricted membership and therefore fewer eyes on me - and couldn't have hoped for a more supportive response. I think it was less than a week later that I posted what is now my favourite pic - makeup, short blonde wig and the new cat-eye prescription glasses that I'd treated myself to - to the "Clothing, shopping and beauty" forum. I then made it my (still current) profile picture.
I'd spent my whole life looking in the mirror and thinking "meh" at what I saw. Now I look in the mirror and for the first time in my life I love what I see! The face looking back at me can be so pretty! And not just the face. Tall and skinny with little body hair, I was never the most masculine guy. But damn, if only I had some more curves and maybe a more toned tummy I could have the female body people drool over! Is that terribly narcissistic? Maybe, but what I'm trying to say is that for the first time in my life I look in the mirror and love what I see. It just took looking with a different frame of reference and 40 years to get there.
Well I couldn't do much about the curves besides buying shapewear, but I started regularly exercising - for the first time in my life - and nine months on I love looking at myself in the mirror before I get into bed a night and seeing my toned belly.
As the year's moved on I've accumulated a decent makeup kit, wigs, a new underwear drawer and a well stocked wardrobe with everything I've always wanted from leggins to blouses and tight-tops, skirts, girlie jeans (I love high waist *and* lowriders!) and faux leather trousers, dresses both long and short, some that flow and some that hug.
Well I say "everything I've always wanted"; there's always more clothes to buy, right :)
And as the year's moved on my fear of being discovered has become something else, what I can only describe as pride - in who I am. I've come to realise that life's too short to not be who you really are around the people you love - and infact that's how I've phrased it when I've told some of the people that I've told about my crossdressing this year: my sister and a few of my closest friends have seen that favourite pic of mine now.
It's been quite a year! And I honestly have never felt happier.
And it started in earnest when I signed up here and found you lovely ladies, who helped me understand that I wasn't a freak. I was just... me.
Thank you, ladies :love: