deepjoy40
07-28-2007, 04:52 AM
Hello everyone, Forgive my indulgence here but I could do with some balanced thoughts as a new member. I’ve spent a life in turmoil like many of you and until very recently I’ve built defences to hide from the unease within. Some of my behaviour in denial has been bordering on self destructive, whilst some of my inherent traits have been a huge gift to me, sensitivity and an uncanny perception are examples.
Women have loved me for it but that love is tempered, as some of you may know perhaps by a lack of "understanding" for the whole person. Acceptance is a compromise and compromises come at a cost no matter how small for anyone, for me being CD doesn’t fit any medical or theoretical model. I have sat opposite people who claim to understand and the stark reality is that they don’t, they empathise but don’t understand.
I’ve done the denial, the over compensating for my perceived lack of manhood and purged myself numerous times. I have pushed people away including some wonderful GG’s who have tried to accept me, but now perhaps I have finally reached the point where I have realised that who and what I am can’t be changed.
The problem is this – I have not been a closet CD but given my build and height I’m not in any way convincing. What I try to see is not what stares me back in the mirror but the person within. The feelings ebb and flow like shifting sands and my identity and sense of self goes along with it. It is no small wonder that GG’s or SO’s struggle. I have ultimate respect and sympathy for them. I think any disclosure within a ongoing relationship is a very real dilemma for partners – like I have posted before, the more we are stereotypically male the more we may repress ourselves and the more we are CD the more a woman’s sense of herself can be thrown into question. She does not have the benefit of looking within first when she sees a CD, she has to look at the mirror image and if your anything like me that is scary no matter how handsome you are as a man!!
She, like everyone else has the right to be happy, not to have her identity thrown into turmoil for our sake, but we do it by our very nature. I read the threads here from GG’s and they are the to be applauded and admired, their struggle is no different to ours, except to say that they perhaps had a true sense of identity to begin with and we seek to change and challenge that. I think that is harder to cope with and to top it all some of us seem to demand understanding like it our right and I think that is unfair and unjust.
I see being a CD as a means of communication perhaps, a window through which part of our personality, the women within can come out to visit and talk freely. I shave my legs all the time but I don’t CD all the time, I recently thought about it and concluded for myself at least that it is like leaving the back door unlocked so she can call anytime. I manage the restriction of shaving in my day to day life to make it easier for her to come over. If I don’t and let my body hair grow I feel like the door is locked and then careful planning and dilemmas that weren’t in such sharp focus there before come into play all at once, there is more a sense of repression and more guilt this way for me.
So I pose this question if I may – If the sense of who we really are is unclear for ourselves as many threads seem to suggest, how do you manage it and achieve a sense of balance within your own mind, I'm I striking a chord here or way off line?
If I can more closely define the answer, I can be accepted and not perhaps demand to be understood.
Women have loved me for it but that love is tempered, as some of you may know perhaps by a lack of "understanding" for the whole person. Acceptance is a compromise and compromises come at a cost no matter how small for anyone, for me being CD doesn’t fit any medical or theoretical model. I have sat opposite people who claim to understand and the stark reality is that they don’t, they empathise but don’t understand.
I’ve done the denial, the over compensating for my perceived lack of manhood and purged myself numerous times. I have pushed people away including some wonderful GG’s who have tried to accept me, but now perhaps I have finally reached the point where I have realised that who and what I am can’t be changed.
The problem is this – I have not been a closet CD but given my build and height I’m not in any way convincing. What I try to see is not what stares me back in the mirror but the person within. The feelings ebb and flow like shifting sands and my identity and sense of self goes along with it. It is no small wonder that GG’s or SO’s struggle. I have ultimate respect and sympathy for them. I think any disclosure within a ongoing relationship is a very real dilemma for partners – like I have posted before, the more we are stereotypically male the more we may repress ourselves and the more we are CD the more a woman’s sense of herself can be thrown into question. She does not have the benefit of looking within first when she sees a CD, she has to look at the mirror image and if your anything like me that is scary no matter how handsome you are as a man!!
She, like everyone else has the right to be happy, not to have her identity thrown into turmoil for our sake, but we do it by our very nature. I read the threads here from GG’s and they are the to be applauded and admired, their struggle is no different to ours, except to say that they perhaps had a true sense of identity to begin with and we seek to change and challenge that. I think that is harder to cope with and to top it all some of us seem to demand understanding like it our right and I think that is unfair and unjust.
I see being a CD as a means of communication perhaps, a window through which part of our personality, the women within can come out to visit and talk freely. I shave my legs all the time but I don’t CD all the time, I recently thought about it and concluded for myself at least that it is like leaving the back door unlocked so she can call anytime. I manage the restriction of shaving in my day to day life to make it easier for her to come over. If I don’t and let my body hair grow I feel like the door is locked and then careful planning and dilemmas that weren’t in such sharp focus there before come into play all at once, there is more a sense of repression and more guilt this way for me.
So I pose this question if I may – If the sense of who we really are is unclear for ourselves as many threads seem to suggest, how do you manage it and achieve a sense of balance within your own mind, I'm I striking a chord here or way off line?
If I can more closely define the answer, I can be accepted and not perhaps demand to be understood.