Once upon a time there were three little pigs

The first pig built his house out of straw

Often here on this site discussions start about what to tell and who to tell and when to tell in the relationship. A recent thread was started about how one would NEVER tell. And my thought was that this relationship was not a very stable one if you feel you cannot share who you are.

I see relationships from many perspectives. Some people see them from only one. Often that perspective is selfish. I had equated relationships with equity. How as you start a relationship you put a little something into it and it grows with time. Each person in the relationship should put an equal portion into it. But some hold back while the other works to build it up. The person who is putting so much in, then gets devastated when they find that the other partner has been holding back a little just for themselves.

But most people know the story of the three pigs, or the homily of building your house on a rock. Relationships are like this of course. You need a strong foundation. But staying with the fable aspect of the three pigs, when you first meet you start building a home. Yes, it may start as a pup tent. You both know that it is just for temporary shelter. One or both will be able to pack it up and move on. Very little left at the site to even remind you it was there. But if you camp long enough in the spot you start to think about a permanent abode. Something a little more secure. It may start as a straw house, with the idea that “Hey if this doesn’t work, it was not a whole lot of work to build.”. Then maybe you move on to “sticks” which may be a little more solid but still has some gaps.

These temporary shelters are not solid. You know that if a storm comes up they could be crumbled (think about a 6 month commitment where you are still not sure you want to share the abode but it is nice to have room mate). If something should happen and you find you don’t like the arrangement, the straw or wood can be taken away and shared or destroyed. It isn’t a forever deal without a lot of repair.

But then you decide to build a stone house. Something you can rely on, something you both feel safe in. To do that you need a foundation. The more solid the foundation the more solid the house. We all have ideas of what each stone in the foundation should be. Most here would agree that one would be “love”. There are small love stones (gee I just want to see you naked and maybe later have breakfast) and there are big love stones (Gee, I cannot imagine what I would do with out you, you are my breath and life. Nothing short of murder would ever make me think about leaving you). Other stones can be finances, children, shared hobbies. Morality, beliefs, religion, attitude. There are many different ways to make that foundation more solid. As time goes on you can remodel or add on to the structure, but the foundation remains virtually intact. To finish this house takes a long time but with time you feel more secure about the house. You think more about adding on and less about how well it is sitting. You grow comfortable.

I think along with love, trust is another large stone. All the stones work together. Trust, love and whatever else you use. Trust is not truth. Truth can be less solid. There are things that your SO doesn’t need to know, like your first date and what you did, how you stole your sister’s underwear and used them for…well you fill that in. Not important. Even if you went through the phase of wearing female clothing but now you don’t, as long as you are sure that wasn’t what you saw in yourself. Omission may be just mortar here and can be chinked in later.

But trust. This stone is a major cornerstone. How you define trust may vary. You may be in an open relationship and you trust your SO doesn’t bring you a nasty disease. You may believe in total monogamy and trust your spouse won’t “cheat”. But trust goes even deeper. You trust your SO. Your SO trusts you to do right by them. Right now some are saying “But I am doing right by not telling her (him). She (he) could not handle this.” This actually, in my opinion, violates trust already. You don’t trust them to be adults and make up their own mind. The stone is wearing away. Part of this is you don't trust YOURSELF. You believe that you are not a good person or are not "normal" and you don't want anyone to see beneath the veneer. So you transfer this to your SO. After all if YOU can't accept yourself how can they accept you?

So you continue to build, you use the trust and love base and you build bigger and bigger. You rely on the stones to keep your house in good shape. But you don’t trust your SO still. They don’t know that you are wearing away that stone and they are content to believe the foundation is solid. Then one day, they notice the sand. Maybe you get caught. Maybe you get angry because you feel you cannot be you. Maybe you even decide to “cheat”. The stone crumbles. The house starts to fail.

Then you stand and watch as all the other stones start to fail, including the Love stone. Because you didn’t give trust a chance. Your SO sees all they have been doing building the house now on a shaky platform. If it was early in the process you lose a small bungalow, but after 10-20-30 years it is a castle. All supported on a weak trust. It is a huge crash right? Because when that trust stone starts getting chipped, it chips away faster and faster. After all if you keep something like this from your SO, what else have you kept from them? They start to ask and doubt. Because you see when they saw the foundation they saw stability. Now that is gone. The questions they would have asked before and you didn't have a lot of equity in the relationship are now huge.

So why can’t you trust your SO? You did early on right? You trusted them for everything. You trusted they would be there for you. You even trust them with your most sacred possession; children. But you don’t trust them with your feelings, who you are and what you are. You plaster the foundation with a facade. They don’t see the chink. You know it is there and everyday you wonder “is this the day it falls apart?” You see it coming and you know when it fails it will be complete devastation. They don’t even get the warning. One day they are in the castle they have built and the walls come down. Big walls. Not the walls that would have come down in the straw house or even the wooden house. Those walls only hurt mildly. These walls hurt deeply. There is a lot more weight now.

So the point (if you are still here) is, when you are building a relationship, it is better to be up front in most things so that the hurt will be less. So that you both don’t have a lot of things you have to carry away if the house collapses. So you can fold up your pup tent and move to a new campsite. It is a lot less traumatic than watching your castle crumble.

Love and trust are strong building blocks. Fear and lies aren’t.

What an awesome, incredible post, Lorileah!

Brilliantly written!

Hugs,
Persephone.

Incredibly eloquent, Lorileah (:

It can be easy to fall into not telling someone about this very essential part of yourself early in a relationship, out of fear, and really - selfishness. It doesn't take much for my mind to start thinking along that track... "Well, maybe I can have my cake and eat it too..." Luckily, one of the things about this forum that I really appreciate are the constant reminders of what a bad idea it is to keep that secret hidden. I see it in the posts of the t-folk whose world is collapsing because they found out. Or I see it in the scared vibrations that emanate in the posts of those who are clinging with white knuckles to a thinly veiled secret. And certainly not least, I see it in the posts that come from GGs who were blindsided by that bus barreling down a back alley that they never heard nor saw coming. And very often, they get dragged down the street a ways as well.

That's why I'd advise anyone who hasn't built that flawed foundation yet to read about on here and consider very carefully what they are doing by going down that road. It's a bet with terribly high stakes, and probably not the payout you'd think.

Great food for thought in this post, thanks...

Always love your post Lori! Shows the importance of telling your SO BEFORE you get married. It is hard to judge when to disclose; tell them on the first date and they will run away screaming. Tell them years after marriage and it causes pain and deception. I told mine after we were in love, but before we made love the first time. She wasn't happy about it, but the love was there already and she appreciated me disclosing before we became intimate and before we got married. She admits that if I didn't tell her before marriage and found out now, she would leave me in a heartbeat. Not for the dressing or transsexual aspect, but for lying and not trusting her.

Amber

Several paragraphs described the growth and collapse of my first house...er marriage. I see two sides to the trust issue as well. We both brought self esteem issues into the marriage that made for a weaker bond of trust. It proved very easy to shatter when the first real stress was applied.

Lorileah hits another home run.

My wife is my best friend. :)

Lorileah, this is an incredibly well thought out and eloquent post. Alas, if only I knew when I was younger what I know now...

Well written! Now I just need to tweak it a little for my own situation!

A beautiful post that hits at the marrow. TRUST. A lot of the discussion focuses on telling your SO as early on aspossible so you can both build trust again together, and not having a history of mistrust be brought up later.

My wife and I are rebuilding trust. Not because I held back, I did not. I did not cross dress until I was 65, after 41 years of marriage. After building our solid house of stone and mortar, trust and love. And it was a solid 41 year house.

Until I told her last December that I was a cross dresser. The 41 years of trust were now uncertain. I was not the person she married. How could i be, I now had a feminine side I needed to express. Our trust did not include this as we built our house. We still had the mortar, the love. I suspect that the fears she has fought over the last nine months have stemmed from the fact that the person she trusted for 41 years had been altered and a person she was unfamiliar with had been put in her husband's body without her permission.

So we are rebuilding trust, almost from scratch. The love makes the rebuilding go much faster, but it does start over from a point of uncertainty, not knowing just who you are now forced to be in a relationship with. Not as easy as if you are told while dating, to run away from. You dont feel right about deserting someone you love even if the trust is not there. I am fortunate in that the stigma of withholding the truth for 41 years is not here. If I had been a crossdresser and waited, she would not have remained with me, i fear.

We are working. It can never be as it was before as I have changed the playing field. It will take time to rebuild the trust. I only hope we have that much time together.

Don't wait.

Barbara

Very good post. I agree with it...mostly. I can see situations where it doesn't...quite....apply.

I DO feel very grateful that I did choose to be upfront about this side of my life.

As it happens, my SO and I are very much into camping... but currently we are camping in a very nice spot, the scenery is beautiful, the weather is gorgeous, the hunting is plentiful, and lots of fruits and veggies to gather. We may well build something more permanent on this spot. :)

Wonderful post inspired by your words Lorileah

I wish I could addto Lorileah's post but she has said it all and she s 100% rght! If you build a relationship on trust it can only grow and blossom from there!