My wife convinced me to put up my University diploma and numerous awards in the office at work. Easily the largest collection.Quote:
Originally Posted by Bea_
So what does it mean where you have the seniority and status to wear whatever you want?
Marion
My take is that your wife takes pride in your accomplishments and sees them to be worth celebrating. And, she may feel a certain sense of pride that you will own your style.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maid_Marion
Just reading the forum, it's obvious that there are both exceptions to the truism and extreme examples that 'prove' it. Your wife seems exceptional.
Micki said it all, in few words and very accurately. Bravo.
Monica,
That is a totally untrue statement , of course I realised my responsibilities but as it turned out there was far more to the situation .
Without a second thought I spent any spare time renovating two homes for my daughter and then two for my son . When my wife and I decided to separate I spent 7 months renovating her new home before I was in a situation to buy mine . In a heated agrument after my wife declared I hadn't done enough for her , at that point I did become selfish because I was totally ****** off . Please don't give me lectures about being selfish , I couldn't have done more for my family over the years .
Enough of the personal back and forth .
You made your points DROP IT .
Keep the discussion to the original question / post.
My wife is a combination of multiple issues already discussed. She is not happy that I hid this from her (I denied it myself and never told her about my history of it as a teenager due to shame and once I got back into it I told her within months, but she says I should have been honest about my teenage history a long time ago and it wasn't truthful to hide it). She is not attracted to women and does not find me dressing as one or partly as one attractive. She does get annoyed when I "out women" her, in particular she can't wear heels due to her medical history and never a fan of the more womanly outfits (and after telling her she went on a shopping spree for dresses for months).
And I don't think you can say well I would accept her if she crossdressed because I think society is more tolerant of a masculine woman vs a feminine man so it isn't a fair comparison.
There has been a lot of good points made here. I agree with that wives expect their husbands to be men.
As far as as acceptance, if can be difficult to understand why some wives do, and sometimes don`t. Starting with a good relationship helps emensly. If the relationship was strained before it won't get better when your wife finds you dressed. Some wives can be narcissistic. You can be a great husband and father and when your little world revolves a little less around them and a little more around yourself they get angry. No matter what you won't please them. Narcissism runs rampant in my wife's family so get a first had view of it, luckily my wife didn't inherit the trait.
I love buying my wife things, I always have, simple things. I found out if I buy myself a dress or heels it gets forgotten if I buy her something too. It can be about anything. I have bought her some inexpensive dresses that are pretty trampy. I like them on her and she knows I like to see her in them so it works out for both of us.
I help out around the house. I do laundry, I cook meals once in a while, or help my wife prepare a meal. I help clean house, I could go on. When my wife found out about my desire to dress it got very stressful. I even asked her if she wanted a divorce, her response? "Hell no, we will get through this, and besides, all the other men I know would make terrible husbands!"
In small towns and possibly some bigger ones, a woman's status is at least parlty determined by her husband's status. I do not defend this - it is just the way things are sometimes. If a man dresses as a woman, he is lowering his own status to that of a woman, which in turn affects his partner. If a little girl wants to dress as Superman she is encouraged, but if a little boy wants to dress as Elsa, this is discouraged - because he would be lowering his status. If we want to be free to wear our clothes more and cause less distress to our partners we have to do our bit to ensuring that women have equal status to men, and it is a sad reflection of our society that we are nowhere close to that yet.
It goes far deeper than that, though. After all, plenty of women 'hide' some of their own unpleasant personality traits from their mates before marriage as well, yet feel entitled because they feel it isn't important that he know. And that's what it really comes down to: Whether we consider our 'hidden' thoughts and behavior to be important to our potential mate or not. And that's where the problem comes in; as most of us were crossdressing for long before we met our wives/GFs, it became even somewhat normal to us, and we forgot just how weird the rest of the world thinks we are.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maid_Marion
And women have had through nearly all of human history, relied on men for protection and support. Finding out that we might not be the 'traditionally masculine' male that they expected, can disrupt everything they expected to find in us. And then the attraction can be gone, and so will she.
Think about how many women stay with men who abuse them, treat them terribly, and even eventually kill them. Look at the prisoner junkie girls who eagerly contact convicted felons, and await them to be released from their incarceration. It's the macho, masculine idea of those men that get those women attracted. And it's something that our penchant for dressing up as a girl, just simply destroys the attraction for them.
In my case, I thought I had 'beaten it', or grew out of crossdressing. I hadn't done it in ten years, and thought I never would have again. Yet several years into our marriage, the stress of everything else, would no longer allow my mind to repress the crossdressing desires, and it all came back stronger than ever.
I knew it was going to be a problem, but in every scenario I could imagine, I truly believed that all the other good things about me would surely be more than enough to outweigh my crossdressing, right?
NOPE.
I hadn't understood that sexual attraction isn't based on what we are, but on what others THINK we are. They fall in romantic love with who they think we are.
Anything that disturbs who they believe us to be, can destroy any love they have for us. Doesn't matter if it's we who actively deceived them, or if they who ignored all the signs that we might not be who they thought we are; they will blame us.
Why do we not tell up front? Perhaps because we think it's not important. After all, we cannot tell someone else absolutely everything that has happened in our lives; it would simply be impossible. So we tell what we think they need to know. And hope for the best.
Susan,
I'm going to agree there is something in that comment .
My wife feels exactly like that over the status I built up with my photography business and also the work I put into building a nice home for the family . As I've said before eventually it feels like a male straightjacket . Because I now choose to live my life as Teresa none of that has gone away , I still have the same capabilities . The other flaw in this thinking is women are incapable of doing the same things as men . I knew some very succesful female photographers and I also knew women just as capable as me at DIY jobs .
I may put my foot in it but some women do like to play or accept the role of the " Weaker sex " .
DTelia, you are spot on! Great commentary.
Teresa, the question was "Why is it difficult for women in general to accept their partners as crossdressers ?". I think that you are missing the point when you go back to "gender dysphoria". I am not saying that gender dysphoria is not a reality, but you are not stepping into your SO's shoes to see the situation from their perspective, and the person that they originally met and loved, versus the one that is facing them now.
I perfectly understand why most women wouldn't and never expect them to. I don't pass and I'm sure most women would feel awkward being out with me as a women, I'm fine with it all.
This is a really good compendium of all the reasons- and my wife feels- uh- all of them. Being a CD or TG make for a classic Greek tragedy- with two people doing what makes sense and is right for them but it keeps being irreconcilable. Of course we are always going to want to be known and loved and accepted, and I have had to accept that in my marriage, and for many more of us, we won't be.
The gender performance construct is so thoroughly developed, and deeply engrained in people's identity and their idea of safety that this is not a surprise- it is just a mountain of a problem for people to get out of it if they are mired in it. It is like quicksand. My wife says she doesn't care about other men- but her husband- no- it is not allowed, not something she wants, not something she will accept, ever, etc. I am sure she is terrified of the uncertainty that lies beyond accepting me.
But, in practice, she is not going to divorce me. She punishes me with coldness, but she understands that she is being defensively abusive. She has her own huge problems with deteriorating health. She said she feels I am encroaching on her turf- with bread making, with sewing, with clothing- even while admitting that she had different tastes and style and there is no actual competition. She understands that I need to feel alive and to follow my heart. She wants me to do it in a way that doesn't bother her. At the same time, she can lay into me viciously, and then say, if I get mad, "Why are you punishing me for just sharing my feelings? " She can't sort out her own contradictions, so stretching to manage mine is beyond her.
So that is kind of a bandwidth problem. But as has been pointed out, in the end everyone is bargaining with life, in the person of our spouse, trying to have more of what we want. It is a risky business trying to find a solution. Some of us get lucky and wives come around, so we can justifiably hope, but some of us lose our wives emotionally or in reality.
I have found peace by realizing that I had to know who I am, first, and work through my own justification and I have seen to my satisfaction that I am a part of normal, I am harmless, I am valuable, and I am as good a person as any husband can be. That helped me take the pressure off my wife, so she can at least feel I am centered, not leaving her or pressuring her, just being myself. And I am watching for signs of how she is managing that information- whether she is still interpreting my dressing as a dangerous fire, or as corrosive rust, or just as annoying, a reminder that she can't control the world [she is the daughter of an alcoholic father].
I try to make sure each day I am more attentive and at ease, rather than stuffed up and resentful. Day to day experience is showing after all that we share a lot of joy together, so why not choose that!
I think this is totally true but goes well beyond sexual attraction. Any aspect of our being and character can be idealized to the point where there is NO WAY we can live up to the expectations. In non-CD areas of my life, the disconnect between reality and ideal has caused almost irreparable harm.Quote:
Originally Posted by sometimes_miss
A large portion of the population STILL considers Cross dressing associated with Homosexuality/Bisexuality---Even though that is a myth, many are still not educated in these matters, nor do they bother. This goes for Women as well as men. That accounts for their disproportionate "discomfort" with CD. Yes some Homosexuals Cross-dress, but most CDers are heterosexual, but many people who got their sexual info from their High School peers don't know that