Hi all; sorry in advance for being ranty.
For the past several months I've been wanting to meet some other local crossdressers. I do sometimes go out while dressed with my wife and friends, but I'd like to add some other crossdressers (and their significant others) to my social circle. "Girl time" would be fun, and it'd just be nice to be able to get together with others who go through the same joys and challenges that I do: how/where to shop for clothes and shoes, how to navigate the various issues that inevitably come up in a relationship (even with a supportive partner), how to feel out whom to be "out" to about crossdressing, how to balance having two ways of presenting yourself to the world, etc. It seems completely impossible, though!
I've got a still-relatively-new Facebook profile, and I've joined the Facebook group for Indiana crossdressers, but that really hasn't been all that helpful. Thus far, I've noticed that the group is a catch-all for a lot of different folks who are looking for very different things. There are plenty of closeted crossdressers (many of whom are married) looking for clandestine hookups with each other, and there are plenty of non-crossdressing "admirers" who are also there looking for hookups. There's a fair share of transgender women going through (and planning to go through) various stages of the transitioning process. There are guys for whom crossdressing clearly seems to be primarily or (almost) entirely a sexual fetish. I'm into lolita fashion--as in, actually interested in checking out new brand releases (even though I know can't afford them) and putting together/accessorizing different outfits (called "coords"--short for coordinates). I've encountered a few other crossdressers into lolita fashion, but (and this is something I was blissfully ignorant of until just a few days ago) a lot of guys who wear lolita and claim to be into it are really just adult babies/sissies who hastily throw together terrible, unaccessorized outfits from cheap sweet coord pieces in order to dress up for their fetishes. (I'd like to get connected with my local lolita scene, but it's sadly no wonder that lolitas are super wary of guys claiming to want to be involved in their activities; between the AB/sissy fetishists and the guys who are just there to hit on young women, I can't say I blame them.)
What I haven't found anywhere even remotely close to me is anyone whose experiences are much like mine. I'm not closeted from my wife and friends, so I don't need to exempt myself from possible get-togethers that involve being seen out in public. I'm not looking for discrete sexual encounters of any kind with anyone of any gender expression. My interests in crossdressing in general, and lolita fashion in particular, aren't fetishistic. Almost every single crossdresser I've found who's even semi-local falls into one of those three categories, though, which makes them all terrible candidates for joining a social circle that includes (at minimum) my wife along with myself. As a rule, I don't extend friend requests to, or accept them from, anyone whose publicly accessible Facebook profile includes NSFW content. And that's to say nothing of the many who are (inexplicably, as far as I'm concerned) hardcore into right-wing politics, born-again evangelical Christianity and neo-Confederate culture. How anyone could have any affinity whatsoever for any movement that sees their very existence as illegitimate is beyond me. I'm not naive enough to think that anyone who happens to be a crossdresser will thereby just automatically be a good candidate for a friend, but once everyone in the aforementioned categories (which are all dead giveaways that someone's not friend material for me and my wife) gets ruled out, there doesn't seem to be much of anybody left around here. I've considered looking into some local transgender organizations, but as a crossdresser who still has male privilege in nearly every aspect of how I interact with society (e.g., law, housing, marriage, employment, education, health care, ability to travel), I also have a sense that a heterosexual, happily married, part-time crossdresser who's happy to keep things that way might be seen as an interloper in at least some such groups.
So I'm just feeling frustrated that I've been doing everything I can think of to try to make some local meetups happen, but I keep coming up empty. I know, crossdressers with knowing, supportive significant others probably have the least to complain about of anybody in the crossdressing community, but the fact that there are so few of us who fall into that category makes it pretty tough for any of us who'd like to find each other in the real world. Thanks for listening, everybody!