Wanting wife/SO to see me dressed

[Robinadress]

Here comes one more of the wife/SO question.

I told her only seven weeks after we met, and she was frightened, sad and afraid of what this meant. We continued together but had a DADT. This summer I sat down with her and talked about how we didn’t deal with this side of me. I also gave her a letter where I wrote down everything so I knew that she knew what I was doing. She was glad I wasn’t trying to be a woman, but that it primary is about the clothes. We agreed that I don’t dress in front of her, and she doesn’t want to see me dressed. It’s ok for her that I dress outside even though I risk meeting someone we know.

After the conversation this summer we have made great progress. I tell her when I am going out and don’t sneak around anymore. I have my clothes in my closet, and we mix my clothes when we are doing laundry. If I have been out she often sees my clothes beside the closet before I put it in the closet. I know she doesn’t like this, but she accepts that this is a part of me I can’t stop.

It is important for me that she has seen me dressed, but this has never happened. I believe it would make it less dangerous instead of her making up pictures in her own mind how I look and how I behave.

I respect the boundaries we agreed on, but as many others I want to push it further. Today I was home from work sitting in our office doing some writing all day. I was wearing a skirt and tights the hole day. I changed before she came home. Before dinner I told her I was going to dress while writing and warned her if she was coming in. After dinner I went back to the office to finish the writing, but I didn’t tell her I was going to continue dressing. I have to admit it was a little on purpose.

The door was open into the office and she was outside for 15 minutes. I thought she must have seen me several times. Then she enters the office and start talking to me and she discovers the skirt. She turns around and says angry and sad to me; “I thought we had a deal, that I didn’t have to risk seeing you when I’m home”. I knew I had pushed it to far this time. I told her I had warned her, but she didn’t think I would continue after dinner. I said I wanted her to see me so she knew and maybe it wasn’t so frightening. She said she was afraid she was going to look at me as a female friend afterward and she didn’t want that to happen. The evening continued as usual with just a short conversation about the incident.

I know I was pushing too far and being on the edge of our boundaries. I believe she would accept it more if she would have seen me. I really don’t change my personality when dressing and have been told this from several friends I trust.

Was I going too far this time? Was I disrespectful? How could I get her to see me dressed so I know she has tried? Does anyone have any experiences?

[JanePeterson]

i think you may be playing with fire - her DADT feelings seem pretty strong, and if you want her to see you dressed, i think it will be MUCH better if you discuss it, talk about your feelings, and let HER decide when and how - just springing it on her may make her upset, and as she seems to be afraid of how she will see you, i think you should be worried about that too...

[Laurana]

Was I going too far this time? Was I disrespectful? How could I get her to see me dressed so I know she has tried? Does anyone have any experiences?

Yes

Yes. Not only disrespectful but deceitful. You purposefully left out how you were going to do it that night.

She saw the skirt. That was enough for her.


It may be important to you but it obviously isn't to her. And don't confuse toleration with acceptance.

[Katey888]

OOOPS!!!

You say you respected the boundaries but you knew you were pushing too far...

You believed she would accept you more if she saw you dressed and she didn't...

You were making good progress but now you may well have screwed the pooch... (idiomatic English - no animals were harmed in the making of this sentence )

Time to knuckle down with a grovelling apology, champagne dinner and spa day for her and a girlfriend... you might want to hide all the kitchen knives while you're at it.

Rewind a week and remember how fortunate you are that she tolerates to some degree and how much so many others of our nature would give to have such an acceptance. I think you know it's gone wrong - now you just have work recovery and please, please don't try this again soon...

Katey x

[Di]

Gg here ... As a mod and have a local support group do you know HOW many times I have heard.... We decided on what we were both comfortable with and my hubby kept pushing for more... So now I just want it to go away .
You know it was wrong it's about both of you not just what you want.
Tell her sorry I thought you heard me and I promise to not push it again .
There are many here that would give anything to have what you have in freedom to dress please do not mess it up by being selfish. She might decide on her own to see you at some point but let it be at her pace not yours.

[Ashley01]

I agree with what everyone else has said. Like you I was keen for my SO to see me dressed and, now, I do dress in front of her. But I was super careful and patient and only dressed when she had agreed. In fact we agreed that I would just dress one day and see how it went. Luckily for me it went well.

[kittie60]

Yes you did. For some so's it will take a long time for them to 100% accept you. Alot of them don't. You pushed the boundarie, crossed the line so to speak. That wasn't what you agreed on. Very disrespectful. Now she may never accept any of it. Some very serious damage control is needed here. I wish you the best of luck

[Jenniferathome]

...

Was I going too far this time? Was I disrespectful? How could I get her to see me dressed so I know she has tried? Does anyone have any experiences?

To the first two questions, yes and yes but you know this. You wrote that you respect her boundaries but your action was the opposite of that. All you can do is talk about this. if she warms to the idea then that is your ok. Nothing else will work.

[AngelaYVR]

I waited for my wife to make that move. It took over a year between telling her and wanting to see me dressed. It went extremely well when she did because it was on her schedule with no pressure. It's a difficult thing for a wife.

[char GG]

Yes, you know you pushed too far. It was important to you that she see you dressed; but obviously her feelings not to see you dressed were not as important (to you). As others have said, you already knew that you were disrespectful.

Bottom line is, she said that she doesn't want to see you dressed - that means she doesn't want to see you dressed.

Good luck. Maybe eventually she will get curious enough to change her mind.

[Lauri K]

whoops, this is the trouble that often happens with setting hard stop boundaries with DADT, is that the lines can get blurred over time and the next thing you know you are over the line

I know I am terrible at following rules, so it does not surprise to see this posted by many here

Alternatively if we don't push the boundary a bit from time to time, no progress is made

My advice is counter intuitive to the situation as it stands tonight, but also remember that suppressing your feelings and needs is not going to lead to a long term healthy relationship either

Try to talk it out, time helps heal many situations and maybe she will sleep on it and come around and accept that you are a real person with real feelings and you must be yourself and it will all just be OK, never give up on mending things but also do not make promises on specific boundaries if they are to restrictive for you

Maybe hit the florist and the wine store to start the healing process..............so you can put this incident behind you all and move on down the road together with your lives

[MelanieAnne]

This isn't going to end well.

[NicoleScott]

In your first paragraph you said "We agreed that I don't dress in front of her, and she doesn't want to see me dressed." This is very clear to me. Not clear to you?
I'm thinking you violated (and want to further violate) DADT rule number one: don't agree to terms you can't keep.
You have a pretty good deal going. She accepts that you crossdress, but she DOESN'T WANT TO SEE IT.

[Diversity]

Yep, you went too far, in my opinion. I believe that your wife does not want to see the image of you dressed, as it leaves an everlasting vision of you for her, which is not pleasant to her. It would be best for you not to push things too fast for her.
Di

[bridget thronton]

It is wise to talk about moving a boundary before you actually try to move it

[BLUE ORCHID]

Hi Robin, Just be careful what you wish for, It might just come back to bite you in the @$$. ~~......

[donnaS]

I agree and disagree. After my wife finding out I'm transgender shortly after we were married was wrong of me to hold that information from her.
She then encouraged me to be myself.
With some limitations. But at this point I don't expect her to throttle back on me either. I'm not going back to my old self.
I want to go further. I'm not asking her to participate. But she got all this out in the open and really encouraged me to fully pursue my dream. So don't back paddle on me. Don't want to loose her but by no means or threats, not going back to my old self. Rather be single than live in that denial and depression again. I am the one responsible for my happiness.
But I also do everything in my power to see he dreams come true and compromise for her needs also.

[Michelle (Oz)]

I'm in very much the same situation Robin ... my wife knows I dress, where my things are, that I launder them, etc. But every few months something wells up inside me that I crave for my wife to see me dressed and to go out with me as girlfriends. It happened just before Christmas but a discussion I initiated had my dream shattered again. She wants to see me as her husband and not have her image ruined by appearing female.

Yes, a setback but I'm still able to dress 4 or so days a week and she maintains her male image. That's what DADT is about ... both parties can live within the arrangement.

You crossed the line and will have to deal patiently with the fall out, if any. Given all you had on was a skirt, I don't think that her image of you will have changed significantly. But take it as a warning and understand the benefits and accept the costs of your arrangement.

[Krisi]

I hate to pile on but I agree with the others. You had an agreement and you violated that agreement.

If you want to change the limits you have to change the agreement first. You know your wife and your situation better than anyone else so it's up to you to figure out how to do this.

[TanyaR]

As a wife & GG, you definitely crossed the line.
It took me a while to be able to see my husband dressed and even then it was small steps and for only short amount of times. I would have been furious had he done that to me. It may have even ended our marriage. It's hard enough to wrap our minds around why you want to crossdress and what that means for our future as a couple. Even though I understand you wanting to be yourself around her and have her share this part of you, you have to respect her wants & needs also. It did change how I looked at my husband at first. It's scary for us and to be honest I don't look at him the same way I did before. It is not a bad thing for us though, it's worked out and I love him and her.
You need to slow down, step back and figure out is this relationship worth you not being able to do everything you want? We all have to make concessions in marriage, but what can yours be and still be ok? From what I read on this site, it sounds like you have a good thing going.

[Robinadress]

I thought you all were supposed to be on my side on this site! Ok, I was making a joke. Thank you all for all the feedback.

I too know very well I did cross the line and was disrespectful. My questions were almost rhetorical, and I knew you would tell me I did wrong. The question of what happened lies much deeper than that.

I know I am lucky and have an acceptable agreement with her. I know I always should respect what we agreed on earlier. If I had followed her pace all the time I would still had my clothes hidden away, and she would never have known if I was out dressing or not. She wouldn’t know in what way I crossdressed. That would not be healthy for our relationship. After we ended the DADT I know she is much more secure that this is something she could accept, and I know she respects me even more now. We went from DADT to “do tell, do dress, but don’t show me or the neighbors you dress”. It is because I pushed the limits earlier she is much more secure in what this is today. She is afraid her seeing me dressed would destroy her male image of me. I know her so well, and that she is very liberal and understanding in these issues when it comes to others not so close as her husband. I really understand that, but I am convinced she would be even more secure if she knew how I looked when I am going out. It sounds selfish and strange of me, but I do this because I don’t want to make her unsecure of who I am when it comes to these issues. I only wore a jean skirt to the knees on purpose not to overwhelm her.

Of course the right thing to do would have been to communicate before I did it. That isn’t always as easy as it sounds. In the future I would do communicate even more, because I too admit what I did wasn’t nice. I apologized to her yesterday. We are being as normal to each other today. I will continue talking about this to her next week.

The main reason for wanting to show her isn’t that dressing around her is so important for me. I want her to be more secure, but the bottom line is I would like to be loved for who I am. It is not a good feeling when the one you love is afraid of a part of you.

[ReineD]

She might decide on her own to see you at some point but let it be at her pace not yours.

^This.

You believe that if she sees you, it will dispel any negative beliefs she may have about how the crossdressing affects you. I disagree. I think she knows that you are her husband who is wearing a skirt and nothing more, since you do not appear to wear a wig, makeup and breast forms. But, she does not like the idea that her husband wants to wear women's clothes. Being forced to see you will not change this, in fact it may make her agree to it even less.

I think it is your insistence that she should see you and your wanting to go out dressed in public more and more, that is making her believe the crossdressing might go deeper than she feels comfortable with. So if you stick to the boundaries, she may in time come to feel that wearing women's clothing occasionally is as far as you want to go and this will increase the chances that she will cease to feel threatened by the idea.

[Katey888]

Rob - we are all your friends in this (kinda...) and in fact the responses have been fairly restrained compared to others I've seen here in similar circumstances - I believe this is largely because you are so open with what you do and want, and fairly reasonable with your rhetorical questions... but I can also see how more of us here could appreciate the other (your) perspective, and I think you make a good and rational point here:

The main reason for wanting to show her isn’t that dressing around her is so important for me. I want her to be more secure, but the bottom line is I would like to be loved for who I am. It is not a good feeling when the one you love is afraid of a part of you.

You have put this very well and succinctly and isn't this a point that should resonate with all of us? Particularly those that are no longer able to suppress this part of us in a relationship, or where it would potentially be unhealthy to do so. I think you are confronting something I've seen here often but I don't believe there is any formulaic or simple, given solution to the problem.

You came out to your SO seven weeks after you met - A Good Thing...

You both agreed to continue the relationship under certain conditions - A Partially Good Thing...

You now find that the constraints you accepted feel too constraining for you and you imply you are not fully able to be who you are in the relationship, to the extent that you feel your SO is not able to love or accept you wholly, because they are artificially blocking a part of you that you feel is significant to your overall self..? - Surely Not A Good Thing...

Ultimately, I do believe every relationship is about compromise. In this scenario, one of you has to be prepared to compromise more than either of you did at that seven week point... I might be painting this as too much of a zero sum game, but if you are saying you must have more and she is saying she can't accept more, this is an unresolveable situation... unless by backing off, talking more, reducing your expectations or speed of progress, one or both of you will move towards that compromise...

Good luck again!

Katey x

[Robinadress]

Reine,

You are correct about my thoughts about this. I don’t claim to know the correct answers, I just try to do what I think is the best for us both. I am thankful for everybody commenting because it makes me see this in different ways. Thank you all.

You may be right of the consequences on forcing this on her. It is not correct that I want to go out more and more. The frequencies have been pretty constant for several years, but it is being more taking care of ordinary things in life dressed. Not just go out shopping. She knows when I go out, and I know going out more and more would probably make her concerned. Of what she tells me, I really believe she will be more secure with time if she trusts me. Maybe yesterday’s action from me didn’t contribute to more trust.

Katey

Thank you for a wonderful reply.

You are absolutely right. Everyone must compromise in a relationship. I don’t claim to be the only one sacrificing something. My wife (we are not married) is absolutely sacrificing a lot too. If I didn’t believe we both will compromise and be happy with our solutions in the future, I couldn’t go on. We have made great progress. I can’t live with someone that doesn’t respect me, and I wouldn’t be happy to live with someone I didn’t make happy. We are happy together today, but I also want it to be like that in the future.