I think for me it went so deep cause I figured out it was "wrong" so early... And I felt pressure as a young person to be who I thought others wanted me to be...Originally Posted by gendermutt
When I finally DID tell my SO, it felt like the foundation of my life had collapsed (she has been super supportive and accepting too)
Looking back I wish I had confronted this when I was younger... But I'm glad it happened
I felt like I was a failure. I was born male. Yet I had feminine qualities I could not shake no matter how hard I tried. There is a part of me that is male internally, it's not a complete fake job, but covering up my feminine aspects as best I could was. It would occasionally slip out..... and of course there was the desire to dress.
This was my deepest dark secret, I was scared to death someone would find out. Shortly after meeting my wife, I purged everything I had.
I rationalized in my head that she didn't need to know because I wasn't going to do it any more. We moved into together about a year later, it wasn't long after that when I started raiding here closet.
Then my reasons were, fear that she would leave me or tell everyone my secret. I finally told here about 6 months after that.(one of the hardest things I ever had to do).
I thought I was going to be single after that, but her reaction was the opposite of what i thought it would be. It was a huge weight off my shoulders.
There were plenty of reasons.
Yes, I thought that once I was married, my desire to cross-dress would fade away. I had tried to quit several times, and with some success, so I thought marriage would finish it off.
I also considered it a bad habit and wanted it to go away. I knew it was socially unacceptable, so why would I expect her to accept it?
I never told anyone about it. It was my deep dark secret. I couldn't share it.
I believed my wife was more important than my cross-dressing, so her needs come first. I want to be the man who will make her life happy. I wanted her to respect me and be proud of me.
I didn't understand why I needed to cross-dress, how could I explain my cross-dressing to her???? I can't make her accept something I don't understand myself.
I shared my crossdressing with my wife before we got married. She wasn't supportive and we agreed I wouldn't do it any more. That worked for a few years and then I returned to crossdressing secretly. She caught me, wasn't happy and I returned to repressing it again. Then a few years later my wife came out of the blue and said I could crossdress if I'd like. She could tell that I just wasn't happy. It made a real positive difference in our lives and our relationship is closer than ever. It's wonderful to be true to who I am and my wife accepting me!
Hmz.. here's a thought..
Jack Nickelson comes to mind.. "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"
I have had several 100% honest relationships, and I can say from experience that they take far more, extremely far more maintenance.. and potentially can end your relationship sooner rather then later, because you or your partner will feel free to voice feelings changing too during the stretch of a relationship.
Just take the classic "honey, how does this clothing item look.. be honest"
There's a ton of approaches here, and we all know for most people it's just as much how you say things as it is what you say.
You can sum up a list of pro's and cons, but in the end everyone will respond differently.
That said, there's ways of weighing your odds.
Fessing up on a big topic if you don't even know your partners views on contraversial topics for instance, would increase odds.. over a period of time find a way to feel out a topic (and there's plenty in the media these days) decreases odds. etc.
I could make a large list of reasons not to make a step, which would probably be as long as the list that I could make to go for it.. in the end do realise it will always be a gamble no matter what you choose, so what feels right for you?
I'm with sometimes_miss. I had not tried on my mother's clothing for quite some time. It seemed something I had done in my youth. I was in the army when I met my future wife. I had been in the infantry in Nam. When I was in the army I never thought of cross dressing. It never entered my mind. In the 1960's, when I had worn my mother's clothing I thought I just had to be a homosexual because that's what society said cross dressers are. Now, how the heck do you tell your future wife that I had worn female clothing as a teenager, thought you may be gay but wasn't, and, I have no idea what all this means. Take a chance? A chance on what?
Ladies, I never dreamed that there would be so many replies to my thread. I'm in awe, but hoping there will be more. Once the thread replies have ended, would anyone with spreadsheet capabilities be able to summarize the reasons? I'm sure the results would be interesting to all, especially those who replied. Jenny22
Denial. For a lot of years I convinced myself I was a guy. I got by wearing men's bikini underwear, and men's bikinis for swimming, and having a little bikini tanline, and that was as far as it went for a long, long time. I was convinced I was going to grow old being one of those tanned brown, shaved smooth, nearly nude old codgers running around the beach in tiny little men's bikinis and thongs. Then I got skin cancer, and losing the bikini/suntanning thing was like someone I loved dearly had died. I went into mourning without knowing why.
I started to ask myself, "what was I getting out of that that mattered so much to me?" Well, most of my men's bikinis were full seat, Brazilian cut, string side, and resembled women's bikini bottoms. It was that feeling of femininity, that I craved. So I asked myself, what can I substitute for it that won't kill me? Well I had this vision of me in short shorts, a little halter top, a big sun hat, a macrame shawl, watering the plants in the garden. I thought "that's totally crazy," then "that totally makes sense."
At some point I realized that I needed to tell my wife about this, that this ran so deep, down to my core, that it was not something I could not share with her. So I came out to her. Been dressing around the house ever since.
Carries a spray bottle of "pink fog" around with her in her purse at all times.
I've known I was bisexual since I was in high school, but I repressed it because my father was homophobic and would never have been be to accept the idea of his only son being anything but straight.
My wife knew from the start, from when we first started dating, that I was bi. I was honest about that with her from our first intimate exchanges. But she also knew that I had strong reasons to repress that side of my nature, and that I was quite willing to remain monogamous and faithful to her. She accepted what I was.
When I was still married, I limited how far I allowed myself to go in exploring my feminine side, or my bisexuality. I did roleplaying games as both male and female characters, and enjoyed both roles. Among gamers that isn't too unusual - especially finding gamers that play both sides, as opposed to only the opposite of their gender. My wife knew that I played female characters as well as males when playing roleplaying games. That didn't bother her. At least, not at first.
What did begin to bother her was that when my game playing moved to real-time or close to real time on-line venues, some of my female characters started to be 'real enough' that the others I was playing with believed I was a girl in real life. Some of them started to flirt with my characters (of both genders) or get romantic with them. And I reciprocated, though only in those fictional settings. But I also set strict and clear rules with my gaming characters that made it clear to everyone that no matter what my fictional game characters said or did in the games or in messages with other players, the real person behind them typing their words was married and monogamous, and would only offer platonic friendship in real life, should we ever meet. My wife didn't like it at first, but she eventually accepted that I was abiding by those rules, and that the more amorous on-line activities that my characters sometimes indulged in were a much safer outlet than me physically cheating on her, with women or with men.
There were a few times when my wife asked me, "Would you rather be a girl like her?", referring to the female character she was watching me play as. At the time, my honest answer was "Not really. I just like the way the character interacts with other characters. And if I'm going to be looking at my character's backside a lot while playing them, it's more fun if they are nice to look at."
But what I didn't tell her was that the roleplaying was also fulfilling a need I had - a need to be perceived and appreciated as a woman. I didn't realize it myself, at first. But I did begin to realize that even in real life, I was looking longingly at women's shoes and clothes, and that if I thought I could get away with it, I'd love to buy some for myself and wear them. The fun I was having with dressing up my roleplaying girls was something I wanted to do myself.
I was also writing erotic fiction that more and more often involved some of the characters cross dressing or being bisexual, and I wanted to know what it actually felt like to wear the feminine things I described them as wearing.
When my parents passed away, I allowed myself to try under-dressing - just wearing panties under my male clothes instead of men's underwear. I liked it, but told myself that was as far as I would go. I was still fully bearded and the urge to wear women's clothes wasn't strong enough to risk my marriage over. I did quickly admit to my wife about the panties. Hard to hide when we both did the laundry. But I explained that I had preferred bikini style underwear in high school, when that had been fashionable for men, and that now the only place to get that was in the women's section. Most of the panties I bought were black or a solid color. I hid the few lacy one I had bought. My wife's leery reaction to me wearing panties told me that I should not take it farther.
Yet I did. Not by much. But I slowly obtained a gym bag and filled it with a cheap wig and a full girly outfit, consisting of shoes, hose, a blouse, a skirt, and a push-up bra plus silicone cutlet inserts, to go with the panties. I had no makeup, and still had my beard. I only wore my girly clothes when no one else was at home. I had no intention of going out as a girl. Or so I told myself. But when I bought the shoes, I admitted to myself that I didn't need them unless I was going to go out.
It probably would have stopped there, if my wife had lived as long as we expected we both would live. My on-line play and writing and occasional private dressing sated my needs. It wasn't worth risking our marriage to take it further, and I don't have gender dysphoria. I was content to leave it at that. There was no reason to confess anything more to my wife. It would only hurt her. If she had found out and objected, I was okay with purging my girly stash and trying to remain strictly male, for her sake.
When my wife passed away suddenly, I allowed my feminine side to come out. I knew my daughter had friends who were gay, and even had one friend who was an MtF transgender girl, and out to all her friends about it and accepted by them. My daughter accepted it completely when I came out to her, and she has been supportive of my exploring my female side.
That said, if I knew while I was married what I know now of my feminine side and gender fluid nature, I either would not have married, or I would have made certain from the beginning that my mate could accept both sides of my nature. If I had felt then as I do now, I wouldn't have tried to maintain such a straight marriage. I'm not sure how I would have dealt with family or friends finding out about my feminine side, back in the late 70's. I probably would have moved away to someplace were my new friends and co-workers only knew both sides of me, and never had a gender-polarized impression of me.
That is essentially what I am doing now. I moved to a new town, and I'm openly wearing pierced earrings and girly nails, and sometimes women's pants or jackets even when in male mode. My new neighbors see me that way all the time, and I don't hide when I go fully feminine and go out as Ceera. And if someone gets interested in me, as a male or as a female, they will know me completely, from day one. If they can't accept all of me, I won't try to build a relationship on what I now know would be a lie.
Last edited by Ceera; 01-25-2016 at 02:07 PM.
I suppose I didn't for a combination of reasons. When we first got together was a period when I wasn't as interested in dressing, so I didn't think it would be an issue. As the desire came back, I guess I was just afraid what she would think. She knows now.
Actually I did tell my fiancée when I was just out of college. I felt she should know before we married as I trusted her and wanted to have no secrets.
She broke the engagement immediately.
Therefore when I met my wife I did not follow that path again. I was gun shy and hid thinking I could keep it secret. That didn't work too well either, but at least she tried to understand and because of who she is and how strong our love is she is now fully accepting and we share everything.
I don't wear women's clothes, I wear MY clothes !
Interesting answers to this... some are close to my feelings, and in my marriage (which was CD-free for the early part - maybe 6-8 years) it was fear of rejection at being perceived as some sort of deviant or pervert - in earlier relationships same at the beginning, but to some extent relationships have tended to submerge my CDing... perhaps that says something about the relationship when the femme side emerges again... hmmm....
Also the fact that this does seem to be quite sporadic for me, with long periods of remission - so now the thought is: what if this is the last time I'm interested...? Why would I potentially risk everything else if it turns out I will naturally outlast the feelings...?
I think there's another aspect which seems totally absent so far: the nature of the other half you would be telling... I know folk like to paint a wonderfully rose-tinted (perhaps pink-tinged...) picture of their relationships unless they're really disastrous - I'm going with Greg House again on this one: "Everybody lies..."
But I'll try to be truthful here...
We individuals are the only ones who are best able to guesstimate our SOs response to a revelation around this passion - my estimate is that she would be strongly intolerant of anything like this. Why do I believe that? Because I know her. Because like a lot of muggles she misunderstands sexuality and gender. She is intolerant of alternative lifestyles. In discussing sexuality she's suffered some strong repression in her life and there are things that she's shared that lead me to believe that I'd be toast... (although circumstances are always a little more complicated and there are arguments to say that she'd have to compromise, but I'm not prepared for that risk nor do I think that would be a fair position to take). I don't believe she has the right outlook to be prepared to understand this about me - she's just too conservative, conventional and lacks imagination as far as these unconventional aspects of life go... with a different partner, things may have been different... I'm fortunate in being able to manage my feelings and activities - I do believe that for those that experience such internal pressure to reveal, it really demonstrates deeper gender issues...
And I haven't done a pie chart in a while here - I might take a look if we get some more replies, but no promises...
Katey x
Last edited by Katey888; 01-15-2016 at 10:26 AM.
"Put some lipstick on - Perfume your neck and slip your high heels on
Rinse and curl your hair - Loosen your hips, and get a dress to wear" Stefani Germanotta
There are so many ways of answering this question because we cross dressers are such a varied lot. Some of us want to cross dress frequently to the point that we would like to live looking female, while at the other extreme are those who just like to underdress in panties.
Yes, it is always a good idea to be honest both with yourself and with others. The problem is defining honesty. I see so many posts here from those who tell of the waxing and waning of their desire to cross dress, or how it retreated and virtually disappeared for long periods of time only to reappear unexpectedly.
I told my SO before we were married but I did not understand the true extent of my cross dressing feelings. At that time I would dress up in lingerie but not much else. Later the desire to be fully dressed became overwhelmingly strong.
I am so impressed by the way in which cross dresser's feelings change and often deepen over time for no perceptible reason. In a parallel example I am always interested in stories of men who while married and living "normal" heterosexual lives for decades, suddenly realize that they are gay.
So, at any point in our lives we can be honest and tell someone how we feel and what we want as cross dressers but to be completly honest we would have to add the caveat, " at least that is how I feel and that is what I do for now, but frankly I cannot be sure that it will always be this way". We also have to be honest with ourselves. How many of us have believed that this is something that will just go away if we married or that it is something we can control or suppress? I suspect that we have all done that at some time but with age and wisdom we realise that what we think is true and possible at one point in our lives may not be the case in a decade or two.
Since I was a teenager, I felt like something was very wrong with me, like I was some deviant. After I got married and had kids it started resurfacing again and I thought, foolishly, that I could try and control it and keep the problem hidden from my wife as I was afraid she would leave and take the kids... She found out by stumbling into my stash of cloths and a big blow up ensued... Her having trust issues with me for hiding it, etc. I am glad she knows about it, I wish I told her about it before she stumbled upon my clothes but she is still working on it and I have heavy boundaries i am working within in now... The boundaries expand and contract often but right now I am in the contraction phase... all that said...
I strongly recommend you tell your spouse before they find out on their own
Such an interesting thread. Pushing myself to be honest, fear is probably the first reason, mixed with a lot of denial. I got rid of denial just some years ago, when I understood that crossdressing is simply part of myself. And now, how can I keep such a secret to my wife?? This is the second, powerful reason: I feel I can't push so heavy a weight on her. Our life is full of hard times and we can count on each other in any moment. But I feel I have to keep this crossdressing thing on myself; at the very end probably this need to tell her (which is some times so strong and overwhelming) is just something I need for myself, but she doesn't need it anyway. It would be only a request to understand me, that wouldn't have, honestly, any advantage for her. So I keep on feeling guilty for the only reason I can't share a secret to the one I love.
Thank you all, this forum is always making me feel better.
The best dress in my wardrobe? A happy smile!
Hi, Katey..Your comment re: your wife's intolerance is one I didn't for see, "fer sure". Its a major factor, to be sure. Please do the pie chart. It would be a great summary! Thanks!Interesting answers to this... some are close to my feelings, and in my marriage (which was CD-free for the early part - maybe 6-8 years) it was fear of rejection at being perceived as some sort of deviant or pervert - in earlier relationships same at the beginning, but to some extent relationships have tended to submerge my CDing... perhaps that says something about the relationship when the femme side emerges again... hmmm....
Also the fact that this does seem to be quite sporadic for me, with long periods of remission - so now the thought is: what if this is the last time I'm interested...? Why would I potentially risk everything else if it turns out I will naturally outlast the feelings...?
I think there's another aspect which seems totally absent so far: the nature of the other half you would be telling... I know folk like to paint a wonderfully rose-tinted (perhaps pink-tinged...
We individuals are the only ones who are best able to guesstimate our SOs response to a revelation around this passion - my estimate is that she would be strongly intolerant of anything like this. Why do I believe that? Because I know her. Because like a lot of muggles she misunderstands sexuality and gender. She is intolerant of alternative lifestyles. In discussing sexuality she's suffered some strong repression in her life and there are things that she's shared that lead me to believe that I'd be toast... (although circumstances are always a little more complicated and there are arguments to say that she'd have to compromise, but I'm not prepared for that risk nor do I think that would be a fair position to take). I don't believe she has the right outlook to be prepared to understand this about me - she's just too conservative, conventional and lacks imagination as far as these unconventional aspects of life go... with a different partner, things may have been different... I'm fortunate in being able to manage my feelings and activities - I do believe that for those that experience such internal pressure to reveal, it really demonstrates deeper gender issues...
And I haven't done a pie chart in a while here - I might take a look if we get some more replies, but no promises...
Katey x
To help Katey's pie chart, I will go with the "thought it would go away" answer. Curiously, it seems the one big difference between me and most of the other posts so far is that this "thing" never went away for longer than a month or two at a time throughout my entire life... I have reflected on it many times. I always thought I was some sort of weirdo, or at least flawed in some unique way and that surely marriage would simply distract me back to "normalcy." It never happened, then came the fear of telling, leading to the inevitable getting caught scenario. (We now reside in some sort of DA (except for now and then) DT (except for now and then) and most definitely a NO show!! relationship.)
Knowing now what I had not known for the majority of my life, I would have gotten married all the same (or hoped to), but would have accepted this side of myself long ago and not needed to "waste" all those years in some sort of hiding limbo...
Hid my crossdressing for almost 50 years (yes, fifty years) before letting my wife know. When I finally outed myself it didn't go well at all. We are still together, but she has threatened divorce repeatedly unless I stop. As for why I didn't tell her sooner, I thought I was a weirdo and I was totally ashamed of my inability to stop or at least control it.
Victoria
By the grace of God, I am what I am.
Hi, Katey.
I hope you might be giving some serious consideration to doing a pie (or other type of recap) chart of the "Why Didn't You" responses. They could be very useful and important to a girl who was found out, exposed, or wants to reveal late in her dressing years as to why she didn't tell all earlier both for members and lurkers. Just a thought.
If you can't do it, you might pose the opportunity to others better than I could, as you are highly respected on this forum. Hugs! Jenny22
Because it will never end. If you made this a sticky, new members would see it and add to it. Eventually you'd have many thousands of responses, but there's no way to know how long that might take, as other threads get posted, and virtually all die an early death if relegated to a few pages down, then they get automatically closed. The few week life of the average thread here wouldn't give you a large enough sample that could be used and regarded as adequate research into the subject.
Some causes of crossdressing you've probably never even considered: My TG biography at:http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/...=1#post1490560
There's an addendum at post # 82 on that thread, too. It's about a ten minute read.
Why don't we understand our desire to dress, behave and feel like a girl? Because from childhood, boys are told that the worst possible thing we can be, is a sissy. This feeling is so ingrained into our psyche, that we will suppress any thoughts that connect us to being or wanting to be feminine, even to the point of creating separate personalities to assign those female feelings into.
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