The thread about CDing and marriages got me thinking about my ex wife and how our lives changed.

When I met her; I was in law enforcement. I was a young detective. I had already done my first enlistment in the Army and was then in the Reserves. She..uh..really liked the uniforms. She was attracted to a manly man. I resisted at first; knowing who I really was, but she eventually got me to ask her out and things went on from there.

Lol...two weeks later we were living together. A month after that she got a bit more serious and I felt it only honest to tell her about me. She was a bit confused but actually quite game...as long as she was in charge of the timing and the budget. She also did the make up, and not in a good way. I looked kind of cartoonish. At least in my opinion. However things went fairly well, and she came to want to be with Michelle, more and more...but still not on my terms and still not more than once or twice a week.

About a year into our relationship, I woke up screaming and in a sweat from a nightmare. I had ptsd from combat. It was not a daily instance but something that happened a couple of times a month.

Anyway....she went to the dresser and handed me a pair of panties and had me put them on. I looked at her like she was a bit batty.

She told me that she had noticed that my nightmares went away when I dressed...well..really when we let Michelle out. I didn't believe her but it turned out she was right.

After that she not only allowed it, she embraced it; and after a couple of smaller...not as intense...episodes I never suffered from nightmares again.

AFter that she treated us as two different people. Which we are, more or less. She admitted more than once that she told me things about herself or her past that she would never have told my "brother".

Within another year she and I ( Michelle) were bff's. We went out together as girlfriends. We eventually developed our own social circle, apart from the one that she and "my brother" had. We did a lot of fun stuff together, and even when we started having kids we arranged for "date" nights a couple,or more, times a month.

Anyway......the point is that CDing saved my marriage; and probably my sanity!