Originally Posted by
ReineD
You all are being way too rough on the Mrs ... and some of you, on women in general.
Well, Reine, I heartily agree with that--about some posts here, anyway.
As you imply, I do think it's important not to go jumping to conclusions about the state of anyone's marriage--not without evidence, at any rate--and especially not to project one's own situation onto another person, when the other person's circumstances may be very different.
If somebody had the bad luck to find themselves married to a bitch, for instance--which may have nothing to do with crossdressing--they have no business assuming that "all women are like that." Doing so can be particularly lethal if they're advising some guy to assume his own wife is also a bitch and to treat her accordingly, as if she "deserved" hostility.
That may be a good way for the luckless person to work off resentment vicariously against some other person's spouse, of the opposite sex to themselves. But if the bad advice is taken, it's a surefire way to stir up conflict and maybe break up some other person's marriage! That's part of the game that Eric Berne more than half a century ago called "Let's You and Him Fight." This game has other psychological gratifications for the player. Notably if the other person's marriage does break up, the player who helped to incite the breakup can indulge in a smug "I told you so!" and "See, now we're all in the same boat." [I'm not just pitching on males here. A number of poisonous females play this game too, and worse still, they frequently do so in gangs! Luckily I've never been a victim of it myself, but I've watched it happening.] Anyway it's a very destructive dynamic, hazardous to the health of marriage, and of human relations in general.
Considering how marriages are different, in the end I can only echo Krisi's words: "Do what you know is best for your [own] marriage."
Originally Posted by
ReineD
To Susan, if you want the skirt so badly, why don't you buy an identical one for yourself if you are unwilling to have a frank discussion with your wife about it. Or do you enjoy posting a thread saying how much better you looked in that skirt, in the hopes of getting some sympathy from members who are more than happy to put your wife (or women in general) down.
Sorry if this sounds harsh but this entire thread is childish in my view.
I don't think that's fair, Reine. There's nothing wrong with Susan's asking for advice and support about something she wants and is having difficulty getting. Susan is not responsible for some of the answers she got expressing hostility toward her wife. She explicitly criticized at least one of those posts, saying "I love my wife and will not simply tread all over her feelings to achieve what I want." Please don't blame Susan for what some other people posted here.
And if some of the thread's content is "childish," it's still constructive if it stimulates healthy discussion.
Originally Posted by
ReineD
To those of you who think the wife behaved horridly, have you asked yourselves how Susan presents to the Mrs ... as a girl or as a boy? I suspect that Susan presents as a boy to the Mrs. most if not all of the time and so why would it occur to the Mrs. that Susan has first dibs on clothing. Honestly.
In the Mrs. eyes, the Mrs. is the female in the relationship - the one who wears girl clothes all the time - and Susan is the male who occasionally wears girl clothes.
This is where I have a problem, on two grounds. First of all, OK, so the Mrs. is the primary skirt wearer in Susan's home, and Susan is merely an "also-ran" in that field. But does that mean her wife's needs in that field are absolute at all times, while Susan's own needs count for nothing? I don't think so.
What if we were talking about something very different from skirts--like ice cream, say? Suppose the Mrs. had a special flavor of ice cream that she adored? If Susan liked it too, though without the same intense passion, would that make it fair for the Mrs. to gobble an entire carton of it without letting Susan get so much as a spoonful? Again, I don't think so. There ought to be some proportional sharing here.
Secondly, and even more relevant in practical terms, this was never a matter of having "first dibs" on clothing. That would be true if there were only one skirt, and the two of them were reduced to fighting over who would get it--like angry women playing tug-of-war over a bargain item in some "doorbuster" sale. But that was never the case. As you said yourself, the common sense solution was for Susan to buy her own skirt, while her wife was equally free to do the same. So where's the "conflict"?
Originally Posted by
ReineD
Maybe the Mrs. did not even hear Susan ask if Susan should buy it for herself. How forceful was Susan's initial statement and how often do Susan and the Mrs. discuss who should get what when there is a conflict.
This in my view in the real, central point. In that respect it can be unfortunate at times when discussion on a thread wanders away from the original issue. I don't see that there was any necessity for "conflict"--not over who should get the skirt, anyway. If Susan had bought it, her wife could have done the same for herself, so Susan was never "depriving" her of anything.
The problem, as you said, was how forceful was Susan's initial statement? Did the Mrs. "really hear" what Susan was saying? Let's replay what Susan told us:
I test the water with "that's nice, I should buy it for me?" (Sometimes she agrees, other times not).
Well, with all due respect to Susan, that's not exactly a "forceful" statement, is it? A "forceful" statement would have been "Wow, I just LOVE that skirt, I'm gonna BUY it!" None of this "testing the water" stuff, "asking for approval"--or for "permission"!
I didn't go asking for "permission" from my wife when I bought a new CAR! I knew what I wanted, and just went out and bought it! I drove it home, parked it on the patio, and when she saw it the next morning she did a doubletake and said "Wow, did you buy a new car?" Mind you, I do concede, as I said at the beginning, that the circumstances of a marriage can be very different. In many marriages, financial conditions are such that any major purchase deserves to be discussed and agreed between the partners. We were lucky enough not to have such tight constraints. As it happened, my wife was due for a new car as well--both of our cars were old--and she bought hers the very next month! So I wasn't "depriving" her of anything by buying mine. Incidentally I still have the car, after 25 years! and still love it.
So what's a $17.99 skirt between friends? Buying it would not have deprived Susan's wife of anything, any more than my buying a new car deprived my wife of her own. To that extent, those posters were right who criticized Susan for "asking permission." We should never have to "ask permission" of people to do something that does not affect them. We are all individuals, and we're all free to "do our own thing" while other people do theirs, no matter how different we may be. If they try to stop us from doing something that doesn't affect them in any material way, then maybe they're being controlling--some people are "power-hungry"--and need their butts kicked out of our business! (I'm not saying Susan's wife is like this, but some people are. It's just a question to be examined, that's all.)
Conversely, some people are ridden with useless guilt and fear, and submit needlessly to the mere petty whims of others. Making such a tentative statement as "that's nice, I should buy it for me?" is an open invitation to anyone to impose their will on ours, without respect for what we want!
Who knows what Susan's wife was thinking when all she said was "I'm going to buy it for myself"? Maybe that's all she was thinking, and didn't take much notice at all of Susan's wish to buy it for herself. More likely, in my opinion, it was more complex than that. I gather the Mrs. has reservations about Susan's crossdressing. So when Susan pipes up about wanting a particular skirt--but in a wishy-washy fashion, begging for "approval"--the Mrs. knows that she can dismiss Susan's wishes simply by ignoring them as if they didn't exist, and hope the whole issue will go away. Besides, who knows whether she's afraid that Susan will look better in that skirt than she does herself, if she's overweight and Susan isn't?
All kinds of factors could be subtly playing a part. But the Mrs. isn't here to discuss this with, and Susan is. So all this is about advice to Susan, not to the Mrs. And the irony is that the best advice to Susan, in my view, was the very advice she criticized: namely, to "grow a pair." That doesn't mean to be "aggressive" or "hostile" toward her beloved spouse. It only means to be assertive, to state plainly what Susan wants, and to go out and get it.
That places the other person on the "back foot," because then if they criticize us for doing something harmless, they're the ones being "aggressive" or "controlling," and we have every right to "guilt trip" them about their behavior. If they keep pushing it, that is. But they probably won't, if all we do is "assert ourselves."