My continuing story of acceptance and, ?I dont care... its weird?.

[Chloe_S]

If you?ve been following my posts, you know how much i struggle with accepting my crossdressing and wondering if it was an addiction. I discussed it with a second therapist and she asked me a bunch of questions. She doesn?t think it?s an addiction either. Just like everyone else has been telling me, it?s just something i really enjoy and it gives me a good release from the pressures of being a man. She didn?t seem surprised by it and said lots of Straight men do it. ( I mentioned my wife had concerns about my sexuality initially)

I?m really learning to embrace my femme side. My therapist suggested i try and integrate some of the traits of how i behave with me masculine side. But I?m more and more happy with myself.

My wife on the other hand told me, ?I dont care how many hetero men do it,i think it?s weird.? She seems to be growing less and less tolerant of it.

I?m really starting to find what i want out of this and happy to do it yet my wife only seems to pull further away from it. It?s a tough situation with no easy solution. But I just wanted to offer an update. Thanks for everyone?s support advice, and kind words. This is a great community.

[mbmeen12]

That is great!!!! Your tipping your toes (learning) and pretty soon full submersion. The question is, are you ready for her to walk out?

[Crissy 107]

Chloe, It sounds like you are in a DADT marriage or will be soon. This is not the best nor is it the worst. I feel hiding ones crossdressing from your wife is much more stressful.

[River GG]

My wife on the other hand told me, ?I dont care how many hetero men do it,i think it?s weird.? She seems to be growing less and less tolerant of it.

Chloe, my heart aches for both of you. I'm not too different from your wife. It's... dare I say... impossible for us to understand. I am so glad you're seeing a therapist because being comfortable with yourself is really important to gaining her acceptance. If you feel weird about it, how can the two of you gain any sense or normalcy?

Keep trying and be gentle with her. This is painful for her. The more she loves you, and the less she "understands," the more painful it is. She will need space to explore her own feelings. I've been known to snipe comments at my DH that apparently were far more hurtful than I realized. I didn't do this because I wanted to hurt him, I did this because there were too many feelings than I was capable to sort through and apparently whatever slipped to the surface in a moment of tension wasn't exactly appropriate. Be compassionate to yourself and to her. She probably needs a lot of help to get to the next level. As do I. Just because we're not immediately accepting does not mean we don't love you and our hearts aren't slowly breaking as we wonder what this means for our future together.

River

[Chloe_S]

That is great!!!! Your tipping your toes (learning) and pretty soon full submersion. The question is, are you ready for her to walk out?

I?m not sure what you mean exactly, but going outside dressed is as far as I want to go, but even that is a little much for me.

[kimdl93]

Therapy thus far seems to have been focused on your concerns about being a cross dresser and whether to treat it as a pathology or simply a personal interest, and ]then how to integrate this into your life. The missing piece seems to be how to successfully integrate this part of yourself into your marriage, or more specifically how to address your wife?s concerns and meet. At this stage, fulfilling your needs will literally depend on finding a way to meet those of your wife.

[docrobbysherry]

Chloe, I'm not sure if it's u or your therapist that's mixing terms up?

"Straight" men means they r not gay or bi. Which has nothing to do with how they dress!
I believe trans and CD's have roughly the same percentage of gay/bi's as the vanilla male community.

But, regular, vanilla males DO NOT crossdress to "relieve stress" or for any other reason!

[Chloe_S]

There?s no mixup. It was part of the conversation we were having. It was relevant to what was said. I didnt type everything here.

[GaleWarning]

The issues for me are these:
Is your marriage going to survive? Do you want it to survive? Why is your wife not also involved in the counselling? Does she want your marriage to survive?
Like the others, I am pleased that you seem to be in a happy place.
But is your wife?

[Stephanie47]

Chloe, mbmeen is indicating your wife may not be able to or want to handle your cross dressing. She may choose to divorce you. Sometimes cross dressing is a deal breaker for a woman.

[Teresa]

Chloe,
The bottom line is your wife doesn't want to know about your therapy unless it provides a cure , the last thing she wants is for you to be comfortable with it , so she will throw all the familiar names at you to make you feel guilty .

From experience it will come to crunch time , your needs over your wife's . At times I didn't get it , why would anyone want to deliberately want you to be unhappy but then I had to consider it's also making her unhappy . Eventually we came to the decision to separate otherwise the marriage would become a more unhappy relationship , it was the best thing for us and it made it easier for the kids .

[MichaelM]

Chloe

I agree with the below and think I'm in the same position.

When I came out, I had counselling but this was for my wife's sake more than me.

I'm comfortable in what I do and see them as just "clothes". Whilst the counselling has helped me understand why I do it - to relieve stress - it hasn't made me want to stop or do it more. They feel nice and I like wearing them.

And this is the rub - I think my wife was expecting the counselling to help me stop. She doesn't understand my crossdressing, doesn't like it and would rather not think about it. She doesn't see it as common and therefore as something strange and something for me to stop doing.

Whilst she's permitted me to do certain things occasionally, it's on her terms and I'm walking a tightrope as to when she gets upset about it.

I've suggested that she gets counselling to help her through this. She's got no one to talk to about it and I'm asking her to accept something about my lifestyle that hasn't been there before.

So I'm in a similar position to you in that the more I do, the more she pulls back. For me, I fear this could spell the end of my marriage - she tells me enough - and it's a horrible feeling.

I could stop if I really wanted to. I could actively deny myself what I enjoy doing. So I know it isn't an addiction. But I would also be denying myself something that I really enjoy doing and I would grow to resent her for stopping me.

Rather than viewing as an addiction, it's more like a hobby. Viewed on those terms, it seems a bit unreasonable for a spouse to say "no" to a hobby ...

Good luck!

Chloe,
The bottom line is your wife doesn't want to know about your therapy unless it provides a cure , the last thing she wants is for you to be comfortable with it , so she will throw all the familiar names at you to make you feel guilty .

From experience it will come to crunch time , your needs over your wife's . At times I didn't get it , why would anyone want to deliberately want you to be unhappy but then I had to consider it's also making her unhappy . Eventually we came to the decision to separate otherwise the marriage would become a more unhappy relationship , it was the best thing for us and it made it easier for the kids .

[GaleWarning]

I could stop if I really wanted to. I could actively deny myself what I enjoy doing. So I know it isn't an addiction. But I would also be denying myself something that I really enjoy doing and I would grow to resent her for stopping me.

Rather than viewing as an addiction, it's more like a hobby. Viewed on those terms, it seems a bit unreasonable for a spouse to say "no" to a hobby ...

I know I resented it when my (now ex) wife stopped me from sailing every Sunday, Michael. It was a huge stress-breaker for me.
Perhaps you have a point.

[Teresa]

MichaelM,
I still feel it's dangerous ground to pass it off as a hobby , simple answer to that , " Find another hobby that we can both possibly share " .

I nearly ended my life some twenty years ago so I find it hard to call it a hobby because they don't induce those thoughts and they shouldn't cause the heartache .

I tried on several occasions to get my wife to attend counselling with me , she was adamant I was the broken one that needed fixing , So I hit a brick wall , I had no where to turn or discuss my therapy with . I couldn't help feeling she wanted her cake and eat it but then I know she was looking for a cure .

To stop or not is irrelevant because it never goes away , sometimes I feel it must be harder for people it waxes and wanes with , to go days , weeks months and then WHAM it hits you just when you thought it might have been behind you .

[phili]

I had an interesting experience- playing tennis with a friend, I let myself be a lot more talkative than I normally am. I felt very free and my whole body relaxed a little. I realized afterwards that I had found another path out of being cooped up in my father's generation's story of manhood.

It didn't magically relieve me of reaching for crossdressing as a way to escape and feel all sorts of new things, but it did take pressure off. I found myself able to say to myself that clothes are a wonderful sensual lift, and I stand by my view that males and females should have equal access to clothes. But they also should have equal access to emotional and behavioral freedoms that are currently separated by anatomical sex designation.

Gender is ahuge and complex social construct, and we go straight to crossdressing since it is a one stop door to all of what we want. But to our wives it is like we just contravened the first rule of each day that they were trained to feel was the single most important thing to do- reach for the clothes of your team, not the other team.

In this view, everyone has their rights and responsibilities, their special privileges, and their protections, and it only works when we are all playing by the rules.

When we blithely violate the first rule, our partners are dumbfounded and don't know how to start, how to get back into agreement, and they haven't thought about gender freedom as a particularly valuable thing to explore, so my wife keeps hoping that outright rejection and sneering and coldness will loop me back in. I think bandwidth is an issue- we have been thinking about gender for decades, and our partners haven't. And it is a monumenal task.

Limiting the impact clearly helps. My wife has discovered that she can survive and recover if I am crossdressing for a few hours int he morning while she reads the paper. She gratefully lets me give her a massage for her aching back, but she feels partly it is a stranger doing it. It was staggering to me to find out just how superficial my wife's view of me is with respect to who I am and how the outputs I give her are generated. But I too realized that I barely know her as well, after 35 years. But we still have an unshakable committment, and I think it is more like being together in lousy weather more of the time than we wish. I feel more confidence in myself, but also that I need to accept the fact that this is going to be a years and years project for her to be able to feel safe when I am behaving in ways that are so far outside the social norms that are the shortcuts to feeling personal safety in the world.

[Dana3]

Me? I'm "Reader"

Most of the books I read are non~fiction, and a never ending quest for answers and solutions.

The subject matter is on one hand all over the place, but yet are correlated. One subject leads down a rabbit 🐇 hole, that leads to another subject, to another, and yet another.

One of the subjects of course is my attraction to Femininity, and all that entails.

Many years ago I bought a simple paperback book titled "PASSAGES"

A brief synopsis is as follows:

"Ar last, this is your story. You?ll recognize yourself, your friends, and your loves. You?ll see how to use each life crisis as an opportunity for creative change ? to grow to your full potential. Gail Sheehy?s brilliant road map of adult life shows the inevitable personality and sexual changes we go through in our 20s, 30s, 40s, and beyond. The Trying 20s ? The safety of home left behind, we begin trying on life?s uniforms and possible partners in search of the perfect fit. The Catch 30s ? illusions shaken, it?s time to make, break, or deepen life commitments. The Forlorn 40s ? Dangerous years when the dreams of youth demand reassessment, men and women switch characteristics, sexual panic is common, but the greatest opportunity for self-discovery awaits. The Refreshed (or Resigned) 50s ? Best of life for those who let go old roles and find a renewal of purpose.."

While not specifically addressing gender issues, or even crossdressing? It did help me to understand the conflict of living a life that our parents, family, friends, society, our culture, our religion EXPECTS us to live, and the life we MUST and are drawn to and compelled to live.

[Brandi Christine]

All I can add is be sure that it is what to really want, because it is a really slippery slope, and when you want to make your way back up it may be too late.

[MiniRock]

I could stop if I really wanted to. I could actively deny myself what I enjoy doing. So I know it isn't an addiction. But I would also be denying myself something that I really enjoy doing and I would grow to resent her for stopping me.

My Dad used to say that my Mum couldn't stop him from playing golf. But she could stop him enjoying it. At that time, he was working six and a half days a week to support us and she resented the half day he wanted for himself. Mind you now, with Alzeihmers, he'd be done for without her. But I know too that one day, she's gong to be lost without him. I so wish couples, particularly women, would concentrate on the bigger picture rather than heading for the divorce courts at their first realisation that life is an ongoing process.