Personal LGBT Exposure - Positive or Negative?

[Lori Ann Westlake]

Hi Charlotte,

This is a very good thread you started, touching on important issues.

I do agree with your counselor that it would be a positive step for you to explore contact with the LGBT community. It seems to me that you're presently pursuing a very negative course of self-suppression. What you seem to be saying is that you're having some difficulty with self-acceptance--which we nearly all do! Yet as long as you continue to reject or disparage that "feminine" part of yourself, by avoiding contact with others who would encourage you to validate and accept her, at least it keeps you in sympathy with your wife's feelings of disapproval, and discourages you from taking any further step to explore and express your feminine personality, which might (possibly) widen the rift between yourself and your wife.

Unfortunately that course of action is bound to be stressful, erosive to the personality, and self-destructive in the long run. At best it only delays the inevitable. As time goes on, you are bound to experience more and more inner conflict with yourself, until the feminine side of your personality forces herself to the surface and precipitates an explosive crisis--including a "blowup" with your wife. Even if that doesn't happen, you're going to continue being miserable for years in the meantime with all the inner stress. You're bound to discover your "real self" anyway some day, so why put it off?

Self-acceptance is a positive thing because it ends the inner conflict and leaves you feeling at peace with yourself. While it's a state of mind we can only achieve "by ourselves," it is certainly encouraged by acceptance from others. Now I was lucky, as I've said here before, and while I was already on the path to self-acceptance of my crossdressing, it was helped further by my wife's acceptance. I recognize that not everyone here has had that luxury, as you don't. But acceptance from good friends, whether in the LGBT community or elsewhere, can certainly be just as helpful, as others have testified.

What I think is more important is a misunderstanding of emotional consequences, almost a turning of reality on its head. You seem to think lack of self-acceptance, a lingering disapproval of your feminine self, puts you in harmony with your wife's feelings toward that part of you. I beg to differ. Underneath, I think it puts you in conflict with your wife--between your unacknowledged feminine self and her disapproval, just like the conflict between your feminine self and the other troubled, unresolved, disapproving part of yourself.

Here Stephanie raised a vital point. As long as you continue to feel desperately dependent on your wife for approval that she can not or will not give, you are bound to resent her for failing to fulfill some of your deepest emotional needs. If you turn instead to others in a supportive community for this approval, at a single stroke you free yourself from this dependence. You get your needs fulfilled elsewhere, and you cease to have any reason to resent your wife, on that score at least.

Suppose for instance that you loved fishing, and your wife showed no interest in it. If you got on well together in every other way, would it make any sense to resent her because she didn't share your love of fishing? No, you'd find some good fishing buddies, go off with them and have a good time, and feel happy afterwards.

You may still have difficulties with your wife in practical terms over your crossdressing, but at least you will feel at peace with yourself and with "who you are." This is important because people who are not at peace with themselves are more prone to vent their frustrations on others or on the world at large. A feeling of inner peace allows us to be more understanding and tolerant of others. Even if you wife still "has problems" with your gender identity, coming from a happier place within yourself will help you feel more forgiving toward her.

I don't believe you ever need fear that mixing with the LGBT community would somehow "radicalize" you and lead you to hate anyone, including your wife, the way a few extremists do, spewing hate of their own against the mainstream of normal society. I myself have examined plenty of political positions taken by others, and aren't we all capable of making distinctions? "That seems right to me," "That I disagree with, though they do have a fair argument"--and "That's just plain bonkers!" You are not a leaf blown in the wind by other people's feelings and opinions. You are yourself, with a personality you probably have not fully discovered yet, but I'm sure it does not include "hatred" of the wife you married out of genuine love, just because of a few other people's hangups.

If mixing with the LGBT community helps you feel happier within yourself, go for it! Better still, I hope you get your wife involved with that counselor to help you sort out any conflict between the two of you.