Sobe said: “Yes, I already know that everyone is different and that each person has a different experience.”

You answered your own questions but still had to ask them anyway. And, not surprisingly, you got different answers from each person based on their different experiences. So here's mine.

I don't appear to be a whole lot like your boyfriend in the sense that I will readily admit that I'm a fetish crossdresser. I don't want to be a real girl and I have no desire to go out in public dressed. I also love the fashions of the '40s and '50s. And yes, I dress to emulate my own idealized fantasy version of womanhood. So what? Shoot me! Perhaps it's because I got my first woody while looking through the Sears catalog when I was 3yo. Who knows? I don't care. I like those clothes so much I want to wear them myself. I also have other kinks and quirks for which I have no satisfactory explanation. I don't want to try to either. “Girls (even fake ones) just want to have fun.”

The bottom line is this: Human behavior and motivations are complex. By that I don't mean that they are merely complicated in the sense that you can figure it all out if you just put enough effort into it. No, I mean that they are complex in the same sense that stock prices and the weather are complex. No amount of information or analyzing will allow you to explain or predict them to any satisfaction. There are just too many variables in constant flux.

All you can do to make sense out of the world is draw “lines in the sand.” You set up your condition and make decisions beforehand about what to do if the condition is or is not met. You might decide to sell a stock when it falls below a certain price. When it happens, you carry out your decision—no regrets, no compromise, no looking back. Then you move on. You may decide that if your crossdresser decides to get breast implants then he has crossed your line in the sand and you're leaving. If that's the case, then do it. But please don't try to understand, predict or change their behavior or motivations. It's pointless and hopeless. In other words, “if you don't like it, leave.” Believe me I know how much that can hurt, but that's it in a nutshell.