Is crossdressing transexual purgatory?

[kittypw GG]

IMO. Certainly for me. I need constant reassurance that this will not happen. As the dressing continues I wonder where it will end. I don't know and that is scary.


Louise.

Exactly Louise, sometimes I wonder if I am holding my hubby back and if he wasn't with me he would be able to live the life he is truly intended to live. I wonder if he resents me in some ways. Resents me for actually being a women and resents the fact that he can't be? Are we both in transexual purgatory?
Kitty

[faltenrock]

Kitty, I think a lot has been said here. Not much to add.

However, I dress very feminine, I like to do it quite often, when on my own in the house. But I tell you, when I'm out in public, after two days in a row at the most, I start feeling uncomfortable and bored by dressing up. Then I'm happy to get back into my male clothes, my jeans and so on. That's been that way since the last 15 years of going out.

At home, it also makes me slow working and doing the stings I have to do, it just occupies me to much sometimes. Yes we're all different.

In one aspect I fully agree with you. if my wife would be supportive, I might dress more and would do more things that I don't do now. But still, I'm a man and I feel good about being male, on the other hand, I would not want to give up dressing - my wife knows that. I had to agree, that I leave her out of the game and that I won't dress around her.

[Ms_Judys_pet]

i think of it as my feminine side. i can't bring it to work, but i can find it at home and sometimes other places.

i will admit, if i go make a complete transition for as a temporary thing, i would do it in a heart beat. i'd love to spend a couple weeks as a woman. However, i prefer being a male in women's clothing.

The purgetory was when i couldn't accept myself and didn't feel like others would accept. my wife's acceptance, she knew when we started dating, has been incredibly liberating.
Fortunately for me, my wife tends to think of me in women's clothing, at the very least the jeans and top. She loves seeing me in skirts, dresses etc.
Another mentioned being a reenactor. i stripped the paint from my toes for a revolutionary war reenactment. i do a fairly hardcore interpretation and need to be able to change sox etc in the open. Mistress (my wife) had me paint them as soon as i got home. It just didn't seem right to her for me to be running around the house with naked toes. She tends to be the same way about men's clothes. She associates my men's clothes with work, and women's clothes with being home.
So i would say the purgetory part was prior to finding acceptance at home.
i'm not trapped between genders so much as trapped in a world that thinks too narrow.

[Rachaelb64]

Me, It probably started as a sexual fetish, in my early years, became an escape route for my depression and stress, now I do it because I simply like it.

10yrs ago when my depression was really bad I did think about transition, but I'm glad I never went through with it, all I really had to do is like myself.

So now I'm happy with who I'm a Person of two halves

[Carin's Wife GG]

Exactly Louise, sometimes I wonder if I am holding my hubby back and if he wasn't with me he would be able to live the life he is truly intended to live. I wonder if he resents me in some ways. Resents me for actually being a women and resents the fact that he can't be? Are we both in transexual purgatory?
Kitty

and we have had many discussions about this. The burden of keeping this *secret* from our children (who now know and are accepting) was truly terrible. I believe it was a part of the major depression I encountered in 2006. We have decided to go to couples counseling to work at some *negotiations* for both of us. We realize that there is no *win/win in all of this. We both lose something. For my husband he loses my complete acceptance in this particular area and I lose the male side of him for the most part. I believe this is something we can live with and move forward, so does he. Not the most pleasant of sitiations bit life is not always that fair. We love each other and have a huge history together. That is something to believe in. My stroke changed my mind and my thinking which is why this might seem unusual to folks reading this. I had spent my entire life living to please others (including my husband) and the stroke somehow allowed me to see more clearly what I could not see before. It took my voice for a while but allowed me to find it again in a more honest way. Sometimes that honesty is hard to swallow but it is at least truly how i feel.

Thanks again for a great question.


Louise.

[Linda C]

Like anything else it's all different for all of us... for me it's just a way to waste some time, de-stress and do a little role playing - my wife works so much that I needed a friend to play with and not step out on her. . she is way to cool for that crap.. At this point in my life I just want to play around with it - nothing to serious - and that's just me...

[Nicki B]

i'm not trapped between genders so much as trapped in a world that thinks too narrow.

I think that needs saying again...

[RobertaFermina]

Dear Kittypw,

Purgatory - you go there and the intention is you move on, eventually, to heaven - with enough intercessional prayer and penitence and patience you get elevated to Heaven - purgatory, to purge you of your earthly sins (errors).

It could be a stage to let go of masculine traits that have been erroneously taken on, or taken on as a strain. It could lead to a more harmonious balance of masculine and feminine energies in the form of a renewed man, or a new woman, or the "purgation" could continue endlessly, into Limbo (another thread, I presume).

So Purgatory? Yes!

Is it a Purgatory that necessarily leads to Transition? I don't know. I would be afraid if that were to be true for me, and, at present, I don't believe it is so. Since other TS's felt that way, initially, as CDers, there is cause to view my beliefs with skepticism......

One thing that counters that skepticism...I still LOVE to do all things MANLY (That's what She Said !).

Oh Well!?

Roberta

[flacindycd]

IT changes for me, sometimes i feel trapped, other times its my escape

[Rhonda Jean]

Hi Kitty,

A deep question. Impossible to answer adequately. What I can tell you is that for me there has been a constant progression. I won't bore you with a biography, but, I've come a long way from a little boy with long hair whose mother rolled up in curlers. The progression is not at all constant. It is only predictable in that there will always be more.

A quick example. I've been dressing forever. Completely. Going out in public, the whole works. In all those years, the one thing I was always uncomfortable was a purse. I had purses, and I carried them on occasion, but they just never felt right. Always seemed to be in the way. I kept trying because I felt like a purse was an important accessory to the overall look. I kept pushing myself to get used to it. i bought several purses of various descriptions. Still would rather leave it in the car. Then a couple of things happened.

My car was broken into and my purse was stolen. Luckily I had my wallet with me, but it gave me a real reason to carry my purse with me, if I was going to have one at all. During this same time my hairdresser started carrying a line of purses, and every time I got my hair done she'd tell me to "be sure to check out my purses" even though she'd never seen me carry one. I'd try them and she'd always comment about how cute it looked or what it would go with.

Somewhere along the line I became comfortable carrying a purse, to the point where I felt like I really needed it. I find myself looking for my purse even in guy mode. I now love carrying a purse, and don't go anywhere without one if I'm "barely feminine". Some time ago I realized It'd become so routine that I didn't even think about it.

This is going a long way around with a boring story just to say you never know when it's done. No I don't think I'm transexual, if that means having some mediacal proceedure. But over the years doing girly things that most men would rather die than do has become ordinary for me.

Back before I cut my hair I could go get my hair done in any feminine style you can imagine, in drab or drag, familiar salon or not, without any fear or hesitation whatsoever. Same with my nails, getting my eyebrows waxed, shopping for clothes, even buying makeup and trying it out at the makeup counter.

I still had my guy side that, to me, was remarkably unchanged by all this. But I'd been doing this for a long time, had never had a bad experience, and just became comfortable doing it.

Because I became so used to doing all this there was definately less dilenation between my male and female sides. Think of it this way. In the beginning the was male on one side and female on the other, with a bold vertical line separating the two. over the years that line began to tilt, until now the line is horizontal. Next thing you know there are arrows on both ends of the line. Then the line becomes shorter. Does the line ever go away? I don't think it will for me. For some, though the line goes away, the two merge, an "female" is the only thing visible.

Transexual Purgatory? Probably not. If you husband is anything like me, though, there will be a years-long progression. Look at what he does now. What he did a year ago, five years ago. Most likely there has been some progression. Chances are that that progression will continue. That doesn't mean that he's headed toward being a full-time woman. For me, it's kind of a mathematical progression. You can take any number and divide by 2 (for example) forever and never reach zero. We just never know what number we'll be at when something inside us will tell us it's time to quit dividing.

This is beginning to sound really stupid. I better go!

Rhonda

[Ms_Judys_pet]

There does perhaps seem to be some wishful thinking, here.. If you are in a close relationship with a woman, unless she is comfortably bisexual, how can it be 'harmless'??

:2c:

i have been married to a bi-sexual woman and now a woman who is straight.

She has experimented and confirmed, she has no sexual interest in women.
There are women who find their husband's dressing enjoyable, both in a sexual, and a non-sexual context. Judy knew about my dressing when we started dating. It was actually part of the attraction.

(my first wife wasn't really into my dressing. She kind of tolerated it. Occasionally it substituted for having a girlfriend. Usually, my CDing was something i wore under my clothes and she didn't see much of. For the record, my first wife is now a lesbian..)