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.
