My wife and I talked last night -- or rather, at the beginning, I took a lot of care to listen to her express her feelings without my trying to respond (because that might have lead to a misunderstanding and fight about just which-ever one point, and I wanted to hear her broad range of concerns. I asked her a number of questions to have various points amplified.
She said the connection between us was completely gone; I asked about whether she felt it was completely gone, or if she felt there was still some connection that she didn't know how to access. She said she didn't know.
She said a lot of different things. I will not talk about them here, because it would only be -my- viewpoint, and I've tried hard over the years not to say things in the public forums that might make it seem like things are her fault when she isn't around to give her interpretation. I will say this: that after listening to her last night, I have a better appreciation of why she has been unhappy with me, and I can feel more readily that there are some "good reasons" on her side.
By the end of the discussion, it was ambiguous as to whether this was the "It's really over" discussion, or if it was the proverbial bottom from which things start to get better.
I will emphasize, that just as has been said in a number of other breakup discussions, the cross-dressing / TG is not the root of the (very real) problems between she and I -- but that it certainly isn't helping matters either. Possibly it was the "straw" of the camel-back proverbs.
I would, if I could, if I knew how, repair and renew the relationship with her, re-love: I hurt, I've hurt for years, but she is inherently a good person. Not a "perfect" person, but none of us are.
There is one portion that I can talk about, as being directly related to this forum: apparently, she has been finding my cross-dressing, especially my getting acrylic nails, to feel increasingly "creepy" to her, the nails especially being "aesthetically creepy". And she has been feeling that with the nails and with my choice of clothes, that I have increasingly been putting myself into the role of a "victim", to be picked on and outcast in public. A while back, earlier this year, she expressed concern about she would say if we were out in public and I was dressed and she met someone we or she knew, how would she introduce me, especially if I were fully dressed, "This is my husband, he likes to wear women's clothes"? She has expectations of social stigma.
My wife has not, over the years, tried to talk to me about how cross-dressing feels to me, nor done any experiments to see if people pay attention or appear to care. I've been talking a to the therapist about how cross-dressing feels to me. And (as I have mentioned in my other postings), when I cross-dress, many people treat me quite well, smile at me, make me feel welcome, talk to me, express concern about me -- and most of the rest pay me no more attention than they pay anyone else. And I don't mean just the people at my cross-dressing social club, I mean -lots- of different people: when I am open about cross-dressing, when I dress, I become part of the community of the city in ways I never was before.
We don't know -why- yet, but the leading hypothesis is that all these years, my brain has been conflicted, long before puberty, long before I realized I was a cross-dresser, and that I've been unconsciously expressing that conflict all these years, and that people picked up on it and avoided me. And that when I gender-bend or cross-dress, the internal conflict resolves and I start to project internal peace and happiness -- that I stop projecting "wrongness" and start projecting "rightness". My main question to my individual therapist has not been about my marriage or how to talk to my wife, and definitely not about how to stop cross-dressing: my main question has been about "How do I bring that internal peace, that sense of being part of the community, the good feeling of having friends, into the rest of my life??"
My cross-dressing and gender-bending is real, in that when I when I am at liberty to engage in them (whether for an hour or an evening or a day), wearing the forms and the clothes feels right to me, feels good. But at the same time, the rate at which I do it, the obviousness with which I do it.... is possibly driven by my unhappiness and loneliness (and if one's marriage is not going well, one can feel very very lonely indeed), and my feelings (from an early age) of being isolated from and largely ignored by society... feeling that very few people cared about -me-. If I were to feel a part of society, to feel that I had real friends (more than the one who lives 1000 miles away)... it is not clear that I would "need" cross-dressing and gender-bending as much. One thing is certain to me, though: I do not want "dive into" cross-dressing society and have all of my friendships be from there... that would be better than what I have, but wouldn't solve any inherent problems... it would be like entering a slightly bigger cage, but still a cage.