Sarah, you are wonderful showing things that we may not have considered. I too feel awkward when if I am discussing dressing up or am dressed and suddenly there is the "look" and I wonder what went wrong, am I now not supposed to dress (or even act like the 'feminine' part I share this mortal coil with ...damn Shakespeare.) and then the rest of the evening and maybe a few days are sort of cold. We are walking a fine edge to start and it doesn't take much to push us over. Both sides are this way I am sure with GG's teetering on their fears. I don't know that most of us dress to emulate how we wish our GG partners would dress, but more about how we feel we look good and there is where I run into problems. I like short skirts and high heels. I like showing off and most GG's don't like us attracting that attention to us or them if we are out. So when we get the "hmmm that's a little short isn't it?" we hear "you look bad" and we start internalizing our fears and soon we are in a mood so to speak. Is this because our partners slip into the girlfriend mode? You know when you tell your BFF her outfit makes her look like a ..... instead of a partner mode?

We would love 24 hour support and praise (who wouldn't?) and when we dress up often we feel totally different than our daily selves. It is a scary world. So even when we get the support and respect from our partners we are doing that balancing act. How we handle criticism may determine how we believe our partners support us. And I have to wonder how many TG's here have more support than they realize but only heard the criticism? I understood the support I had in my marriage as almost 100% but I was the one who set limits because of fear. Now my relationships tend to appear, to me, more restrictive even though I am out more. Envelope, pushing, differing concept or who I am and what the partner thinks I should be. (read dress your age....don't be so flirty...can't you be more prim?).

So the point here (sometimes Lori doesn't know when to shut up ) is that even with a high level of support we get scared and are sort of like mice. And with less support, or what we expect to be low support, we are even more fearful