SweetPea, I am very sorry for how everything went down between you and your SO. No one deserves to be left in the dark especially after 20 years together. And I hope I speak for everyone when I say, I have no I'll feelings towards you, and appreciate the original post. I took no offense to it.

In my opinion, I think regardless of what the subject matter of the post may be, you are prolly always going to have a bad taste in your mouth regarding crossdressers. Your situation was handled poorly by your SO (that is assuming everything you say is true, and I have no reason not to believe you), and I understand that with that comes resentment.

My question to you is this, why don't we get any credit for hiding this with the intention of sparing this feeling you are having right now? I mean we obviously don't hide this because we are trying to pull one over on you and get away with something. We do it to protect you from the feeling of shame we have felt our entire lives. A lot of cds feel that the relationship we have is way more important than coming clean, and then losing that relationship becasue you came clean. We would rather risk losing you if you find out later, then risk losing you now. Do we not get any credit for wanting to be with you so bad, that we would try to stop something we cant stop? In my situation, I thought after I found my wife, that I would never want to crossdress again. I was wrong, 2 years later I find myself getting the urge to dress again, and at that point the last thing I am going to do is upset my wife by telling her something as meaningless as wearing an article of clothing. I mean it's clothes for heavens sake. I understand the feeling of betrayal, and the lying thing, I get it, but what it comes down to really is clothes. He is wearing girl clothes, not doing heroin, or molesting children, he is wearing girl clothes.

I don't know why your SO has shut you out. Is it possible even though you say you want to talk about his cding, that your body language isn't exactly supporting that statement? My wife is a perfect example of this. When she found out, she claimed to want to talk about it, but when I did, she always has some kind of surely or snide remark to make that made me feel like she was making fun of me "why would you wear this with that? Seems you would look silly wearing something like that with your body". After a few minutes of this I say "do you now see one of the reasons I kept this from you for 7 years? I knew you would do something exactly like this". After that, she now makes a real effort to make me feel comfortable, so I will want to share with her. I am not saying to do something that your not comfortable with, but at least show him you are serious about hearing his feelings on crossdressing.

In conclusion...
I just found out over the thanksgiving holiday, that my wife has been sending money to her mother every month for the past 7 years. She does the books, and I have always trusted her with that (still do actually), and I find this out because her mother left a drunken message thanking her for the cash. After a bit of research, I find all of the western union receipts in our filling cabinet (little reminiscent of my wife finding my pics). I was irate. She kept this from me for 7 years because she knew I would get mad. I am sorry to any gg's, but this is significantly worse than finding out your husband puts wonderfully feeling fabrics on his body (not saying this is worse infidelity, or something like that). Did I decide to hate every woman in the world that takes money from a joint account to send to thier mothers? No I confronted her, she confessed, I expressed my reasons why I don't agree, then told her that if her mother needs help, we will continue to help her until we find a better solution. Now again, this situation is way worse than crossdressing, so why was it so easily ended? Because I know the only reason she did it, was to protect me. She hid it from me because she didn't want there to be any complications between us, or resentment towards her mother if I found out. 7 years later, I got mad when I found out, but there were 7 years I didn feel that way. She saved me 7 years of anger.

P.S. my wife has told me that if I had come out to her while we were dating she would have ended the relationship. She went on to say that if I had told her 2 years into the marriage (which is when my dressing resurfaced) she would have devorced me. Now after 7 years of marriage, and me coming out, we are closer than ever. She says that my crossdressing is nothing compared to the years we have spent together, and the way I have treated her as her husband. See so if I would have confessed from the very beginning, we both would have missed out on the best years of our lives.