"Didn't sign up for this"

[Eryn]

This thread hits home big time. My wife is in a wheel chair, with muscular distrophy, and later, breast cancer. She knew about Celeste from very early on, when she was healthier. She was mildly supporting, but would not let me go out, and some really girly things pissed her off. As her desease progressed, to the point she needed constant care, she became overwhelmingly accepting, giving me free reign. We do everthing together, me en femme. So... I've often wondered, is this acceptance free will, or the trade off for her constant care?

Perhaps it is more a realization that, in the fullness of life, having a cross-dressing husband isn't so bad a thing. We all come with our warts and some of them are more easily tolerated when the "balance sheet" is closer to completion.

Even though in some cases the CDer thought it would go away or didn't realize it until they were married the above is common.

Some women would not or could not accept this side of their SO even if they knew in advance. It's just the way it is based on their upbringing, religion or values. I think most women go into marriage based on traditional values and can't be forced to accept the Cding.

It seems contradictory that "traditional values" in this case don't seem to include adherence to the traditional wedding vows. Not that long ago, being divorced was a definite black mark on a person in our society. Now divorce is so common that even the devoutly religious use it as a convenient exit when things aren't going their way.

I think the key point you missed is that we crossdressers who come out after a marriage is consummated, have effectively lied about a part of us to our wife! None of your scenarios cover the lying part....

Having cancer, gaining weight, losing a job or a limb... These are not things you know about in advance. For the most part, crossdressing is. They are completely different things.

The issue for most GGs (not all) is the feelings of being lied to, betrayed and duped by their spouses. I mean, this is your best friend who knows everything about you and vice versa. Now all of a sudden there is this whole femme side you knew nothing about? Were you not livable enough to tell? Do you really respect me if you could hide this? How could you have me share everything with you and keep this from me? Do I even know the real you?

Said this before........... A crossdresser knows he's a crossdresser before he gets married. It's unfair on the wife to be if he doesn't tell her.

This topic keeps coming up and I'll keep trying to clarify that many crossdressers do not have a clear concept of what they are before marriage. This was the case with me and after talking to a number of other CDers I don't think that it is all that uncommon.

I remember that I had an inordinate interest in feminine things from an early age. I did not even consider this interest to be crossdressing because I was also, along with most males in their teens and twenties, intensely interested in females. The clothes, the makeup, and the young women were all fascinating and inaccessible and there was no need to distinguish between them. I thought that this is what every young man was feeling. Yes, there were some experiments with donning articles of clothing and applying makeup, but these were given a thick coating of shame and buried deeply since one does not talk of acts that one considers perverse.

Moving on into my early 30s, I managed to find the love of my life. At this point I doubt that I could have accurately defined the term "crossdresser" let alone identified myself as such. I would no more have talked to my future wife about my minor gender exploration than I would have talked to her about the time I did something really dumb with a gallon of chianti. They just weren't that important in my world-view.

So, we're married, life speeds up, careers blossom, children appear, and there isn't a lot of time left for self-exploration. Yes, that "inordinate interest" remained, but there is plenty of other things to worry about and I could always tell myself that I was being a good husband by helping my wife with her shopping, etc.

A couple of decades pass, children head off to college, career is more stable, more time is available for introspection and, most importantly. the Internet brings information to our fingertips. I have more "me time" to think about those feelings that have been bothering me more and more lately, perhaps due to waning hormones. I also have more self-confidence that allows me to consider things that I would have immediately suppressed in the past.

After some research I'm surprised to find that there are thousands of people out there who have had my experience and who aren't shamed by it. I still don't really understand myself well, but I do realize that this is something that I have to share with my wife. I know the hazard in this after reading stories about wives who left decades-old marriages after similar conversations. Still, there is little choice, since the road I was on (depression, etc.) wasn't healthy for our marriage either. We sat down and had "the talk."

I consider myself very lucky. My wife could have taken the easy path, accused me of lying to her through decades of marriage, and washed her hands of me and the entire situation. Instead, she strove to help me understand my own feelings better. We talked about what I might want to do and she encouraged me to explore ideas that I had not dared to entertain before. Things were a bit crazy at first, what with the Pink Fog rolling in, but the situation has smoothed out and our relationship is stronger and much more enjoyable than ever before.

The bottom line is that many latent CDers, even intelligent and educated ones, can be ignorant of crossdressing for most of their adult lives. They can enter into relationships with no realization that they might have the seeds of crossdressing planted within them. It is insulting and hurtful for people to insist that every married CDer entered into marriage on the basis of a lie.