Paula, you made a very excellent point. An alcoholic can always get sober and start working an AA program, in theory. In practice, it is very difficult for an alcoholic to actually get sober - you can't force your alcoholic husband to get sober, only he can make that choice to stop drinking and start going to AA. The alcoholic must hit rock bottom before they stop drinking. But at least there is hope. There is a chance the alcoholic will stop drinking, and start going to AA. And we see people in the rooms of AA with 10, 20, 30, 40, and even 50 years of sobriety. So an alcoholic never has to drink again. There is real hope. Same thing with drugs other than alcohol, or with any other addiction (sex, gambling, eating, etc...)
The same thing goes for having affairs - although it can be difficult for a man who has had affairs to stop that behavior, it is possible for them to learn to be monogamous for the rest of their life. The same thing goes for criminal activity. Although it can be difficult for someone engaging in criminal behavior to stop, they can stop. Sometimes they have to go to jail for a few years before they stop. But it is possible for a criminal to live an honest, law abiding life for the rest of their life.
With CDing, there is no such hope. Because CDing is part of who you are - there is underlying gender dysphoria, albeit less progressed than a TS, so you can never stop CDing. A CDer's desire to CD will only get stronger as time progresses. If you are TS, it is even worse, because you're left with no choice but to transition. It can be as difficult for a TS to accept the fact that they are powerless over their gender identity and transition, if not harder, than it is for an alcoholic to accept the fact that they are alcoholic and stop drinking.
An alcoholic who stops drinking can still be the man his wife envisioned. In fact, a recovering alcoholic often becomes a better man than the one the wife envisioned. I have heard time and time again from male alcoholics that they learned to be real men in AA. The same thing applied to female alcoholics - they learn to be real ladies in AA. There is little prejudice towards an alcoholic in today's society, and a recovering alcoholic loses little by getting sober. Alcoholics who lose their job or wife after getting 6 months sober often happens because of things they did in the past because of their drinking and not because they decided to stop drinking. Most jobs want a sober, productive employee, not a drunk.
A TS risks losing everything over being TS, in addition to things they did in the past. So there is a much bigger risk to transition. But a TS has no choice. A TS who transitions causes the wife to lose the man she married forever. A CDer causes the wife to lose the man on occasion, plus risks being socially stigmatized for being associated with the CDer.
There is no known cure for CDing, and the only known cure for being TS is to transition. Just my two cents.
