Is keeping a secret too much to ask from someone?

[Leslie Langford]

Shame? What shame, even if your girlfriend (consciously or unconsciously) feels the need to share this information concerning your crossdressing proclivities with someone...and likely one of her posse, as women typically share EVERYTHING when it comes to relationships and all manner of personal information. It's the way their brains are wired, as in their world, it is all about friends, families, and relationships, everything else is secondary, and all this over-sharing for emotional support is what generally gets them through the day...especially when accompanied by a glass of wine (whine?) .

Shame for you, her, or both? Hardly. Remember, this is 2017 and like you, your girlfriend is likely 30-something-ish as well. That includes being a confident, thoroughly modern and liberated woman who is all about equality of the sexes. You two are part of a generation that is open-minded, generally accepting of all manner of diversity, likely LGBT supportive if not downright friendly, and for whom the concept of being transgender is not so foreign and unlikely to elicit a negative reaction either. So go for it - what's to lose except potentially years of the type of unsatisfying DADT relationships that many of us here are burdened with.

I - and many others here - envy the members of your generation and their openness to new ideas and experiences. Those of us who came of age in the 1950's, '60's, and '70's (i.e. the Mad Men era) didn't have access to an internet to make our connections with like-minded others, or even the vast educational resources available there. We were left totally adrift in trying to come to grips with what these strange feelings that we were being subjected to were all about or where they came from, and we certainly couldn't talk to anyone else about them. I don't think the word "transgender" even existed back then, and we weren't even "crossdressers" yet - we were "transvestites", along with all the negative connotations which that clinical term entailed.

In short, most "normal" people considered us to be a pathetic collection of perverts, and perhaps only one step removed from sexual predators and/or child molesters in their eyes. Naturally, our girlfriends, future wives and SO's had been indoctrinated by the same negative propaganda given the societal mores of the day, so of course, we remained deep in the closet and many of us had to settle for DADT relationships so as not to rock the boat unduly with respect to our partners and our families...never mind any negative fallout in the workplace on top of all that.

This is not your reality in today's world. The Earth will not stop spinning on its axis if you either come out on your own, or else word of your love of crossdressing happens to leak out. If anything, you will likely be congratulated by others for having the courage to be your authentic self. As former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt would have said in your case "You have nothing to fear, but fear itself."