Unfortunate update

[JulieC]

britskye, you've noted about being able to track the whole family on your phones. Our family does the same thing. You might present it to her this way; you can always turn off location sharing on your phone. The fact that you aren't means you are being fully transparent to her, and are not hiding ANYthing. If you were trying to hide it, if there was a reason to not trust you, you'd just turn off location sharing temporarily while you made your jaunt to do something CD related.

As for public discovery; ok yeah there's a chance of that. I personally am very, very protective of my family. Thus, CDing is not something I am going to allow to affect my family. I'm in my 50s now, and have never been discovered by anyone whom I know or who can possibly affect my job or my social circles. It does require careful decision making, but it's not that much of a burden to keep it hidden from public. It really isn't. I would venture to guess that a majority of us on this forum have kept this secret as well.

I concur with vplshowoff; it sounds like she's a NIMBY (not in my back yard) person when it comes to LGBTQ issues. Many people are. That doesn't make them wrong. You can accept many things that don't directly affect you. But, when it does directly affect you it can be far more difficult, or even impossible, to handle that. Sexual attraction, for example, can be a dicey thing. There's a person on this forum who noted recently about how his wife, upon seeing him dressed, couldn't unsee it and had lost sexual attraction for him. This isn't about being open minded or not. We each have what we are attracted to.

Something else to consider; you are who you are. CDing is part of you. Your wife married YOU. That includes CDing. Maybe she didn't know about it, but she fell in love with the person you are, which includes CDing. My own wife notes that she benefits from these aspects of me, sometimes in ways she doesn't even immediately realize.

[britskye]

Julie, the phone app discussion is one i'm holding in my pocket, but trying to avoid as it could also lead to "so you've been thinking about it" types of discussions.

as for my wife, we're both pretty progressive. she has no problem with LGBTQ, so long as it doesn't include me. i firmly believe if either of our kids came out, she'd be 100% ok. instead of NIMBY, prob more like NIMB (not in my bedroom). your other mention of the wife who saw her CD husband could have been a previous post by me as that's exactly what happened just prior to my previous post in March.

She was upset still that I'd never mentioned this prior to this discussion over the last few months. My response has been that yes, i have occasionally on a very limited basis dabbled in wearing women's clothing previously. However, prior to about 10 months ago, i'd never considered myself a crossdresser and thus never associated the term to myself. Previously i always looked at it as this weird fetish or phase that i went through. I'm hoping that at some point she does realize that this is part of who i am and always have been. I may be foolishly convincing myself there's a chance, but it is one of the few things i can still hold onto..... for now.

again, i thank everyone for your comments. i have a small advantage by being part of this community, without you all, i'd be sitting on my couch stressing more than i need to. Your comments and advice are appreciated more than you know. I've suggested she find a community that offers groups where family members of CDers can talk. to the best of my knowledge she's thus far been unwilling to look anything up. While yesterday's discussion was hard, i know it was necessary and even though it felt severely negative in whole, there were still some positives there. lingering threads of positivity that may be enough for us to repair our relationship

[Genifer Teal]

The thrill of marriage should come from intimacy between two partners. It seems she might feel that thrill is coming from your dressing which she probably sees as a fetish. Now that she feels she no longer is the center of your attention she may feel like you are cheating on her. Hard to make that work in a marriage.
No idea what's really going on. Just my thought.

[Jane G]

As others have said. You need to get your wife to go to the therapist too. She needs to hear from some one neutral, how it is. That you probably will always want to dress and that there is likely nothing more to it than that. Right now, you can be fairly sure, she is grabbing info from all sorts of uncontrolled sources and coming to conclusions based on mixed information. You have dropped a bomb on the person she knew. She needs to understand that person is still there, but has a few extra parts to him. You can't tell her that, until some one neutral has talked to her and she understands it is indeed you talking. We only ever saw the therapist once together, but it was worth it's weight in gold for us. Good luck.

[britskye]

Thank you Jane, my fingers have been crossed all day waiting for her to speak up about help finding therapists on our network, but she's been working off and on so tomorrow may be more likely