Should You Tell Your Wife About Your Cross Dressing?

Our trees are starting to bloom.

 Happy Thursday! Well so far it's a good day. It's cooler outside so sleeping this morning was way more pleasant. We got a lot of planting and tilling done so the potatoes will be finished planting tomorrow and we can get on with some other crops. Life is always busy in the Spring as we plant our veggies and hope for a good harvest. The whole valley where we live is scented with the apple blossom perfume right now from the orchards and all the wild trees. Even the dandelions are gorgeous. It's lovely to take a full breath and enjoy Spring.

So down to the nitty gritty.

 I want to ask you some questions, and I'd love some feedback because I'm going to have to write this from my own perspective with a few comments from friends. Maybe in a year I'll feel differently but as of this date this is a pretty accurate representation of my thoughts. I am learning so much from my friends though, thanks for the support, hugs to you all.

1. Should you tell your wife about your Cross Dressing?  YES   But I respect that it's entirely a personal decision and could have some amazing positive benefits but just as equally negative ones.

2. Should you try it out for a little while and see how it goes before telling your wife?

NO...Maybe. It depends. Does 'a little while' mean a week? A month?  Or will it turn into 25 years? See question above. If, however, you are trying to work out your feelings on this subject I still think it's ok to give yourself a couple of weeks to figure out the basics but after that it's best to let her know you're exploring this and do do it together. I think it would feel like a betrayal of trust to find out your husband cross dressed after he'd been doing it behind your back for a while. Better sooner than later.

3. Isn't it a good thing to have secrets in a marriage?

NO  Except things like birthday presents and personal time while you poop, those you can keep to yourself :P  Can you think of any exceptions? I know some people try to shelter their spouse from financial concerns or work related stress. But those are important aspects of your life that you can and should be honest about in order to receive support for the stress and work together on the financial aspects of your relationship. Keeping one person in the dark about these things isn't good in the long term for either of you. When you have honesty in a marriage it just seems to be easier to communicate about everything and when you're accepting of yourself and your spouse it gives you both room to grow.

4. At what point in a relationship should you tell your significant other?

What do you all think? I think that when you are getting serious enough to be considering making this a permanent thing whether that means moving in or getting engaged. You have to disclose who you really are, without the rosy glasses of new found love, so that you can both make an informed decision. I think that if you truly love someone there's an inherent level of respect and respecting someone means you'd let them know who you are so they have the opportunity to love the whole you. Wouldn't you want to know all about them too? Of course as a relationship deepens and matures you discover new things about yourself and if you already have good communication it's easier to share these parts of yourself you need or want to explore. Our identities are fluid, we change our interests, tastes in food and our beliefs over our lifetimes.

5. It's too late. I have been dressing for years and now it's too late to tell her, isn't it? 

I admit that I really could use your help on this so please comment below. I haven't had any direct personal experience with this.  I can see that if you've been keeping this a secret for many years, that suddenly telling your wife is going to elicit a strong range of emotions including fear, anger, betrayal and sadness. And those are just from her. Throw in your resentment, fear, trepidation etc. and that's a potent mix for disaster. We've all read and heard stories about wives who leave, the number is staggering. But maybe it's not actually just because of the CD, maybe there are other factors and so the CD becomes the catalyst for a change. Let's be honest, if you haven't shared this part of your life with her, what other secrets are you both keeping? What else aren't you talking about?

6. Okay I've decided to tell her. What's the best way?

After the rain, the sun.

Gently, and with great love and care. I'm making the assumption that if you're trusting her enough with this secret side of you, that you love her deeply. If you look up this question online I'm sure that there are lots of examples and advice. But I'm going to tell you from my personal experience. My husband told me quite early on in the process, within the first few weeks. We sat down just the two of us for a talk. I don't actually remember the details but I do remember being absolutely gobsmacked, and the shock and the emotions that followed. It wasn't pretty for me. I cried a lot for a couple of days and felt generally heartbroken. I asked lots of quetions, sometimes several times over. I wasn't mad really, more scared and adrift. I felt like my life had been turned upside down and I was worried that this meant he didn't love me any more and was going to leave me (my first husband left and I didn't want that to happen again).  Or perhaps he was gay, or maybe I'd done something wrong as a wife...I'm sure you've all heard these things, they seem fairly common. I think the scariest part of the whole thing was that I wasn't sure where I fit in any more and that I felt un-feminine and like I was losing my best friend. In many ways this last 6 months has been a grieving process for what might have been, the dream of the 'normal life'. The stages have certainly been very similar to grief for me at least. 

A friend on one of the forums I'm a member of told me this from his perspective. "From experience, I bet he was more scared than you. After all he had no idea how you would react.  Would you scream at him, call him names, threaten to leave him, throw him out the house, threaten to ridicule him in front of his friends and family, divorce him and take the children away.  Believe me, it takes a great deal of courage and trust for someone to tell their partners about their dressing."

And they're right. I guess many women do react those ways and it's a huge chance you take that in order to be yourself you run the risk of losing everything you hold dear. Do you know what helped me? The fact that my husband let me ask a ton of questions and patiently answered them best he could. Obviously I was very insecure at that point, I still am some days, but he was very loving and reassuring. Yes fellas, sincerely loving your partner and having good sex go a long way to making a woman feel more loved and secure. I'd say that's doubly true for us middle-aged women in the middle of raising a family or facing retirement. He puts up with the fact that as my mood changes I sometimes wish for the 'carefree days before CD complicated our lives'. And now I'm beginning to realize the extent that he gives up for me so that we can appear as a "perfectly normal family". Oh if only people knew!! LOL

Seeing if from the cross dressers perspective really does put the whole thing into a different light. And they also need to think carefully about how their wife is going to feel and do whatever they can to mitigate the damage. Extra notes of appreciation, loving, kind words, sincerity, and being your genuine self all go a long way. But that's just my opinion. What do you guys think?

Yes M, the genie's out of the bottle.

Honestly the more I learn and come to accept, the more I can see that there's a huge variation in the ways that people express themselves. And cross dressers aren't any different. We're all human. We're all just messed up in different ways from each other. And we all feel things differently. I can only tell you what is working for us on a day to day basis. And so far I think we're doing alright. We've made a few friends online and in real life. I have people I can ask questions if it gets overwhelming and they are loving, kind and really help me to get a grip again. But also our communication as a couple seems better. 

Some of us were talking online about the highs and lows so I asked my husband what his happiest and saddest moments so far were and he said this:

"I think my happiest moment is after we told the kids because it meant I didn't have to hide that part of my life from them and that I was able to dress comfortably around the house.
The saddest moments I think are when I have to revert to male mode just to avoid confrontation with probably unsympathetic people."

Well there's thunder rumbling through the valley and the rain is starting. It's past midnight so time for bed. Thanks to all my friends for your loving support.

Elizabeth