Principles (Long)

[Elizabeth]

Hi girls,

I have had something on my mind for a while but have not been sure how to address it. Today it dawned on me, that what I want to talk about is "Principles".

When I talk about principles, I am talking about the set of guiding rules that people live by. There are many kinds of Principles. There are religious principles. "I put God before everything else". There are moral principles. "I don't harm others". There are nationalistic principles. 'We Americans always help our friends". There are local principles. "I never litter my city or state". There are personal principles. "A person's word is thier bond". There are sexual principles. "No wife of mine is going to work". And there are gender principles. "Men don't wear dresses"

We have these principles, these sets of rules to live our lives by, because they are supposed to cause us to live a happy fulfilled life. Now I am not here to get into a debate over symantics here. I am not interested in debating what principles are, or what principles are good or bad. I am here to discuss the principles each of us lives our lives by, how we got those principles and last but not least, to steal from Dr. Phil here, "How's it working for you?"

There have been several times in my life I have been forced to re-examine my principles. When I say forced, I mean that my principles were not working for me and my life was either at a crossroads or a crisis, or both.

The first time was at age 9, when I was left alone in a hospital alone in a far away city with both my eyes patched and very afraid. I had injured my eye, and had surgery to repair the damage. This could not be done in the small town in Wyoming I lived in. My dad drove me to Salt Lake City, UT. where I had the surgery, had both my eyes patched, my hands tied to the bed to keep my from rubbing my eyes. If all of this were not frightening enough, my dad then came in and said "you got about ten years of growing up to do in ten minutes". He went on to explain that he had to go back to Wyoming and I would have to remain there by myself.

Being there by myself changed me. I knew that no one really cared about me. That I was on my own. That whatever happened to me, I did not have anyone to count on. It changed my guiiding principles. It would only be three months after this even that I read about a transsexual for the first time, and immediately knew that was what I was.

Later in my early 20's I found out that my dad had sexually abused all fouir of my sisters. Like most young men, I idolized my father, but this revelation forced me to do a comprehensive search for my own beleifs. You see, it turns out that for must of us, our beleif system is inherited.

We are given many of our beleifs without really questioning them. They come from our parents, our relatives, our teachers, and our friends. Many times, like with religion, we adopt these beleifs only because our parents beleive. In fact one only need look around the world to see this. If one is born in China you are most likely Buddhist. If one is born in India, one is most likely Hindu. If one is born in the Iran, you are most like Muslim, Israel, than you are Jewish, Mexico, Catholic and US, Protestant Christian. These are only generalizations, there are other religions in many of these countries, but in most cases one religion prevails. Why is this?

But besides religion we have a whole host of other beleifs that we adopt without really questioning them. We repeat them as if they are fact, we teach them to our children as if they were fact, and yet all along, we really have no direct knowledge they are correct.

Now here most of us are, living our lives with all these beliefs, principles as it were, and we have not really ever questioned whether or not they are valid. We wonder why we are unhappy, but we have never questioned why we are living in these beleif systems that we really do not beleive in, or we do beleive but we don't know why we beleive.

Then out of nowhere one has some shocking revelation, such as I did about my dad, and I am forced to re-examine my beleif system. The funny thing about this process was that I realized that about 90% of my belief system were things that were just told to me. Under scrutiny many of them did not hold water.

I am not here to judge any one person's beleifs, my own included, but when we get to a point in our lives that our own beleif system no longer serves to make us happy, isn't it time to re-examine those principles? Isn't it time to say "how's it working for me?".

In here we often talk about principles. Stuff like being honest with our SO's or we must make sure to protect our kids from this. We talk about how people should go out dressed. We talk about being ambassidors to crossdressing and a whole plethera of other principles as broad as our membership itself.

We many times see our principles as roadblocks to becoming the person we beleive ourselves to be, but still use those principles as guides when we know they are not making us happy, and usually the people around us either.

If you are unsatified with your life and your guiding set of principles are keeping you from being the person you beleive yourself to be, I implore you to re-exaimne your principles, discard those principles that block you from being the person you beleive yourself to be. No one is ever going to do it for you. No one is ever going to make you happy but you.

While many of the beleifs that are my guiding principles now, have been with me most of my life, they were only personal beleifs before, not my guiding principles. I had adopted the principles of the alpha male, which clearly I am not, nor have I ever been and used those to guide my life. So why did I live my life under these principles for so long?

The answer is, I thought I had to. It was part of my beleif system that I accepted without challenging it's validity. I knew I was a transsexual, yet accepted a set of guiding principles that were incongruent with transsexualism and in the end, it was not working for me, and in truth, it never did.

I hope this is understandable, it is a really difficult concept to try to put into words, perhaps some of my more eloquent sisters here can help me out. It's about dropping the notion that we gain some special dignity by sticking to our principles, even when they are wrong and make us unhappy.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[DonnaT]

Hmm

I don't reckon I've given up on any of the principles I adopted as I grew up, like, being fathful to my wife, doing no harm, never start a fight, no cursing. Well, very very little cursing anyway.

I may have put one or two to the side as I questioned their validity, like smoking tobacco or MJ, but have re-adopted them.

I reckon the hardest to try to follow is, don't make promises you can't keep. Even though I still believe in that principle, and try very hard to follow it, sometimes promises get broken either through circumstances or selfishness.

But overall, the principles I've adopted seem to be working just fine for me.

[Gelinda]

Gelinda:

I agree with Donna on this one, I have never put away my parents and my own personal principles.

I am a Army brat. I often explain to people that I am 25 years military, 22 years of my fathers and 3 of my own. But I having been seeking my fathers acceptance for 48 and 3/4 years which in my own mind I never had. Which lead me to do things that I was afraid of but did anyway, becoming Special Forces then Sniper and then doing my duty as I was ordered. All to have his acceptance.

I believe that is why I fight the CD within because it goes against everything that I truly believe a Man's Man is suppose to be.

I have finally found peace within since my fathers dead in that it was my problem as I had his acceptance all along he just did not know how to tell me. I also finally found the one true God an am going to be baptized in the next couple of weeks.

I am truly happy to be me now and what I am. I still do not like being CD but I do not like not being able to drink alcohol without starting a fight with someone over nothing either but it is what I am so I fight an win 95% of the time with the drinking problem. I have my principles to make me what I am and who I am.

Sorry for the going on and on about I but that is me also. Gee

[CJ]

Hi all,

Very interesting thread. Thanks for starting it, Elizabeth.

We all know and we've all seen where conflict over principles can lead us, not just within our own lives, our own communities, or our own borders, but in the world at large.

You say "to-MAY-to"... I say "to-MAH-to"; let's call the whole thing off.

Before we get into that, though, I want to say, Elizabeth, that I agree with you 100% and then some. This is what Socrates meant when he said that "the unexamined life is not worth living." If, in other words, we go through the course of our lives without ever stopping once in a while to examine, to dissect, and to question our own motivations, our own reasons for being who we are and for doing what we do, we're little better than beasts in the field. The Oracle at Delphi had a sign posted near where she sat that read: gnothi seauton. "Know thyself." (Interestingly, the "oracle" in the movie The Matrix had the same sign hanging above her kitchen door.)

Know thyself. That is, work at, literally, "discovering" who you are. Why is this important? Because, by doing so, the likelihood decreases that, through sheer "automatic" behaviour and "automatic" beliefs, you will lead yourself down various existential dead ends. And, as anyone who's had to do it knows, backtracking's a bitch. You feel you've lost time, you've lost energy, and, above all, you've lost your bearings.

I'll take my own case as an example. I think the one thing that "saved" me was (and is) my propensity to question things. Not only things about the world around me but things about the worlds within me, as well. I fueled this tendency by steeping myself in philosophy (and, believe it or not, there's a whole new branch of applied philosophy becoming increasingly popular called "philosophical therapy"). Now, I've never taken any kind of psychotropic medication; I've never been in therapy (bar that one disastrous meeting, back in December); and I've never "self-medicated" with recreational drugs or alcohol. What I did do is probe and seek and question and inform myself about what it means to be human... across the gulf of time and across the span of cultures. Above all, I held on to my sense of wonder about the world and my place in it.

This had several consequences for me. First, it gave me enough of a sense of (healthy) detachment to allow me to realize that my own little life is but one among billions and that my own little way of looking at, and of being in, the world is equally but one among billions. I lost my need to find existential validation in something outside myself (even though I sometimes still pine for some form of existential acknowledgement--not validation, but acknowledegment--from those people that matter to me). I lost my need to have life--my life, all life--mean something. (Life is no less precious for not having some ultimate meaning that could conform to the dictates of my own reason.) But this, especially: I lost my fear of never being able to be certain about anything. The condition of certainty is, in my opinion, vastly overrated.

Another ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus: "Everything is in flux." (At about the same time, in another part of the world, the Buddha was saying pretty much the same thing.) Ben Franklin wasn't far off the mark when he said that the only certain things in life are death and taxes. The rest is up for grabs. Including my view of myself or of those around me as well as my understanding of the world in which I live. These are all things that can (and do) change over the course of our lives. We ought to accept that they will (and do) change in the course of other people's lives as well. It then becomes inevitable that my principles will sometimes accord with, and sometimes differ from, not only those of other human beings but--and this is the irony laid bare by "philosophical therapy"--my own most cherished ones as well.

This has much to do with good mental health, by the way. Although I'm no big fan of Dr. Phil (for reasons too complicated to expound here), I agree with him on this one. We need to continuously ask ourselves if what we're doing, what we're about, is working for us. One sure sign of poor mental health is the persistence of maladaptive behaviours on our part that keep bringing us back to distressful (and stressful) situations and outcomes. At some point, it becomes necessary to bring out a mirror (often in the form of, say, a therapist or of a close, trusted friend) and look deeply into ourselves. We cannot circumvent this necessity. Not if we're to survive, at any rate.

Again, in my own case, that mirror was (and is) philosophy. Now, philosophy is, in a way, the enemy of belief, of faith, and of any generally assumed "received" wisdom. But it need not be so. One effect philosophy (or, more properly, philosophical "principles") have had on me is to "open me up" to other ways of seeing while yet allowing me to retain a healthy sense of skepticism, i.e., a questioning stance. I will never judge anyone for believing this or that or the other thing... believing this or that or the other thing is part of what it means to be human. But I will judge whether or not this or that or the other thing is appropriate for me to believe. Again, "does it work for me?" No? Then I discard it. I discard it--and this is important--without supposing that it's necessary for someone for whom it works to also discard it. If it works for them, then all the more power to them. By the same token, I expect them not to force me to believe what they do. This is mere common decency in a pluralistic world such as ours. Failing to respect such diversity leads to social strife.

You say "po-TAY-to"... I say "po-TAH-to"; let's call the whole thing off.

No, let's not call the whole thing off.

And that's precisely how we can get around to, not necessarily seeing eye to eye but, at least, to looking in the same general direction: by talking to and listening to each other. Conflict resolution is communication. Communication of thoughts, of feelings, and, yes, of principles, too. Once I truly understand how important it is to you to call a "po-TAY-to" a "po-TAH-to" (or vice versa); how it allows you to take your place in the world; to be who you are; to be existentially acknowledged; I can also come to see just how much you make my own world a richer place. I would ill serve myself to exclude you from it.

Again, great thread, Elizabeth. Thanks to all who participate.

Love,
CJ

[Amelie-Laveau]

Another good thread.

This is a tough one to answer, I can't go into deep phiolosophies.

At one time, probably during my youth, I might have had some principles. My parents were always at work so I had my grandmother try to put us on the right track. School didn't install any principles in the students, in fact school might have had the opposite effect. It was similar to a jail.

From my teen years and onward, I probably had no principles. I did what ever I wanted, even if the outcome turned bad. I did what ever I could so that I could get that one piece of substance that made my life just one bit better than it was. And if I had to lie, cheat and steal, then this would be done. It didn't matter who got hurt along the way, others around me did the same so I didn't feel like I was doing wrong, it was the way to live back then.

This lack of principles also lead to a sex life that said anything goes, there was no right or wrong, just do it was the attitude. People were used by me just the same as people used me. It was a constant battle of who can get that little something extra that was always needed.

I did have one principle, uf someone was really good to me, I would never forget it and do my best not to hurt or use them.

Then again, I also had reverse principles. I had rules that might not be considered good rules, but they were rules all the same, that I lived by. For instance if someone was to hurt me, I would find a way to hurt them back, this was one of my principles in life(I don't know if this can be classified as a principle). Maybe I didn't follow other peoples ideals were, but I did make my own set of rules for the way I lived. It might not have been right way in most people's eyes, but this is the way I had to live.

Now, I am not so much like I used to be. I am tired of hurting people, I am very tired of people hurting me. Nowadays, I just want to live and sleep, maybe more sleep than live.

I do think that I might be gaining some principles in life as I read from this forum. I have learned a lot from you guys, I don't have to be like I was. I can have friends just to talk to with out taking something from them. I am not afrid that someone here will do the same to me and hurt me. You people have such a high regard for others that some of it has rubbed off on me. I can look at people for what they are and not victims for my gains, what little gains I would get.

But old habits are hard to die, and sometimes I get very angry on the forums. I sometimes feel the need to hurt someone and I argue with them over silly stuff.

I just re-read my post and it all sounds confusing to me, I hope this is what you had in mind about principles. I am just now obtaining some principles,,from you guys.

[Virginia]

Elizabeth, Honey once again you show why I think you are our resident Oak Tree, you gather us all under the safety of you branches and allow us to feel safe and open to share with our sisters here!
CJ: Never been in counselling huh?? What do you call what happens here?? There is no where and I mean no where that I know of that we can go to obtain the love, support, understanding and empathy that we have here. Our "condition" is unique all of us will admit that and finding this forum and the love and consideration shown to each other can not be found anywhere else - hell, there is no where else that can extend the understanding that you can find here - the "been there, done that!" Those "shrinks" ain't and most don't have a clue what to do with "us!" We may be a bit rough around the edges in how we share some of our experiences and advice but you can't get it anywhere else.
Amelie, your sisters here are seeing you grow, honey and we see the beauty that is within you. In the time I have known you I can see the changes in you! You are a beautiful person and you are beginning to share your gift more and more and I can see you beginning to actually enjoy the return on your investment. Thanks for being you!!!
Virginia, well this forum has made her the woman she is and I am forever in your debt for that!!!! You have also made me do some soul searching and go "back to the beginning" and I have come to recognize that she was always there, but repressed, strongly repressed! When she had finally had enough, seveal years ago it was "All right, big boy, enough is enough, you need some help so back off and let me at 'em!" All I can say now is "Damn, what a woman!!!!!" Why so long, well my parents were married for a total of five months and divorces three months before I was born. At age 4 1/2 I was placed in military school and remained there until I graduated high school - PRINCIPLES - only one it was survival of the fittest - I was the fittest and I survived! Along the way yes, I too hurt some people, and badly, and I am not proud of that but I can't fix that so I live with it and move on. I held down three jobs working my way through college and then became a naval aviator. Family etc, a couple of years ago before my wife started having seizures and brain operations my hopefully soon to be "ex-mother-in-law" said something to me that went right to my core! "I feel so sorry for you - you never had a family!"
Ron White the comedian (Redneck comedy) anyway he has a new show out called "You Can't Fix Stupid!" I did not even respond to her when she said it- I gotta admit and I am sorry, but I say what I feel - I wanted to punch her right between the eyes! I did not because "You Can't Fix Stupid!" See I do have some principles, never hit a woman - especially a retarded woman!
Yes we all have principle and I think we do need to review them once in a while - things change that is a certainty and if we don't grow and change well we die!!!!
I guess if I had to list the two principles that I conform to:
1. I say what I mean and I mean what I say!
2. Quote Winston Churchhill:"never give up; never give up; never give up!"
Thanks ladies you are all wonderful!
Virginia

[Absaroka]

This is an excellent topic and thanks for bringing it up.

I guess you could say that I have a couple of really basic principals. One is to treat others the way I would like to be treated. Probably not too much to argue with there unless we get to extreme situations. Like if I was about to committ a serious crime would I want someone to drop a dime on me to keep me from doing it.

The other is to trust in a number of spiritual principals such as forgiveness (me forgiving others) and trying to live my life the way God would want me to. Now of course we can get into all sorts of trouble. After all a few years ago some people thought God wanted them to fly airplanes into buildings. All I can really say about this without getting into a long theological discourse is that by God I mean the Creator whoever that may be, and that whatever understanding I have of God is woefully inadequate. I do think that God loves those folks in the aforementioned airplanes every bit as much as He loves me and wants very much to forgive them. And to tell the truth I hope that after they died they were able to repent and be forgiven because how can we wish the alternative on anyone for corporeal deeds.

I figure that if I can hope for that level of forgiveness for others that what clothing I wear is not a big deal in the eyes of He who created me the way I am.

Onto the smaller stuff. I have all sorts of beliefs, many of which I am not even all that aware of. And often I find that when I examine them that they have run my life in a way that is not so good.

For example in spite of all my good talk about God and forgiveness there is a deep belief somewhere in me that it's undesirable to be a punk and the only way to avoid this is to take no s*** from anyone ever. As you can imagine this has caused me problems at times. I have a pretty good sense of self preservation so I have not gotten myself into any real trouble with this in a long time, although there have been a couple of times when I was perilously close to getting myself into real trouble. But what is a problem is how easily this can rent too much space in my head and cause me a lot of anguish and anxiety. I think I would be a lot happier if I could really and truly let go of that idea.

I have teenage daughters. I find I am having to constantly reexamine my ideas about the right way for adults and teenagers to react. Partly because what was appropriate a year ago may no longer be appropriate as they grow older. Partly because some of my ideas just didn't seem to work. Other times though I need to stick to my guns, since they will take any self doubts I might have and run with them. For example if I am reexamining my ideas about what time a proper curfew might be they will be happy to bring up the idea that maybe there shouldn't be a curfew at all.

I could fill page after page here with the smaller principals and are they working for me or not. But I am pretty comfortable with the really big principals.

I would have to say now that I think about it a bit that in regard to my crossdressing (as opposed to that of anyone else here) that it is important that I not impose it on others. Which means that since in the circles I move in no one is saying that guys should come to a party in their favorite dress, and since it would probably make most people I know uncomfortable, I conceal it. There are only a couple of people that the secrecy bothers me with, my wife and a couple of very close friends. Personally I think that this is far too big a secret to keep from my wife. But it might (don't really know) jeapordize the marriage and I don't want to take that chance. So I have a couple of principals here in conflict and I don't like that. I don't like what a good liar I am (avoiding any mention of the truth at all being the best way to lie) and at the same time I take a perverse pride in what I still consider the skill of being able to lie believably.

I've told my therapist everything. He's not allowed to tell anyone anyway. I ahve a sponsor in a 12 step program. It's suggested I tell him everything also and I am sure he could handle this but I am not sure I could handle him knowing. So I have told him the truth, that there are some things I have told only my therapist. He is okay with that and so am I.



Absaroka

[Anita]

I would say that principles probably don't change that much for most of us, while what I'll call "guidelines" do. What I learned about being a man consisted of a lot of both principles and guidelines, but the principles are the learning that doesn't change much from boyhood to old age. Whereas the guidelines do change, and you keep adapting them to new circumstances.

"Be an honest business owner." That's a principle of mine, and it's not going to change from when I mowed lawns at 13 to when I do floors now. I could do them as a woman, and it wouldn't change the principle. But the guidelines would be different for the 13 year old, the 35 year old, the woman, and any other different role you can think of.

So I would say that when I examine my life, it's usually guidelines that I'm looking at, seeing what needs to change. My basic principles have been the same for many decades.

My new life as a version of a woman was revolutionary as far as needing new guidelines, and altering the old ones. It did not need any new principles, as far as I know. This is not to say that what I'm calling guidelines are frivolous, or easily changed. They aren't. I went through a lot of pain in seeing which guidelines about "being a man" were going to have to change to accomodate Anita's coming.

I will say that one priinciple has come to be more important to me as I grow older. It's the one Absaroka mentioned; forgiveness. It was a very minor guideline for me as a younger person--it's become more like a principle now. Good post, Elizabeth.

[Elizabeth]

Hi girls,

We have really had some awesome posts here and some really interesting ways of looking at this issue.

I just wanted to reinterate, in the event that my first post did not really come out as clearly as I would have hoped, that I do not beleive it is a good thing to hold on to principles, just because they are "our principles" The principles we live by should be congruent with the lives we live.

It makes no sense to me to live by principles that suggest what we are doing is wrong and that it is a selfish choice that needs to be hidden in shame, when we know that we did not choose this and will most likely never stop. I know only from my own experience and what I have read in the medical journals and in forums like this one. The treatment for gender dysphoria is not abstinence. It is acceptance. Abstinence leads to depression, self loathing, low self esteemm, anger and in many cases suicide.

I know of no person in the mental healthcare profession or medical doctrine that suggests that the preferred treatment for gender dysphoria is to attempt to quit. And while there is anecdotal evidence that a person of strong will and desire can, with counseling and behavior modification exercises, overcome crossdressing. The results are less than impressive and the numbers of such motivated individuals is extremely small.

If the behavior is not going to change, which most of you already know it's not, than it only makes sense to adopt principles that support the behavior, rather than condemn it.

Love always,
Elizabeth

[CJ]

Hi all,

There are some excellent responses, here. This is awesome.

Anita,

I like your take on the difference between principles and guidelines and I tend to agree with you that our most cherished principles don't change much over the course of our lives. They're like bedrock, in a way; they sort of form our personality whereas who we are makes us adopt this or that guideline. Generally speaking, anyway. But, still, I think it's important that we examine (and occasionally reexamine) even our bedrock principles--especially if they've led us to hard places in our lives and if it one day becomes obvious to us that they don't work for us but against us.


Virginia,

Although I've never been in therapy, I guess I was unhappy enough with a few things in my life that I certainly wanted to try. Last fall, I met once with a psychiatrist I know through my boss and once with a sexologist. As I recounted at the time in my "mini-RLE" thread, the meeting with the sexologist was a total disaster. But the psychiatrist was excellent; he's very attentive, warm, humane, and he knows his stuff (he comes to our workplace to give a yearly presentation on the latest meds and treatments). When I told him I was a longstanding member of an online crossdressers forum, he was glad; he told me that such groups, either online or in real life, are often a lifeline and the best form of support and he thoroughly encouraged me not to abandon the forum.

At the time, he found my claim odd that there were no real-life support groups for crossdressers here, in Montreal. However, two weeks after our meeting, I phoned him back for a follow-up and he admitted to having come up empty-handed himself. He'd asked his colleagues, phoned around, polled his resources, and even went online (all things I'd already done) and found that, aside from a sexual orientation clinic and a transsexual support group (which I'd already called), there were no other resources for gender-variant individuals. He told me to continue on the forum. Uh, duh! I would've done so anyway. This place saved my life, in a way.


Amélie,

I hope you won't be offended by this but I tend to think of you as our resident "bad girl with a heart of gold." Although your life may have led you down some dark alleys, figuratively speaking, I suspect that who you are--the Amélie we've come to know and love--has shed no small amount of light in those dark places. I think you're a good soul mired in a place where principles that work for you are hard to come by. Mind you, I'm not judging you. You know I'm not. I just hope you realize that you have much more power over your own destiny than you perhaps believe you do. That's my belief, anyway. Come to think of it, it's also one of my most cherished principles: we have the power to effect changes in our lives.

Love,
CJ

[Absaroka]

With regard to the whole question of gender dysphoria an important question is how much? Because since there is this spectrum, one can have a little bit of dyphoria or a lot or somewhere in between. For me it has been relatively simple. I'm a guy with a few more feminine traits than usual. These forums along with many other things have helped me to accept that.

Self acceptance I think is always a key principal as is acceptance of others. For me self acceptance sometimes includes accepting the idea that I, like everyone else on the planet, sometimes have feelings or desires that it is best I do not act on. THis has a lot more to do with characteristcs like anger and greed than anything to do with gender however.

I really liked what Anita said about guidelines vs. principals.

I guess that the guidelines for me as a man have a lot to do with how do I express such things as emotionality, nurturance, artistry, and sensuality in ways that work for me. Thinking out loud here. A lot of having to do with the guidelines is do they work?

Absaroka

[DonnaT]

If the behavior [read CDing in my (Donna) case] is not going to change, which most of you already know it's not, than it only makes sense to adopt principles that support the behavior, rather than condemn it.

I reckon the hardest to try to follow is, don't make promises you can't keep. Even though I still believe in that principle, and try very hard to follow it, sometimes promises get broken either through circumstances or selfishness.

The reason I selected these two quotes comes to the discussion my wife and I had last night. She accused me of breaking promises made a long time ago. I told her I know I have, but times change, circumstances change. That I tried to keep the promises and did for many many years.

So, I agree Elizabeth.

My wife is trying to push me back in the closet, and I told her I wasn't going there ever again.

[Elizabeth]

Hi Donna,

She accused me of breaking promises made a long time ago. I told her I know I have, but times change, circumstances change. That I tried to keep the promises and did for many many years.

I sure understand this and I would bet a good many of our sisters here also understand this. It's a tough situation, but the way I looked at it was this, I only lied because I was forced to. There really was no other way. I was not supposed to crossdress, yet there was no way I could not. I hated lying, I hated what it made me. It made me feel ashamed of myself, not only for lying, but for not facing this. Waiting so long to say that this need must be fulfilled for me to have any quality of life.

I do think there are so many of us out there that not only neglected to tell the people we married about our crossdressing, but once caught minimized it, understated it and continued to do it in secret, or wish we were doing it.

To many SO this appears to be an escalation in the crossdressing, but really it is only an escalation of us telling them the true nature of our needs and desires. We so desperately want and need to do this, but we also don't want to lose our families, friends, jobs and all the other bad things that can happen in some communities if one were to be outted.

Because of this, we only let out a little at a time, thinking that we can tell them more, as they get used to the last thing we told them. It seems perfectly rational and there are stories on the forums where this philosophy is promoted by those who say it worked for them.

Only problem is, there are certain SO's who beleive they can handle a small amount of secretive dressing, but as the escalation in desire to dress more frequently and more publically happens, there is a realization by the SO that thier DH or boyfriend is not going though a phase or a fetish and his desire to do this is not going to diminish. It is not going to go away.

Between the realization that the desire is not going to diminish and the crossdressers need to express this part of themselves as they get older, there can become an impasse. The distance between our needs and our wants and desires becomes too great for the relationship to sustain.

I have not only seen this in my own life, but have read many similar stories to mine and also witnessed this happen to my sister Virginia, who at one time seemed confident that her wife would come around with "baby steps", but unfortunately ended in divorce also.

I have to say, I like that you say that you discussed it with your wife in a conversation, not in a heated fight. It shows that you two must have pretty solid communication. Now that is a reason for optomism.

Love always,
Elizabeth