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Many women don't know what to do when they find out that their husband or boyfriend likes to dress like her!
In the same way that most heterosexual men are attracted to female women, the majority of heterosexual women seek masculinity and virility in the men they want to relate to. Many women are unable to be attracted to men who wear women's dresses, lingerie, and shoes, just as many men are not attracted to women who wear typical men's clothing.
Of course, this also applies to most homosexual men and women, respectively.
Another issue is the continued confusion people make between gender and sexuality: Many women fear that crossdressers are homosexuals. Not all homosexuals are crossdressers, just as not all crossdressers are homosexuals - or transsexuals.
Another difficulty is that many men practice crossdressing and keep it hidden from girlfriends, wives, and others until they are discovered accidentally. In many cases, they may feel betrayed.
I believe that transparency is important in human relationships. On the other hand, I think that men do not need to tell everything they do, not even to girlfriends or wives as long as it does not harm them. It’s similar in that it also doesn’t make sense for other people to know her secrets and she most likely isn’t sharing. We all have things that we choose not to share. This is true the older we are when we establish a new relationship.
On the other hand, there are women who are tolerant of crossdressing and even support their boyfriends or husbands - - after all, on a planet of almost 8 billion inhabitants, there is certainly someone who will accept you and like you for just being you.
Some women often have fun with crossdressing boyfriends or husbands. Yes, there are women who like crossdressers. The range is endless as is the type of relationship one might have. From women who find a simple attraction to crossdressers to those who are more fetish inclined. In most cases, I don't believe crossdressers think this is a punishment—if that is the intent.
And dreaming doesn't cost anything, so why not a wedding with both wearing a wedding dress. Just look at how many fun things a couple can do thanks to crossdressing, all that is required is an open mind and open heart ...
In retrospect, what if you found out that your girlfriend or wife likes to wear men's clothes? Maybe even let the hair grow on her legs, etc. Men's clothes are not as varied and interesting as women's and the stigma so much less as it is. I believe there are more men who like to dress up as women than the other way around—in the true sense of crossdressing.
But I confess that if that happened to me ... I go back to the beginning of the article ... I wouldn't know what to do.
- Would you like to have a girlfriend or wife who supports your crossdressing?
- Does your girlfriend or wife know about your crossdressing? Does she support you?
- What would you do if you found out that your girlfriend or wife liked to crossdress as a man?.
Marie Claire
Marie,
Nice article that succinctly captures many facts/observations that have been stated by so many others, both here at CDH and elsewhere. How do women deal with it? I think the more essential question for most of us is how does YOUR woman deal with it? And to state the obvious, there are as many different answers as there are cross dressers in relationships.
But to generalize, I would say that the vast majority of SOs have a very hard time dealing with it. I think a major reason can found if we modify your question: "How do we cross dressers deal with cross dressing?" For many of us, the answers involve feeling of shame, guilt and lifelong bewilderment at this aspect of our behavior, to the point that we feel it is something that must be hidden from others, most painfully from SOs, often for years or decades into a relationship.
In short, we don't fully understand this about ourselves - most importantly, we don't have the answer to the eternal question of "why do I/you need to do this?" Until science discovers that it can all be explained by a cross dressing gene in our DNA codes, or something to that effect, I think the best we can do is sit down with our SOs and try to articulate how it makes us feel.
This is a challenging dialogue, but one that needs to be sustained over the long term if a relationship is going to survive. For one thing, it requires that we ourselved have a good understanding of who we are as cross dressers. We may not understand the why, but we do know the how/what/when of our behavior and again, how it makes us feel.
It is also useful to have at hand the kind of facts highlighted in your article, so that we can, for example, be ready to answer the usual questions like are you gay, do you want to be a woman, etc. Such questions are the first ones asked by many women because it is the only frame-of-reference they have when trying to deal with this new information about their partner. Society in general can understand homosexuality, bisexuality, and perhaps to a lesser extent, the concept of what it means to be transgender. It's Pride Month, for goodness sake.
But the non-fetish, non-transitioning cross dresser? As far as I'm aware (because it seems to be updated frequently), the letters C and D have yet to be added to LGBTQ. So, I'm going to be dramatic and say, Society as a whole has no understanding whatsoever.
I think it's also useful to be aware of the different ways cross dressing is described/depicted out here in Internet land, because the response of many SOs will be to start doing their own research and, within a few mouse clicks, stumble across pornographic or fetish sites that may or may not reflect a CD's own experiences. In short, it's important to control the message that you are sending about yourself, as an individual, and the aspects that you are interested in, how they make you feel.
So back to your question, how do women deal with cross dressing? There's only one way to know, and that is to communication with the only woman of importance, your woman. We need to be completely open and honest with our SOs and we need to listen very carefully, openly and non-judgmentally when they tell us how they are dealing with it, every step of the way. It's an ongoing conversation that hopefully will lead to understanding and a balance being achieved, even if it takes years or even decades.
This is so well written, thanks Mona it could not of come at a better time for me to read this, thank]n you
This is so well written, thanks Mona it could not of come at a better time for me to read this, thank]n you
You are spot on about communicating why we cross dress to our SO. We need to be able to answer this question ourselves first.
You are spot on about communicating why we cross dress to our SO. We need to be able to answer this question ourselves first.
great article with many of our concerns and issues we all face on a daily basis. I do wish more ladies would be more accepting and understanding opf our nee/desire to dress up.
