After Jesus, the greatest gift God ever gave me is my wife, Tonya. The first time I ever saw her she was sitting on her front porch with her 5-year old son. Now, her neighborhood was primarily inhabited by doctors, lawyers, professors, and local politicians so the logical assumption would be that she was married. As for myself, I was in a five-year relationship with my girlfriend and we had a three-year old child. Despite all this when she said, "hello", I knew immediately I was going to marry her.
Suddenly I began seeing her everywhere: at the grocery store, at the mall, strolling downtown. Though I did not know at the time, she took a job where my mother worked and they became close friends. A year later we met for the first time when we found ourselves working for the same company. As it turned out she was divorced and, though I didn't know at the time, my girlfriend was in the process of leaving me for another man.
The next severl years were a whirlwind as we dated, got married, had two children and started our own business. We were, and remain, constant companions. Since the day we first met we have always worked together and in our married life we have virtually never spent a night apart. We are so close that people began referring to us as, "Chonya", a contraction of "Charlie" and "Tonya".
February 15, 2014 Tonya and I will celebrate our 23rd anniversary. I have no doubt that Tonya and I were literally created for each other. Our strengths compensate for the other's weaknesses and neither of us fit the stereotypical gender roles: I do most of the cooking and she does home repairs. We fit; like puzzle pieces.
So, why did I choose to hide my CD desires from her for five years? Fear, of course. I had found out the hard way that women don't always react well to the discovery that their partner is a CD. Fear of rejection, fear of being outed to friends and family, fear of job loss, fear of being labeled a freak: these are all powerful motivators. Fear is one of Satan's most powerful weapons.
Most crossdressers are well acquainted with what goes through a CD's mind when they enter a new relationship. There's the fear of the consequences if your secret is revealed of course, but there is also the belief that getting married will put an end to the desire. On top of that, my wife and I were both finding ourselves drawing closer to God during this time period, and that brought along a whole new set of challenges for me.
The first five years of our marriage were adifficult personal journey for me. I was "successful" at ridding myself of CD desires many times in this period, only to have the desire come back stronger than ever. Each time the desire returned I found myself pushing the envelope more and more. It was during this time that I began acquiring wigs, breast forms, and makeup as I increasingly had the desire to go out into the world in the female form. Tonya started noticing little things like missing clothing that turned up later in another location and eventually she amassed all the circumstantial evidence she needed to ask me, "Are you a crossdresser?" I know my wife well enough to know this was a rhetorical question; she already knew the answer. I also know her well enough to know that she had done her homework on the subject, i.e. she knew to use the term "crossdresser". So, I had no choice but to be completely honest.
Just like that, with a single question, my soul was laid bare. My secret was out. This was the beginning of the end. Except it wasn't the end. This was the beginning of something wonderful. My wife accepted and supported me - the whole me. We spent the next several months exploring this new aspect of our relationship and before I knew it I was going out as Jocelyn and interacting with regular people. Finally, after nearly 25 years of struggle, I could say, "I'm a crossdresser and that's OK."
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