Wish You Were Here

I was listening to old music a few days ago and came across a favorite I hadn't heard in awhile: "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. I had forgotten, but these lyrics actually played a huge role in my decision to come out of the closet. 

So, so you think you can tell

Heaven from Hell,

Blue skies from pain.

Can you tell a green field

From a cold steel rail?

A smile from a veil?

Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade

Your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange

A walk on part in the war

For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.

We're just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl,

Year after year,

Running over the same old ground.

What have we found

The same old fears.

Wish you were here.

The whole song speaks to my feelings as a lifelong gender non-conforming individual, but it's the last four lines of the second verse that pushed me out of the closet for good. 

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange

A walk on part in the war

For a lead role in a cage?

I was no longer willing to accept cold comfort in society. Not if it meant the death of my very being. And although I wasn't that keen on accepting a part in a war, I had grown weary of living in a cage. So I stepped out. Guess what? It was fine. No, "fine" isn't the right word; it was amazing! My wife, children, friends, and family have all been supportive to varying degrees, and for the first time in my life I was free to just be me. The only thing I regret is that took me 29 years to get there. What a waste.

To be clear, most people in my life, if asked, would say they just don't understand it. That's OK. I don't understand it myself. I don't expect people to like it, talk about, or embrace it. I just expect them to accept it as reality and realize that I don't need their approval to exist. 

It wasn't always like this. I started out deeply closeted. I've been outed and lost relationships and my livelihood. I've experienced loss, betrayal, and self-loathing. But I survived. More importantly I learned something very powerful: All of the pain was my fault. I chose the wrong woman to share my life with. I chose the wrong friends. I chose the wrong job. Oh, I loved all of it; everything that was my life. I didn't want to give up one tiny part of it. That's why I hid and feared it would all be lost one day. What a shameful way to treat the greatest of all: life. 

I sometimes wonder where I would be if everything hadn't been ripped away. I can never be sure, of course, but I do know I wouldn't be here and "here" is the best place I have ever been.

To tell, or not to tell

I recently joined a Cross Dressing forum. I should say I re-joined the forum, but it has been many years since I was active. Guess what? It hasn't changed. It's the same questions, the same stories, the same arguing, the same...everything.

Does it sound elitist to say that I find much of what I read in our community to be boring, sad, and just plain wrong? To answer my own question: "Yes. It does sound elitist." Honestly, I'm not a snob, but of course that's just what a snob would say. Anyway, that's a topic for another day. What I want to talk about today is the subject of coming out to our spouses. I came across a favorite topic today in the aforementioned forum: Should I tell my wife? What follows is my response. My apologies for just copying and pasting instead of making a proper blog, but I'm lazy. Would a snob admit that?

I am firmly in the "tell" camp. I say this as someone who has experienced the ugliness that can follow revealing I am a cross dresser. I say this with full knowledge that cross dressing leads to divorce in many, perhaps even the majority, of cases. If that's the result I would not assume there had to be other causes, I would assume that you married the wrong person. You are a cross dresser; she couldn't stay married to a cross dresser.

I find the notion that it is OK to keep secrets from our spouses to be very troubling. OK for who?  Obviously it's great for us; probably not so great for our spouse, though. When we keep this a lifelong secret we rob our spouses of the opportunity to make fully informed decisions about their own lives.

Please don't mistake that statement for lack of empathy. I absolutely 100% understand the desire to keep this secret from the world. I've been there, done that, and have the scars that come from being discovered. I suppose one could even justify keeping the secret if their cross dressing activities are strictly limited to times when their spouse is absent AND that the activities have 0% impact on the spouse.

Is that possible, though? Do we impact our spouses by borrowing their clothes? What about spending family resources on our own stuff? Fantasizing about experiencing sex from a woman's perspective? Getting grumpy because our spouse won't leave the house long enough for us to dress?

We want the same things others want: a loving relationship, a stable income, friends, etc. None of us intend for our desires to impact others, but what happens when they do? You shared that a previous relationship ended, at least in part, due to cross dressing. You assumed (and we all identify with this) that you could control this desire. Now you've discovered, like most of us do, that you can't. The problem is that you told your current wife this was no longer an issue. I'm making an assumption here, but based on what you shared cross dressing appears to be more than a rare indulgence for you. What will the consequences be if your spouse discovers your secret? How likely is it that you will be able to maintain the secret?

Every single member of this forum knows the pain of keeping this secret. Each of us has to wrestle with the question of whether to stay or leave the closet. I'm so very grateful that we can gather together to support one another. But, please, let's not make the mistake of promoting keeping secrets as the recipe for a perfect marriage. We may very well have a perfect marriage, but until our spouse knows what we know all we really have is the illusion of perfection. Maybe that illusion is enough for you, and that's fine, for you. But, our partners absolutely have the right to make that decision for themselves.

And yes, if your marriage ends those urging you to come clean won't be there for you - at least not in the way an actual real life friend can be. We will tell you, however, that it is possible to survive and even thrive. We will tell you that it is possible to have a great relationship based on mutual compromise and respect. And we will tell you we understand and will continue to offer an ear or a shoulder to cry on no matter which way you decide.