Tell Her The Truth

Many crossdressers learn to become liars and manipulators of the truth to avoid the humiliation of having their secret discovered.

Who Are You Really Protecting?

Many crossdressers are sure that by hiding their dressing desires, they are “protecting” their wives and/or girlfriends.  But are they protecting the women they supposedly love, or themselves?

Many CDs are too embarrassed to acknowledge the truth about their crossdressing desires with the female they love. They hardly understand it themselves, so how can they explain it to someone else? But being trans is not something you do (unless you’re a fetishist, which may be driven by things other than gender identity); it is something you are, and as such, by locking it away in the closet, your wife (or girlfriend) only knows you as a fragmented person, not the complete person you are.

Truth can be hard. Especially when it requires telling someone you are in love with something you’re embarrassed about. Fear is ever present: the fear she will look down on you, the fear that she will no longer want to — or be able to — love you, the fear that she will leave you.  At the same time, making her an unwilling participant in a secret life she is unaware of (which will reveal itself anyway) is cruel and unfair. After all, you’re letting her build a life based on a misconception about who you are as an individual and as a couple.  The concept that you’re “protecting” her is just another lie that you convince yourself of. In truth, you’re protecting yourself at her expense. Thus, many crossdressers learn to become liars and manipulators of the truth to avoid the humiliation of having their secret discovered.

She Finds Out Anyway

Ultimately, from every account I have ever heard, wives and girlfriends in long-term relationships ultimately find out anyway, probably because most TGs subconsciously want them to know.  So do it in the beginning so that “if” you are going to have a relationship, it begins with honesty and grows in truth. Otherwise, when she finds out, it shatters everything she thought you were and everything you had together. She will likely feel bewildered and betrayed. You will have tricked her into a false understanding of ‘who’ you are, and how could she ever really trust you again?

Truth doesn’t always lead to happy endings. I know this from personal experience.  Yet even through unhappy endings, I am still a fan of truth at all costs, because the little white lies we tell to hide our secret lives can become habits of deception that creep into other areas of our lives, sometimes without us even realizing it.  

I wrote a song many years ago, and this passage of the lyrics seem relevant here:

Every one of us has known sadness

Every one of us has known what it is to cry

Always chasing love, never knowing quite why 

Love, Lust or Validation?

Know why you seek love from the beginning. Ask yourself why you are looking for a relationship with this woman. Is it Love, Lust or Validation? 

People say doing the right thing is hard. But that isn’t accurate. Knowing the right thing is what’s hard. But once you know what the right thing is, you’ll find yourself compelled to do it. We did not choose to be trans, but we can choose how to deal with it in our lives. We can choose to tell those we want to share our lives with the truth, with love and honesty.

She then has a right to feel however she feels about it, and we cannot and should not try to control that. She may be shocked, horrified, amused, or anything else. But in the end, if you are accepted anyway, with the truth, you have a real relationship based on who you are; if not, you never did, and never will.