Wow. It's been over a year

Ok, then.  It's been over a year since I last posted.  I didn't realize it had been that long.

But for the record, things are wonderful!

My wife and I have grown closer together, we're taking things one step at a time and she's been awesome through the whole thing.

I've been out a few times dressed, to some parties with some awesome people I met on FetLife. There's a lot of good folks in a group I've joined.  I've had sex while dressed (with another girl), and it was wonderful.  I've cuddled with friends as a girl and that was awesome, too.

I've bought some new clothes, including a sexy bustier, and gotten complimented on my looks and on my courage.  I even took the opportunity when my wife was away to go to one of the parties dressed from door to door!  That felt so good, too!

Tonight, I put on makeup by myself for the first time (I've gotten help with it before), and it didn't look totally clownish.  My wife said it looked damn good, especially for a first time.  She was perfectly ok with it, even giving me advice and helping me with taking it off (since I have to work tomorrow).

So, all in all, life is good!

So what do I make of this?

So tonight, we were on our way home from going out a bit. 

One of our boundaries is that, when it comes to my girl clothes, I am responsible for my own laundry.  No big deal.

So I remembered that I needed to do some laundry, and asked my wife if the washer was going to be free tonight.  She said yes, and I reassured her that I would make sure my clothes were out of the dryer in the morning, before she got up.  She replied, "Oh that's fine.  If I need to do some laundry, I'll just wait till Thursday if your stuff is still in the dryer."

Now, I'm trying to not take things badly.  I really am.  I don't want to take things the wrong way, and I don't want to start any arguments, particularly since it's late.  But she would rather wait an extra day to do her laundry rather than sully her pristine little digits by removing a few pairs of panties from the dryer to make room for her laundry.  Panties, I might add, that are very little different from the ones she wears every day.

Is she really that disgusted by the thought that the panties are mine and not hers that she won't even look at them, in fact will wait a whole additional day so that I can remove these filthy disgusting garments from the dryer?

She still calls my crossdressing, "that thing you do" or "the stuff you do," rather than call it what it is.

I'm still relegated to dressing late at night after she's gone to bed, and only in my office, just so there's no chance that she will lay her innocent eyes on me wearing anything less than manly.

I'm trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here, honest I am.  But how else am I supposed to take these things?  I see very little sign of flexibility in her.  I see very little sign that these boundaries will ever change.  The boundaries that seem to be only around me, not around her.  The boundaries that seem to be for her comfort and protection, never mine.

Color me sad, frustrated, a little resentful.

It's been a while

It's been a while, both since I posted and since I've had a chance to be Megan for a while.  Between work pressures and family pressures, there just hasn't been enough private time.  Tonight, after dinner, I told my lovely wife that I needed some alone time.  Well, honestly, I sort of hemmed and hawed as she said goodnight that she finally figured out what I wanted.  I still hesitate to tell her, not because she'll disapprove, but because it would make her a little uncomfortable. 

Well the lovely, perceptive woman she is, she figured it out and immediately put me at ease.  She went off to bed smiling and I went off to my office smiling.

Today's been a day and frankly, I could use some pretty time.  Normally, I'll just slip on a skirt and blouse and maybe my flats and just relax in my office.  Tonight, though, I went a bit more elegant.  Stockings and my heels, and my pretty black skirt and purple blouse (I really need some more tops!)

I feel wonderful.

I've been thinking again that maybe it was time to let it go.  I hadn't realized until I got dressed up tonight how silly an idea that is.  There are days when I need this feeling; when I need to feel pretty and feminine (looks to the contrary).  Especially after a day like today.  Not going to go into a lot of details, but suffice to say it was a very long day at work and I left a lot undone when I left that will just have to wait till tomorrow.  Twelve hours is quite enough, says I.

So here I am, feeling pretty and feminine and kind of sexy! (It's the stockings and heels... must be!)  I love how the skirt feels as it brushes against the stockings, and I love just feeling pretty.

So no, I don't think this is something I can (or want to) quit.  It's too much me to do that.  Now, I'm off be a geeky little girl and play some video games! 

My first pedicure!

I've mentioned, I believe, how much I love my wife, yes?

Well today she gave me even more reason.  I had mentioned to her that I wanted to get my nails done.  I've never had a pedicure before and had always been a bit indifferent to my toenails.  I wanted to change that and get both my fingernails and toenails looking more presentable.

She offered to go with me to get a manicure/pedicure done.  Including color on the toes!  (Her idea!)

Yes, my lovely wonderful wife went with me and we both got pedicures and I got a manicure.  When we got there, she insisted on the deluxe package, which included all kinds of neat stuff, including a hot stone massage of my calves and shoulders, a rub down of my arms and hands, and a really good job on my fingernails and toenails.  Here's a picture of the toes :)

Ok, I don't have the sexiest feet in the world (they look much nicer in stockings ), but I love the color!

I feel very pretty, and definitely more feminine.  

This has been a great day!

And I love my wife :)

First Day of Therapy

So, I began seeing my therapist again today.

I had seen her quite some time ago for some other issues not related to my cross dressing, and we both agreed that my time with her was done when we were essentially spending most of our session chatting about stuff instead of doing anything therapeutic.  While I love chatting with her (she's damn smart, easy to talk to and definitely makes one think), I figured it wasn't really fair to charge my insurance company for a chat buddy :)

So after a couple of incidents where I was going into an unpleasant state of mind because of a few things that happened around the house, I and my wife figured it was time to actually get some professional help dealing with, not the cross dressing itself, but with the emotional issues surrounding it, particularly relating to my father's actions when and after he caught me. 

The first session was really good.  We did spend a little time catching up and talking like old friends, but not a whole lot.  I was nervous and somewhat unprepared (she called me with a last-minute cancellation and I was totally not ready for it, but I jumped at the opportunity anyways), but we are working on a plan to help me deal with the crappy emotional feedback I feel whenever I start to feel that my dressing is hurting someone or making them uncomfortable.

Yesterday, we had some company over.  My wife was folding some towels that had gotten left in the dryer, when she came across a pair of my panties.  At first, she thought they were hers, but didn't recognize them.  After she realized they were mine, she quietly called me into our room where she handed them to me and told me where she found them.  Now one of our agreed upon boundaries is that I do my own laundry of my girl clothes.  I had done some the day before and apparently missed a pair of panties in the dryer.

She could have made me feel like shit.  She could have been cold and nasty about it, or even cold and formal and disapproving.

Instead, she giggled about it with me.  I apologized, and she just smiled and said it was ok, and we laughed together about it.  See why I love my wife?  She could have tossed me into one of those nasty little feedback loops where I felt like shit, but she didn't want me to hurt.  So she found the humor in it and shared it with me and we laughed together.

She'd better be careful or I might start to actually feel good about myself again :)

And that's why I love my wife.

More therapy every week for a while, so probably some more posts here and there.

Megan

Coming Out, Part V, The Aftermath

Well, curious reader, it's amazing what difference a few days can make.

Joan and I have been talking steadily.  One ground rule that I've made is that I won't bring up the topic, but will wait for her to decide she's comfortable enough to talk.  Of course, this doesn't completely preclude my mentioning it, just any significant, substantive conversations will be started by her.  This helps her maintain a comfort level, which is really important to her accepting all this.

So the topic has come up every day, sometimes a couple of times a day, since my last post.  We've talked about all kinds of things.  I've reassured her that she is still first in my heart and will always be that way.  I've reassured her that I'm not gay, nor likely to decide I am any time in the future.  She's reassured me that I have her love and nothing is going to change that (a huge thing for me!), and that we are not going to split up over this.

We've talked about some girly things (she wants us to do a manicure/pedicure together!) and I asked about waxing and how painful it was.  All in all, it's been a great few days. 

I've had a few "What the hell am I doing," moments, but working through those as they happen.

I've stopped biting my fingernails (!), a habit since I was 10 or so.

I'm determined to clean up my office and make it a nice safe place for Megan to come out occasionally at home.  I don't think Joan will be ready to meet Megan any time soon, so I only get to be her from time to time.  Not the best situation in the world, but you know... if it never gets any better than this, I could live happily like this with my wife forever.  I'll still have my time as Megan, and she'll still have her husband.

So I think the whole coming out story line is about over for now.  Now it's just the day-to-day living part.  I'm sure I'll have some adventures I'll post here, and some hard times I'll work through here.

For now, I have my wife who loves me, my friend Abby who is going to help me through a lot, and my online friends Ellen and Megan (yes, another one, no I don't have a split personality) to chat with from time to time.

Life is good.

Coming Out, Part IV - The Pain

You know, I thought it was too easy.  And it appears I was right.  Today was painful. 

My wife, whom I truly love with all my heart, told me something today.  She didn't say it to be hurtful.  It was actually more in the way of a confession.  What it was isn't important.  Suffice it to say it showed me exactly how much all of this has affected her.

So, I felt like a complete shit.  I felt horrible.  I felt like I had let her down, I felt like I had betrayed her, I felt like I was the lowest form of life on the planet.

So I went home at lunch and told her that dressing and all wasn't worth hurting her.  It wasn't worth putting her through enough pain that she ... well it was a lot of pain.

So I told her I would stop.  And I meant it.  I promised I would just stop. 

I didn't want to hurt her.  I also didn't want to feel like shit.  I didn't want to hate myself any more.  And I didn't want her to hate me. 

Let me be clear here.  She NEVER said she hated me.  She never said she felt I was horrible, or betrayed her or anything like that.  That was all me.

More accurately, it was all my father.  All over again. 

I was so determined that I wasn't going to let him poison me again the way he did before.  I was so damned determined to be me.

And all the feelings were still there.  Just waiting for the right combination of words, circumstances, whatever to flood out from the fucking abscess they've been rotting in for 30 fucking years.

So here I am. 

We talked, we cried.  We talked more. 

She's made an appointment with her therapist.  She wants her to help her learn to deal with this.  She wants to be better.  For me.  Because she loves me.

I'm thinking I need to do the same thing.  There's a lady I saw years ago, back when things between us got really bad.  It wasn't entirely things between us, there was a third party involved (not someone I was in a relationship with), that made things immeasurably worse with their lies, their selfishness, and other problems that I'm not going into here.

We both got help and things got better.

Looks like it's time for that again.

Wish me luck!