Blogs are often seen as a way for ourselves to purge things from our soul… so this article will have little interest for most of you. It’s just part of my internal struggle in getting my wife to accept the next stages in my crossdressing…
Lucille Sorella has an interesting article for the “New Year Resolutions”. She suggests that we don’t think of “resolutions” but more as “intentions”, since in many cases, we will fail those resolutions and then become frustrated. Whereas by “intentions” we might achieve some success and thus gain a bit more of self-confidence. I think I last published my last list of “resolutions” back in 2008, and was not very successful — some of the things I “decided” upon only happened in 2010 or so. Some of the “resolutions” on that list were actually planned for 2010… or 2012… like remaining a whole month as Sandra. But this becomes less and less likely as time passes: last year, I’d have settled for just a week. Then just for a few days. Now I just pine for going out…
You all know that my wife strictly forbids me from going out alone, because it causes her intense anxiety. I’ve very reluctantly accepted to patiently wait until she felt a bit better about it, and bring her with me the next time I drove round as Sandra, but she keeps postponing the experience. Every other week, some fellow CD tells me about an event or just invites me out, and I keep being denied. Two years ago, I was granted the promise to go out during Carnival (our local equivalent of Mardi Gras, and since it’s during deep winter, unlike in Brazil, it means wearing a lot of clothes 🙂 ), but I’ve checked the calendar, and Carnival is almost always on top of the Tibetan New Year, which we’re otherwise busy, and there is no time for crossdressing. So this means that the most likely time to be allowed to go out is — never.
I admit that in the past few months, the last thing I do before the long ritual of undressing is just to wear my faux fur coat, pack the handbag, and pretend to go out. My wife, by then, is fast asleep. So I just enjoy the adrenaline rush from imagining that I could actually go out while she’s sleeping. By then she usually coughs in her sleep, or moves in the bed, and this is a clear sign that she’s probably not that fast asleep, and that I should forget all about it — so I just put the coat back in the closet and start undressing.
Well, during my last session — the first in 2012! — I couldn’t resist any longer. My wife was really deep asleep. It was a Thursday, when there is pretty much nobody awake after 2 AM. The clanking of the dishwasher covered most noises anyway, and when my wife is asleep, she doesn’t wake up that easily with the barely perceptive noise of opening the apartment door (although even the slightest metallic grinding from the lock seems unusually loud to my ears!). So, in an impulse, I called the lift, and stepped on it, and there I was, back to the street 🙂
Of course I felt horrible about it; I was breaking a promise to my wife, and I truly hate to do that. Even the “justification” that she has been breaking her own promises for the past seven years is not valid. I’m supposed to keep to my promises to build up the trust she has in me, and, through that, get her to accept my need of going out.
So instead of my usual drive — sometimes walking around for a bit — I didn’t even do that. I just had a smoke in front of the building, enjoyed the cold January breeze in the night, and went back home again. It was perhaps not even ten minutes.
But of course it was exhilarating! When you’ve been postponing going out for so long, even ten minutes of walking around just in front of the building, listening to the high heels of my boots on the cobbled stones, was more than enough to utterly enjoy the adrenalin rush. The coat I wore is a bit too thick and hides the feminine curves, so I would be picked out far more easily that way if there was anyone around (I use a belt on top of the coat to get at least a visible waist line!). But, well, it’s very elegant. Overdressing for sure!
Back at home, I sighed, and got through my undressing routine again. My wife never woke up. And this naturally creates a dilemma. Doing it once is worse than never doing it: besides dealing with the remorse, there is also another point which becomes complicated. The more you do something, the easier it becomes, and breaking the trust that my wife put in me — even though she doesn’t suspect anything — will become easier and easier.
And one day she will be not so deep asleep, but I will not notice it, and she will wake up and see me gone. All Hell will break lose! Worse than that: all these seven years patiently waiting for her approval will be wasted.
In one single instant, you can destroy the whole relationship on trust. Oh, I’m sure we wouldn’t actually break apart, but she would never trust me again with simple promises, and this would be all my fault. All that for just 10 minutes of adrenalin rush? It’s not worth it.
So for 2012 I will just stick with one “intention”: the intention to make her see that her reluctance in letting me go out, with or without her (that’s irrelevant for me, I always enjoy the pleasure of her company), even though I fully understand her anxiety, also creates a similar “anxiety” in me. It’s different from hers. It’s more frustration than anxiety, and a deep feeling of profound sadness. It’s suffering, however I look at it. I can deal with it — I have done so for many years — but it’s not easy, and I’m by far not a perfect person. I know now that the urge can be so overwhelmingly powerful to go beyond my own self-set constraints. Perhaps, in a sense, I got a taste of how it feels “cheating your wife” — granted, I did crossdress and I did go out (albeit very rarely) many years before I have revealed myself to her — and I was not happy afterwards. Still, I got my lesson: uncontrolled urges can break promises easily.
But my subconscious mind dwelt upon this for a while. Just yesterday I had a bit of an unusual dream. I mean, most dreams I remember are actually almost always nightmares, with very few exceptions; since I was a kid that I always had nightmares, and, after having enough of them, I just don’t care much more about what I dream about 🙂 They’re usually related to things I hate to do, like studying for exams or being late for an appointment.
On this dream, however, things were quite different. I dreamed I had been given permission by my wife to make a trip by train, crossdressed. I remember wearing my long hair wig and a white tailleur (not quite like the one from Dior on the picture; the skirt was shorter, and I was wearing a cream handbag), driving to the train station and buying a ticket for Oporto, 300 km away from my own home city and the second largest city in Portugal — it’s known for having some of the best-dressed women in the country, and I also have a few CD friends from there, whom I wished to visit at some point.
What was interesting about the dream was that it was relatively realistic. Usually I dream more of “being a woman” and the dreams are just plain fantasies. In this one, I distinctly remembered that I was crossdressed and not looking specially passable, specially at daylight, but I wasn’t uncomfortable. Most people either didn’t care much — they surely picked me up every time — but they weren’t downright pleasant — except for a ticket seller on the trip back, who clearly was being extra nasty with confusing ticket options because he was intolerant against CDs. When arriving at the destination, I went shopping in small boutiques on side-streets (something I actually do in reality, when I’m on my own, even if not dressed, when I have some spare time — I don’t care much if people find it strange that I’m looking through the women’s collections; I’m a customer like any other! — and the truth is, nobody truly cares much these days). I remember dreaming of sitting down at one or two cafés, calling up my wife telling her that all was going well, trying to catch up with my CD friends there, and so forth. Again, during all that time, I was pretty sure that most people were picking me up, but I was quite indifferent — I was enjoying myself, I was feeling great being dressed, and I was definitely feeling great for doing so. Then I remember that the return trip was a bit more chaotic. This actually happens me almost every other time on my return trips from Oporto — I keep missing trains, picking up the wrong schedule, missing connections, and so forth. I have more stories about failed return trips from Oporto than stories about going out crossdressed 🙂 so I’m sure my mind played some tricks and mixed both things together in the dream, where I got in the wrong train, then had to switch at a junction, got in touch with a nasty ticket seller (as said), but eventually got into a train back home. There was not really “stress” when doing so, just annoyance: in fact, that’s exactly how I feel in reality as well, after being so used to missing trains and airplanes. In the dream, there were some short attempts to conversations with the neighbours in the many trains, mostly complaining about conflicting schedules and misinformation (which actually is not that close to reality… the Portuguese train system, surprisingly, works rather well). In some cases, the conversation stopped when the person picked me up as a crossdresser and was somehow bothered; on other cases, even if they picked me up, they just continued with the conversation, looking beyond the dress and the gender, and just pretending to ignore it. There was also a moment at one station where I hesitated before deciding on the toilet, but finally went into the ladies’ toilet. I should explain that in my country people are not so obsessive about toilets than what I read about in the US. Many toilets in relatively small offices — if not all — are used by both sexes (like on an airplane or train, after all). Some universities, using buildings originally built for different purposes (like old army barracks), have toilets being used by the thousands of students and teachers, no matter what their gender is. In the early 1990s, it was still a bit uncommon to go to a bar or a club with single-sex toilets, but these days, even old-fashioned restaurants might just have a single set of toilets for both genders. Of course, in all these cases, it means there is privacy during the actual use of the toilet, but the wash basin might be common.
When I woke up, I found this whole dream a bit unusual. I usually dream all the time of being female, that’s not an issue. This was one of the much more rare dreams where I was conscious of being dressed as a woman but not truly “passing”. I cannot, in retrospective, remember if I dreamed of being already through transition, or actually at the end of transition; the dream is far too vague in my memory for that. What counts is that I was aware that I didn’t pass. And what was important is that I truly didn’t care. I looked smart and elegant in the white tailleur — business-like and professional — and wasn’t “dressing to shock people”. With a long-haired wig and sunglasses I definitely didn’t draw much attention, except for my height, but I didn’t look un-womanlike. It’s just that I simply didn’t pass. What was interesting was that most people didn’t really care much. Some might never have noticed anything; some might have noticed, felt uncomfortable about it, but didn’t make a fuss. Some even smiled and tried to be gentle and nice. And all through that experience I was pretty much indifferent to what people said, thought, or even how they looked at me; I was very comfortable in being dressed like that and full of self-confidence.
Now, I don’t believe in “visions” or things like that, but the dream showed me an “alternate reality”. This, I thought, would be very close to my life if my wife just allowed me to go out. While I’m always excited when dressing, and feel the adrenaline rush very intensively in those rare occasions when I go out, after a short while, it becomes natural for me, and I’m very comfortable with it. Incidentally, this is one of the many reasons why my wife actually gets even more anxious: she’s a bit indifferent when I’m crossdressing at home, but, because I get this adrenaline rush while dressing up, in the first minutes when I finally return from the bathroom and sit down in front of the computer, I’m still jittery and nervous: my fingers tremble, I drop small things, my gestures are awkward. She notices that very clearly. Then, after a cigarette or two, the adrenaline rush goes away and I’m just enjoying comfortably what I’m wearing and how I’m behaving. It’s just during those moments that the nervousness — driven by adrenaline — manifests itself. But my wife reads that as “being clumsy and prone to make mistakes”, and this makes her more anxious when imagining that I might be out driving and having car accidents because of that.
What actually happens is that the adrenaline rush hits me before I walk out of the door. It stays for ten, fifteen minutes. It might get triggered again when I start the car, but, again, it subsides after a while (I just have to be careful while under the influence of the adrenaline). On those occasions where I stopped the car and walked a bit on the sidewalk, I obviously got a new rush, but then it went away and I was walking more relaxed. This is natural! Adrenaline rushes don’t last long (they tax your organism, after all) and then you can either feel comfortable or uncomfortable afterwards, but you’re “back in control” once more.
This is pretty much what my dream was telling me. I can very positively imagine that the first time I go out in plain daylight, I might be very nervous about all those people looking at me, many of them probably laughing, and just thinking of that might trigger the adrenaline rush — but after a while, I’ll be ignoring it, and just feeling comfortable with myself, and pretty much don’t caring about what people think and enjoy the whole experience. Now this is something I cannot explain to someone who is naturally anxious and every little thing will trigger even more anxiety on top of an already anxious mind, like my wife. It has to be horrible to live like that, day by day!
And it was because I think a lot about how my wife feels constantly — that never-ending adrenaline rush which makes her feel so uncomfortable — and try to understand what she’s experiencing, all the time, that I’m so reluctant to be more pressing about her allowing me to go out. If I’m aware of the sheer intensity of my urges, desires, and anxieties, but know they’ll pass eventually, just leaving me feeling very comfortable about the whole experience, how does a person feel whose feelings of anxiety will never subside (except with medication, and that can only be taken to a certain degree)? I simply cannot fully understand that. It seems very close to living in a permanent nightmare, and must be horrible!
When I wake up from nightmares, I’m aware it didn’t take long — it just seemed that way. When experiencing terrible things, which certainly happened in my past, I’m aware that they will not last “forever”. So I have a more relaxed attitude towards life. Even the urge to go out fades now and then; it’s not something that remains at the peak of intensity all the time. It’s clear that on all those past nights, when I wore my coat, and waited to listen to my wife’s regular breathing during her sleep, I was actually feeling the full force of my desire to go out for a bit. It’s always an incredibly strong sensation; the heart starts pumping like crazy, my breathing gets shallow, I tremble with excitement, I might even get a cold sweat — all those are symptoms of the self-induced adrenaline rush. It’s exciting because it’s something I can trigger just by thinking about it. It is, in fact, so exciting that it comes close to an orgasm — that’s why crossdressing, on top of everything, is also a fetishism: it triggers very powerful emotions.
But I know it will fade away. When I give up and put the coat away, almost instantly my mind switches — I know I’m not going out — and the whole body relaxes and gets back to normal. During most of the time in the day, I’m not constantly thinking about crossdressing — just when I’m really in the mood for it. When I’m crossdressed, I’m not constantly thinking about how wonderful it would be to go out. What I’m mostly thinking is that this urge, this desire, will also fade — nothing lasts forever — so why give it such importance? Of course, under a spectacular burst of urge to go out, and under the right conditions — like last Thursday — I truly lose control and just go with my emotions. I’m not exactly happy about that, since I’m supposed to be training to keep my emotions in check and not let them influence my rational decisions, but, on the other hand, this just gives me a bit more humbleness: after all, in spite of having this positive self-image of myself, I’m actually not so good as I thought at controlling my emotions and keeping them in check. Under the right circumstances, I still lose control.
This is perhaps what worried me much. On one side, of course, I’m not happy about the whole situation. My wife’s anxiety is not rational and because of that, I have to suffer, which seems unfair. But what I learned was that the reverse is also true. My urge to go out is anything but rational, either. It’s triggered by the most irrational bits of my mind. So how can I shift the blame to my wife for being irrational about my going out, if I’m irrational about it as well? I’m not better than her! Perhaps I’m even worse, because I usually remain in control for longer, and am fully aware that this compulsion to go out is just triggered by my desire — something I can switch on and off, given some training, and it becomes easy with enough training. By contrast, my wife’s anxiety is a clinical condition — she can do little about it. Medication helps, and her mind training also eases the anxiety a bit, but, ultimately, this is very deeply ingrained in her genetic disposition, and, as such, close-to-impossible to shake off. Why should I be angry or sad about that? She cannot change the way she is by sheer willpower — she would do it if she could, and she’s really training hard to do so. Perhaps it’s time to use her as an example and try to use my own willpower to keep myself better in check.
But it’s so hard to do!…
