Telling my Sweetheart (part 1)

I've been wrestling with how best to approach this post. Ever since I started blogging here, my online friends have been urging me to share my transgenderism with my dear wife (let's call her "D.W." for the purposes of this post). I knew that I wanted to share all of this with her, and that she deserved to know, but I could never seem to find exactly the right time, due to a whole pile of other stresses in our lives. Well, a little while ago something happened that forced my hand, ready or not. It's kind of involved, and is taking me a painful amount of time to articulate well, so I'm going to split it up into parts. Here's Part 1.

I was getting ready to go on a work-related trip for a few days, and had been pulling a couple of late nights trying to get ready to go. One night, as sometimes happens, I felt the strong need to dress en femme (I hate the term "cross-dress" — it just carries too many negative connotations for me, and doesn't feel like a good match for why I do what I do). I can't put my finger on any specific triggers for these feelings — they just come on strongly sometimes, while at other times it's a barely-noticeable undercurrent in my stream of consciousness. Not that dressing really "solves" anything for me, anyway — it just seems to make the dysphoria more bearable, taking the edge off things, so to speak.

Sorry, tangent. I'm like a dog in a park full of squirrels sometimes.

Anyway, I threw on an old pair of D.W.'s jeans that she'd tossed out, a comfy silk shirt from my small stash of girl clothes, and on a whim, I grabbed a pair of my sweetheart's strappy heels from our closet. Usually I wouldn't bother with shoes... after all, I'm not actually going anywhere. But, I'd recently shaved my legs, and I wanted to see how they looked on my feet (answer: meh). Once changed, I bent my mind toward my evening's tasks.

At some point while working, I kicked off the shoes, because my feet are a little too big for them anyway and, like I said, I wasn't actually going anywhere, and barefoot was more comfy. A little after that, I went into the downstairs bathroom to answer a call of nature... and fell asleep! Usually not a big deal — it happens from time to time when I'm pulling a lot of late nights in a row. Usually when it does, my alarm clock will ring upstairs in our bedroom, D.W. will realize I'm not there, and come downstairs to wake me up. I'll look a little sheepish, she'll roll her eyes at me and go back to bed, and the day proceeds as if it hadn't happened.

This time was a little different.

When the alarm went off, I heard it, realized I was still en femme, and quickly changed into my pajamas before D.W. came downstairs to wake me. I assured her that I was up, and she went back to bed. I stashed my girl clothes, returned the heels to their place, got ready for work, and left, feeling guilty that I still hadn't told her about what was going on with Arcee.

Only... remember when I said I'd kicked off her heels before going to the bathroom?

On her way to wake me up, she saw them.

... Oops.

A few hours into my workday, I get an email from D.W., asking if it was just her imagination, or if she had indeed seen her shoes downstairs, and if that meant I was getting into her things again...? You see, early in our marriage, before I'd really come to terms with my gender dysphoria, she'd caught me dressing once or twice. I'd feel guilty about it, we'd both cry a lot, then I would promise not to do it anymore, because of course we both "knew" that this was just some weird, sinful thing that I shouldn't be doing (spoiler alert: after a lot of fasting and prayer, I don't feel that way anymore... but it still skeeves D.W. out just as much as ever). So here I was, caught in the act, and being asked about it over email, no less (which is, I have to say, a terrible communication medium for this sort of conversation if ever there was such a thing)! What to do?

As it happened, I had been working on a letter to D.W. for a little while, based in small part on a similar letter my blog-friend Laurie had shared with her wife. I excused myself from work for an early (and longer-than-usual) lunch break, then shlepped my laptop over to the nearest McDonald's to partake of a salad and their free wi-fi. There, I finished the letter and emailed it in reply, all scared and nervous about what her reaction would be, then I went back to work. What else could I do?

Two hours later, she sent me back a reply. Even though I'd anticipated her reaction, it still hit me like a punch in the stomach.

To be continued in part 2...