Comfort Zones - Question in Guest book

Thanks for the email and guestbook message Lorna, I'll try to put something useful here and hope it makes some sort of sense based on my chats with others and my own situation with my wife.

So setting or negotiating a comfort zone.

I had this email and message from Lorna and also had "Comfort Zone" come up in a chat with a t-girl the other night in tvchix asking me how my relationship got into  a comfort zone and acceptance.

There is a wide variety of acceptance levels as the survey on my home page points out and also as the survey points out this can change.

Some wives and girlfriends are totally non-accepting.

I have come across both crossdresser and wife/GF being hostile, angry, upset, and just about ready to walk out the door.

One struggling to come to terms with her husband crossdressing and in some cases the Crossdressing husband having enough of the cold shoulder over what to the corssdresser seems a more trivial matter.

Some Women are disgusted with their husbands crossdressing and think of them as being perverted
(My wife had this fear I'm sure and also asked if I was Gay! :( ) forgetting their husbands history and what made them attracted to him (In fact the softer side "the crossdresser" unbeknownst to the gf at the time may have been part of the attraction? who knows)

One minute everything is fine the next you find out or he admits he's a crossdresser and all of a sudden he's someone else this secret this perverted secret?

Some wives never accept crossdressing or even listen to any reasoning and people have actually got divorced due to crossdressing... This is very sad and I'd like to think more to the divorce than crossdressing.

I'd say take a step back and take some perspective about crossdressing in that what harm is it doing..Its still him... it's only clothes, fashion... different to the norm.. harmless? Women wear trousers so do men ....women wear a dress but a man cannot?

At the other end are wives and girlfriends who are totally accepting and even drive their husbands crossdressing.
 
I've chatted with some wives and read a bit on the internet about women who forced feminized their husband.. My wife got me to crossdress for a laugh not knowing i was a secret crossdresser at the time but went from it being a laugh not believing i was letting her put makeup on me and dressing me up as a woman to it being scary as hell "What do you mean you've crossdressed before?!?!"

Some wives actually drive crossdressing in their husbands (which i think is exciting) but they find it hard to understand those who dont support their husbands. They can be quite hostile towards non supporting spouses in Forums. I used to chat to one woman like this who i thought was pretty rational and once asked my wife to chat to her and she turned a little crazy chatting to my wife teling her she should let me crossdress and if she didn't like it go sleep in another bedroom "wooohhhh I dont condone that"... totally unexpected but shows not all advice is good advice... even from me as my advice is based on my experiance.
 
In between the extremes, the vast majority who are not hostile, dont drive crossdressing but are not totally supportive either who work on it to certain levels of acceptance. (Lorna from your email I assume you're here).

Willing to listen, and try to understand and to make it work... Divorce at the back of their mind i surmise but also scared about what crossdressing means for their relationship..  "Is he gay, does he want to be a woman ..."
 
Setting acceptance levels to a comfort zone is more important in this scenario and Crossdressers in this situation should let their wives drive the pace of acceptance (no matter how slow) and not dive two stilletoes first into appearing en fem in front of their other halves at the first sign of acceptance (Although with a bit of acceptance you'll want to do this... take one step at a time).

Personal examples; I used to only crossdresses in the bedroom daring not to go into other parts of the house incase my parents or later my wife came home and caught me, for an hour at the most once or twice per month... even after telling her I was a crossdresser.

I suppose this is easy for a wife to accept having nothing at all to do with it.

A wife may then come home to find a happy relaxed husband possibly not even realising the crossdressing has given him a release of stress.

Some Crossdressers I chat to have something similar where their wives know but have nothing to do with their crossdressing and they crossdress only in the privacy of their home and generally when their wives are away with work or away for the weeknd. Some will spend all weekend en fem at home hiding all signs of crossdressing when wives return.

The most I've been dressed is probably 8 hours in a day, never overnight or for a whole weekend... I wonder what that would be like?
 
If not for the fact that their husbands told them about their desire to crossdress, they would not know at all a certain comfort zone.

It appears that for a wife or girlfriend to accept crossdressing she needs to be in her comfort zone.

We reached a stage further, my wife now content with some involvement with me crossdressing, girls nights in and even seeing me crossdressing around the house which has made things far easier for us both.

I'm sure my wife would lose her comfort zone if I were to escalate my crossdressing further for example by going out dressed whch is definately outside her comfort zone. She was a little freaked by me admitting i'd put the bins out one dark evening crossdressed and also when my web cam was on in a work web ex meeting lol.
 

The fear of me being discovered.

To help a wife or girlfriend reach her comfort zone depends on good communication and the ability of her crossdressing husband to introduce her to his crossdressing in a positive manner and let her reach that level at her pace.
 
We will all have our comfort zones and it is important that we respect each others with open honest communicatin should the comfort zone change at any point or negotiate.

I hope that helps? and makes sense?

For some reason I've had a spate of emails from t girls and wives/girlfriends this week so will try to blog more later and answer some questions ... one on Self Esteem, one on being in the closet.. a t girl out of her/his closet with a wife now stating shes in a virtual closet, one on awkward situations and one on lesbianism (a fair question). If i get time i'll blog my thoughts tonight .