Family Fun Time

There’s some potential drama going on in our family life right now. I don’t feel like going into details but some family members I was under the impression already knew about Melantie’s crossdressing apparently didn’t and found out about this blog thanks to Facebook. Through the grapevine I’ve been informed that these family members “think [I'm] crazy”. I don’t know exactly WHY they think I’m crazy… for talking about it? For supporting Melanie? For creating this blog so other women (and men) who discover that they’re the spouses of crossdressers now know they’re not alone and can feel like they’ve got a friend in this? How am I crazy?

This attitude – being told that I’m crazy – saddens me IMMENSELY. I don’t expect everyone to get why I do this or to even realize that I do this under a pseudonym for a reason but family is family and when one family member calls up Melanie incredibly uncomfortable and upset because my actions have exposed him to scrutiny, then that hurts. Feelings have been hurt and not just Melanie’s and not just mine. There are other people involved here too – people who’ve had hard enough lives as it is – and the fact that people don’t realize or simply are too wrapped up in themselves to care… well, that makes me both sad and a little angry.

I don’t know what Facebook has to do with the whole mess. There’s some automatic feature at work here updating folks on my activities online and I suppose someone must have signed up for it or some such nonsense. I don’t know all the whys and wherefores because by time the message grapevined its unhappy little way to me I wasn’t hearing the story second-hand or third-hand but something like seventh-hand. I’m a reasonable person and I’m very aware that this sort of literal game of telephone can get very twisted very fast. So I’m going to wait to rant about it or allow any emotion other than vaguely hurt feelings and confusion to surface until I hear “you’re crazy and your life is disgusting” from them “face to face”.

But I’m sad. Your family is your family. They don’t have to like you but Melanie’s (to my knowledge) likes me… and the idea that her family – who has more than one crossdresser in the mix – is disgusted an appalled and thinks a wife supporting her husband and giving advice to other CDWives out there… well, the idea that they don’t like me and that they think what I do here is crazy, well I find that upsetting. On several different levels.

My mother and sisters are highly judgmental people. I mean some of them will judge you (and me) at the drop of a hat for a wide variety of reasons, some of them completely nonsensical. BUT they support this and they support Melanie. They’re exceedingly Catholic too so you’d think this sort of thing would get them riled up. But it doesn’t. Their biggest concern is that Melanie might be “secretly gay” and holding out on me, waiting until the perfect time to drop the “gay bomb” on our happy, comfortable little life and run off with a man. I tried to explain that it doesn’t really work that way – that most crossdressers traditionally are straight and just like to wear clothing assigned to the other gender – but they worry. I think if I took away their ability to worry about *something* they’d just explode.

Another friend of mine who is the most religious person I’ve met… just about ever… is also completely supportive of Melanie. She believes that “Jesus and God don’t care what the packaging looks like, it’s what’s inside that counts”. She’s all about piety and understanding and walking a mile in Melanie’s pumps when I get frustrated with the status quo. Do you understand where I’m going with this? I’m surrounded by people who you would traditionally would think would make judgments… and they don’t. They don’t care. So to be told “you’re crazy” by people it never occurred to me would be judgmental, people who I *thought* knew and were okay with it… well it hurts.

We’re supposed to move back home eventually but this has made us begin to rethink our plans. Neither one of us wants to be around people who can’t or won’t love us the way we are and I certainly don’t want to be around people who think I’m insane for not only supporting Melanie in this but setting up this website to support other women who are new to the world… to offer a helping hand and telling them that they’re not alone, that they don’t have to go through learning about their husband’s crossdressing alone.

I’m not going to apologize for putting this blog out there. This place is important to me. I feel like I’m making a difference in the world and the many, many thankful letters I’ve received seems to validate that belief. I do speak frankly about some things, some things that I don’t think need to be hidden. Sex is one of them. Married couples have sex, folks. When you’re married to a crossdresser you may have questions that you don’t feel comfortable taking to family members or friends. Hell, as far as I’m concerned, people are too hung up on sex anyway. So long as sex is used as a tool to deepen the bonds of love between two people, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s when you devalue yourself and your partner to the point where you give sex the same consideration as scratching your nose, then it becomes an issue. Either way, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you can’t talk about it, you shouldn’t be doing it. Period. If being willing to talk about a simple biological function that is used in a social way to draw two people closer together is crazy, well, sign me up for the nuthouse. Because I think it’s natural. Meanwhile, our puritanical obsession with hiding boob on the big screen while violence is glorified… yeah, I think THAT is crazy. I’m not saying go XXX for shits and giggles, but the sight of a woman’s chest isn’t going to kill anyone unless it’s one magnificent rack and their heart was really dodgy to begin with.

As for the rest of it… well I’m very cautious about putting names or faces to our lives. Right now that’s simply not an option. Melanie and I’ve discussed it over and over again and while we would like to be 100% forthright about who we are and what we do, the job market is too unstable right now to make it any more of a consideration than a mere passing fancy. Fake names and only the most general of occupations are always used to protect the innocent and/or potentially embarrassed.

In the end, it boils down to a feeling of betrayal. I tend to be a fairly forthright person and when someone says something and it gets passed along to me it hurts my feelings. If I’ve got a problem with someone I tend to call them up or email them and try to talk it out. There are exceptions to this rule – for example, if Melanie requests my silence on an issue in order to keep the peace, I generally comply – but for the most part I want to hash out problems one-on-one before they become like this… tangled, dramariffic messes.

Tags: drama, family, finding out