We enjoyed our life together. The children came...one at a time over eight years. When I was twenty or so, being around such a beautiful woman sparked the old longings.  I began to dress again occasionally. When we were married, I was the same size as my wife so I collected "hand me downs" from things she threw away. I felt even closer to her being able to dress in clothes she once wore. I longed to tell her but did not because of my fear going back to the age of four. I hid my "other" clothes in a barn on the property we rented. Jailyn [the name I had picked for myself years ago - actually that's yet another story!] was a woman that truly "came [and went] in a box".

I went to an ivy league university after our son was born, ultimately being awarded an engineering degree. We had NO money during this time and it was hard to build any sort of a wardrobe.  I never threw anything away (a "pack rat trait I have always had!) and I was never taken to the "purges" you hear about. I seem to just "purge" in my mind.  In retrospect, my way was probably a much cheaper way to do it!

One night, my wife and I were up late talking as we sometimes did. We talked about a lot of very intimate things.  Somehow, in the midst of sharing some of our very private feelings, I wound up finally telling her what I wanted to tell her for years...that is about "Jailyn". I think she was probably pretty devastated. She must have wondered so much about me and about our life together.  I can imagine she had so many questions for which I few which I had few answers,  I was also felt devastated probably because I knew what she must have been feeling.  I felt myself almost wishing I hadn't told her and I remember the anxiety I had for weeks thereafter.

For those of you who can think back to the way it was twenty five years ago, things of this nature were just not talked about. There was little information available in any form on the subject. I remember spending hours at the university's library trying to learn about this "thing" that afflicted me. My university has the 4th largest library in the world and yet after many, many hours of research, I was able to find only THREE articles or references to the topic in general.  All of these pointed to the subject of transsexualism and or homosexuality as opposed to crossdressing.

Given all of the above, I can only imagine how my wife must have felt since she could have no reference point or resource. I too began to feel I was all alone in the world with my "affliction".  Given the lack of any reference to crossdressing., I even thought that I must therefore fit into the category of TRANSSEXUAL. Funny, I didn't feel "gay"...I didn't think I wanted a sex change!  I got into the information enough to know that there was very little serious work being done on the topic of gender dysphoria at all.  I reasoned, that my own weirdness must in fact be so rare that no one has bothered to take up the task to study.

Anyway, my wife tried really hard to understand that which was impossible to understand at that time (actually, I suppose it is still pretty hard to understand for many!).   She thought it would be ok for me to dress around her.  At first, I would dress occasionally in a nighty or the like.   Like many of us in the same situation, I probably went too far too fast.  It became too much for her in a pretty short time and she explained to me although she thought it was probably OK for me to dress as I "needed to",  she really felt she could not participate.  She said I did not need to hide it but it was just too much for her.

I understood and complied with her wishes. And so that part of me went "underground" and things stayed that way for 23 years. After that time, I never hid my things Although I didn't leave them out either) but never dressed in front of her.   In all that time she came home unexpectedly and found me dressed only a few times. When it did occur, I would apologize and immediately get drab.