Jane and Me... and Becky makes two

When it comes to being supportive about my cross-dressing, Jane makes no effort whatsoever.

Which is great.

I'd better explain.

She's supportive in the same way that the sea is salty. It just is.

It doesn't have to make any effort. It doesn't feel it's making any major sacrifices. It doesn't feel the need to join forums for salty things to discuss the endless burden of being salty with... errrrm... anchovies. It doesn't appear in magazine articles entitled "How I Learned to Live with my Secret Salty Shame". Salty is the natural way of things. Quite frankly, the sea is a bit surprised that other major bodies of water aren't salty.

Jane is equally a bit nonplussed by women who don't want anything to do with transvestites. Why some girls seem to get their knickers in a twist that some boys want to wear twistable knickers. She's blessed with enough common sense and wisdom to see that transvestism is a facet of a personality, not a defining trait.

I initially found it strange that I didn't have to endlessly explain my actions to her. Then I realised that her attitude was that while she might not totally understand why I do it, that's doesn't make it a Big Scary Thing. As long as I'm totally honest with her, and live to the fundamental ground-rules that any partner should, she trusts me implicitly.

That doesn't make her unique, I've met lots of other partners of trannies (including a few at the weekend) who are just the same. But it's still reason 3 of the 6 reasons I love her. (Before you ask - the other five a split into too many sub-categories to list here.)

That's not to say that I've got total free rein, and Jane doesn't have any opinions in the matter. She's normally pretty good at pointing out when those stripy tights don't go with that floral blouse or you might want to avoid bending down and/or being seen dead in that skirt. And that's just the sartorial matters!

Where Becky is concerned, things are working fine. As I tried to indicate with the title of the post, she's not the "third person in the relationship", she's just part of me. Who wears a skirt.

(Aside: FFS, if you're ever going to accuse me of just being a "bloke in a dress", get it right! I hardly ever wear dresses!)

It would be easy for me to rest on my laurels, happy that we've got "Transvestism in a Modern Relationship" sussed. But situations change, both gradually and in big jumps, and there are couple of big jumps coming up that we both need to factor in to the equations.

For example, when I first started going out with Jane I explained to her that cross-dressing was my "garden shed". Most men have some place to go to get away from it all, whether it's to tinker contently with a recalcitrant lawnmower, or to make exact scale models of the Titanic out of matchsticks. A place away from the complexity and vagueness of real life and real emotions. A place where most problems can be solved by WD-40.

Cross-dressing and it's related paraphernalia fulfils that purpose for me. Admittedly, I've not found too many uses for WD-40 yet, but I still use "Becky" — the dressing up, this blog, the community and social aspects — as a little walled-garden that I can escape to when the rest of the world is just too pointy.

I told this to Jane because I needed her to understand that sometimes I'd want to go off and "be Becky" on my own, and I didn't want her to worry that I wanted to do this to be unfaithful or because I didn't want her there. I don't really know why I want it, I guess it's just something that, even now, is fundamentally private to me.

Jane was cool with that, and really up to now it hasn't been much of an issue anyway. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in the last 18 months I've been out as Becky without Jane along for the ride. Because I really wanted Jane to see what I was getting up to, and meet my friends so that they became her friends too. I've been immensely happy that she's been there enjoying herself, there's not been an outing yet that I've regretted going to with Jane. And also because I've generally found my Happy Place with Jane, maybe I don't need to dress as much as I used to anyway.

But it has highlighted some differences. I don't think Jane will argue with me if I say she's not the clubbing type. She's got a wide and varied taste in music, but not much of it the kind of stuff that turns up in the boxes of the DJs at the kind of clubs trannies frequent!

I however enjoy occasionally enjoy swinging my lack-of-pants to popular dance combos, and it's something I'd like to keep doing. Also, there's still the whole garden shed thing. In the future I don't always want to have Jane along for the ride when I go out as Bex, and Jane doesn't always want to be there. We just need to set the ground rules for what acceptable and what's not, and adjust them when necessary.

This would be in danger of being one of those horrible tranny blog posts where the writer shares their deepest thoughts with the readers of their blog, without communicating it directly to the other person involved. That's not the case here, I've talked to Jane about most if not all of this beforehand, we've already set some new rules that will come into effect should X Y and Z happen in the future. And it will be an agenda topic forever more, no doubt.

'Cos that's what you have to do. Keep talking. Even when it's working.