Came Out to My Son

[April Rose]

My 24 year old son is back living with us, temporarily. He is working part time, irregular hours. In order to avoid living in fear of being caught dressed at an awkward moment, at my wife's suggestion, I came out to him as a cross dresser. I was pretty sure that he would be okay with it, given his anti authoritarian but generally open minded worldview. But I was nervous about it nonetheless. You never really know how these things are going to go.

It turns out, He already knew. As a teenage skate punk, he was convinced that my wife and I had pot hidden somewhere in the house, and he spent hours searching for it. He never found any. We quit smoking it before we became parents. What he did find was that dad had a little secret. Then there were the computers. He's always known more about them than me, from the get go. He became aware of the history features long before I did.

And I thought I was doing such a good job hiding my websites.

At any rate he is , to use his words "down with that". And I am feeling very relieved and liberated, and proud to have the son that I have, even though, as has just been demonstrated, it had a lot more to do with luck than parental competence.

[Ralitsa]

That is very nice to hear, and I'm sure relieving to you April. Everyone always says that our kids understand a whole lot more than we think that they do, I guess this proves it. Because of this principle, and that I think a few of my kids are smarter than I am, I've adopted the policy of never trying to BS them and pretend something that isn't true. They figure things out too quickly.

[Susan]

April Rose,

my congratulations to you for bringing up a well balanced young man. To me it shows you have been top notch parents.

Best wishes

[Davita]

April Rose,
Glad you had the right mind to raise an open-minded kid. Obviously the rewards were good for you.

So I'm guessing he's seen pictures? Knowing and seeing or knowing and meeting are different. You'll be the nervous one just like when you came out.

Congrats!

[DonnaT]

Very cool.

My son told me he already knew also, when I came out to him. Makes things a lot easier to be free.

[April Rose]

Davita, I'm more of a diarist than a self photographer. I don't know the details , but I know that he's found stuff that I've written, both online & on paper. And he has found clothes and books with the papers. I haven't decided if I will dress for him on purpose or not just yet. But it is such a relief not to have to worry about surprises.

[Anita]

Hi April--
That will be a relief, not to have to worry. It'll help your mood a lot, based on other people's experience of it.

Davita wrote:

Knowing and seeing or knowing and meeting are different.

This is important to remember. A friend of mine is used to dressing when he goes to a certain concert series. He wanted to come out to a friend who was visiting him, so that he could still do this. And I said that it sounded like he could come out to her, but it would be better if he weren't dressed.

I'd never thought much about it, but the two "coming outs" are separate. One coming out is to introduce the idea that you do this. And that may be the only one; I know there are friends who never want to see my femme self.

[Kittie]

My 24 year old son is back living with us, temporarily. He is working part time, irregular hours. In order to avoid living in fear of being caught dressed at an awkward moment, at my wife's suggestion, I came out to him as a cross dresser. I was pretty sure that he would be okay with it, given his anti authoritarian but generally open minded worldview. But I was nervous about it nonetheless. You never really know how these things are going to go.

It turns out, He already knew. As a teenage skate punk, he was convinced that my wife and I had pot hidden somewhere in the house, and he spent hours searching for it. He never found any. We quit smoking it before we became parents. What he did find was that dad had a little secret. Then there were the computers. He's always known more about them than me, from the get go. He became aware of the history features long before I did.

And I thought I was doing such a good job hiding my websites. :oops:

At any rate he is , to use his words "down with that". And I am feeling very relieved and liberated, and proud to have the son that I have, even though, as has just been demonstrated, it had a lot more to do with luck than parental competence.

You lucky girl!


PS to Kittie: I have changed your Profile settings back to the Forum's default settings; your continuous changing of these settings interfered with how your post (above) looked: the quote did not appear as it does now, it was just software coding and text. Please do not change these settings, they are there for a reason! Thank You!! - SL

[Stephanie H]

Hoping the your fortunes continue with your family.

[JoAnnDallas]

Glad it worked out so nicely. This last year I got my ears pierced and the first time our 40 yr old son saw them he did say a word to me. He did ask his mom later, "What's with Dad and the ear rings?". Wife calmly said to him,"His TV idol, Mike Holmes has ear rings, so he decided to get them pierced". Now this is all true. I love his shows and it just goes to show that getting your ears pierced is not a macho thing anymore. Our son was not against it or upset, just mostly curious. Kids, yes even older ones, LOL, are more outcoming about things than we were when we were kids.

[Paulette]

Told my 43yo son about 10 months ago, with no ill effect. He said our friends were as accepting a group as one would ever find, and he had no problem with it. I knew that he had friends of various presentations, and his recent girlfriend's husband had just come back from a complete MTF series of procedures in Thailand.

I keep forgetting that his generation is much more accepting and casual about TG than mine, though CD is still undefined and uncertain territory for most, and still confused with drag queening.

None of this addresses your concerns except that I know it's a nervous time. Good luck!

[Jamie R]

A couple months ago I was finally able to come out to my son, who is 47 y/o. What a relief!
A little background, we always joke about being so much alike. For quite some time we have both known that we both like BDSM. He, however, is not a CDer. A couple of months ago, we were camping together. One evening around the campfire, involved in an a conversation, about a lot of things, my daughter in law asked me what I was into, or liked. What a chance to come out, to them. It was so much easier to come out with "I like to crossdress", his response was something like "I could see that" and his wife was also cool with it.
So much worry about telling him, and wanting to tell him, when it actually was so much easier than I had imagined.

Father and sons, many times, are very much alike, and with CDing possibly being in our gene makeup, I have to wonder how many father and sons share the joy of CDing. I think that may be a good discussion question.

Jamie