This is turning out to be a fun thread, even though Stacey may have had more serious matters on her mind when she started it. She was looking for comments from SO's on how they overcame the shame and embarrassment that arises out of their DH's crossdressing. Some posts here have addressed this. Inevitably, with this kind of thing, discussion turns to the nature of shame and embarrassment itself. And that may not be a bad thing. Hopefully, more SO's will chime in with their own views on the subject.
Georgia,
Thanks for the compliment. I love writing, I do. But the appeal of a regular paycheck is just too strong for me to think of writing as anything other than a passion and a personal pleasure.
About our little semantic hair-splitting regarding the word "lifestyle," I agree with you; a lifestyle is the kind of life you choose for yourself based on your needs and drives. Still, the thought that compulsion or necessity are only vaguely hinted at in the notion of choice leaves me uneasy. If a lifestyle is matched (or not) to someone's, uh, personal constitution, then we could say that a blue-eyed person is free to choose (or not) to live the lifestyle of a blue-eyed person. While this isn't as absurd as it may at first sound (there are such things as contact lenses, for example), it occults the fact that, regardless of whatever prosthetic sleight-of-hand a person engages in in order to mask her blue-eyedness, she remains a blue-eyed person. Now, I realize that you're referring to emotional and psychological constitution (needs and drives) and not to a person's physical constitution, but the principle applies nonetheless if we believe that some psychological needs are as grounded in some unalterable reality as are most physical ones. I believe that gender identity is one such instance of an unalterable psychological constitution. That a transgendered identity is resistant to modification through therapy only supports this belief.
You can choose to wear this or that item of gender-appropriate or gender-inappropriate clothing; you cannot choose to be a man with feminine drives or a woman with masculine ones. And those that so choose do so primarily out of some other drive than the expression of their gender identity, it seems to me.
Again, though, I understand what you're saying, Georgia, and the examples you use from your own life are very well suited to this discussion. When you say that you'd go mad if you had to live a life similar to what you knew growing up, it very much sounds like what a transgendered person may say to himself. But the similarity stops there, I think. In the case of a transgendered person, there are no instances where this kind of madness-inducing pressure may be lessened, short of the necessary expression of a gender identity considered deviant by many, if not most. And this is our cross to bear, that we have madness-inducing pressure coming both from inside ourselves as well as from outside.
As you suggest, though, some TG'd individuals may be successful in living a life where even a slight allowance in the expression of their gender identity may serve to relieve some of the pressure they feel because of their needs and drives. In everyone's life, there are positives and there are negatives. It's up to us to juggle with these and find some balance; we do that by choosing whatever kind of life it is that we do choose for ourselves. We have no argument there, you and I. I'm merely suggesting that there are limits to choice.
Choosing implies access to some type of free will. As I stated above, I'm not entirely convinced that a person's psychosexual needs and drives fall under the purview of free will. If this were the case, I'd guarantee you we'd find far less sexual deviance than we do now--social pressures, taboos, and conventions are much more powerful than we often suppose; the "need" and "drive" we all have to conform is not innate... it begins when we first encounter the word "No!" in our lives.
On another level, there are limits to choice in the very objects of our choices. If you think A would make you happier than B (in a world where both A and B are acceptable choices), then, by all means, choose A. However, the choice is not so clear in a case where A is considered unacceptable (or shameful or embarrassing) by others; in other words, if the choices we make are for the purpose of aligning our lives with our deeper needs and drives (in your case, Georgia, to be a self-employed writer with a bohemian penchant), we have to be given an option where it's possible to do so. And, well, if we're not given such an option, we either truly go mad or, assuming we're strong enough to do so, we create that option--a singularly tough proposition in a world that shuns diversity, difference, and eccentricity.
Anyway, one thing I can say for sure is that I'm very glad you chose to join this forum and have these conversations with us.
A little communication, a little speaking and a little listening, go a long way to open up the way for those who crave living in a world where all are free to choose the shape of their lives.Sunny,
Please step right this way... into the cloning machine.
Seriously, your attitude is a blast of fresh air. I know that there are many, many difficulties in being partnered to someone whose gender identity is unconventional and I know it's of no use to anyone to gloss over those difficulties. It's been a tremendous pleasure for me to be able to have conversations with a few of the SO's on this forum--from all points on the "acceptance" spectrum--and I've occasionally fancied myself a champion of their cause (their cause being: "I simply want to be heard and acknowledged in my feelings about this.") but I'll admit that, even though I don't play favorites, there are times when I say to myself, "Damn! We need some more of that!" My own criteria for so saying are few (and they apply to the CD's as well as to the SO's): sensitivity, openness, emotional honesty, intelligence, and what we call, in French, la beauté dans l'âme, "beauty in the soul."Basically: I enjoy reading your posts.
Love,
CJ
Proud Military Family - Navy, Army, Coast Guard, National Guard 
