greenboots wrote:...one purpose for me in the conversation was to gauge whether...this was a natural desire or an unhealthy obsession...
Now that's an interesting question, because the same behavior could be either one. It seems like a value judgment rather than anything innate. Or maybe it's a question of being able or unable to stop doing something self-detrimental (although the question of what's detrimental is itself a value judgement.)
I recall someone here mentioning they own over 200 skirts. At first glance this might seem obsessive, but if you collected tin soldiers, miniature cars, coins, or stamps would 200 still be obsessive? And is that number detrimental? If you spend so much on it that you can't pay the mortgage or the rent I suppose so, but if it means only that you want skirts more than a traveling vacation, I suppose not.
As to your wife, I certainly can't psychoanalyze her from here, but it seems at some level that the idea of your wearing skirts is just more unconventional than she's comfortable with. Or, more crudely, she doesn't want people knowing she's married to a weirdo. And I'd guess that's not something your going to resolve in a ten-minute rational discussion. The only advice I have is to keep gently pressing the envelope and avoiding major flare-ups that cause her to dig in. Any progress may be painfully slow but that's still better than no progress.
Here's another thought. What if your wife told you one day that she was going to get her face tattooed, or her head shaved, or her body heavily pierced, or all three? Well of course we'd tend to claim these things are much more extreme than our wearing skirts or, since it's only hypothetical, to claim we'd say, "That's fine," because that's the reaction we'd like to receive regarding our skirts. But more realistically, we'd quite possibly think, "Wait a minute, that's not the person I married, that's not the deal I signed off on, I don't even want to be seen with such a person," and it might take a long time before we could be comfortable with it.
Courage, conviction, nerve, verve, dash, panache, guts, nuts, balls, gall, élan, stones, whatever. Get some and get skirted.
caultron