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August 6, 2016 12:46 pm  #1


Cross dressers and transgenders

Just wondering how many of you are or were married to a fetish cross dresser?  I am talking about the ones who have been dressing up since a young age and who are or at some point were sexually aroused by dressing up as a woman. What do you think they are sexually fantasizing about when they are dressed up?  I know what I think, but my ex denies it. How many of you think that many fetish cross dressers become so delusional from their untreated paraphilia and the increasing social acceptance of transgender that they believe that they are really transgender?  How many of you who have lived with a fetish cross dresser or transgender know that that they also have strong traits of a narcissistic personality disorder?

 

August 7, 2016 3:02 pm  #2


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

my husband came out to me a few years into our marriage. I was livid because he never told me about it before we got married. Its hard because of all the lies, but once he came clean and explained what it was he wanted (to be with me), I believed in him for my kids whom he loves. Is this ideal for me ? maybe not. Is it best for my kids ? yes. I don't know if you have kids but it takes a whole new perspective.

Best of luck and stay strong!
lw1

 

August 7, 2016 11:47 pm  #3


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Sun, my GIDTGH has been dressing since a young age, has progressed from panties, lingere & the usual, to full blown wigs/make u p/silicone body parts and yes, I do believe that the are almost encouraged as you say, by societies acceptance, Kaitlyn & perhaps even by their very nature of translating a spouses "pass" as encouragement & opprtunity to go that little bit further every time. If you've ever been on THEIR forums you will witness how they educate each other on how to get more freedom from their spouses. Once they enter that Pink Fog area, you've lost them. They will never turn back or dial it down. And yes, it is a sexual turn on for them, no matter how much they deny at first. They become so bloody CONSUMED with their girly crap (way more than any real woman I've ever met!!) and yes, rather narssistic in that they are the only thing that matters. I went out a few times with my spouse to events & it was like I wasn't even there, so bloody enamored with himself, prancing around, showing off his latest outfit/wig/costume, basking in all the compliments from fellow girlfriends/tg. It was like being raped by fucking tacky trailer trash meets veronica's closet. Yes, I'm fucking bitter. This goddamn fetish has robbed me of a happy, loving marriage & a life of confidence. Everyone thinks he'she is such an awesome guy in & out of the closet, but he's a selfish lying manipulator as a man & a selfish woman as TG. 

FTR, I hear all the time women talking about how they never knew before they got married so it's extra hurtful & insulting. Well I knew ahead of marriage & it doesn't mean squat. I'm still gutted on a regular basis.. CD's will ALWAYS progress to more More MORE female persuasion if given any freedom. My husband who swore numerous times he wasn't ever going to transition, is now talking on his TG forum about taking hormones one day. "NEVER No Way am I gay!!", has been surfing gay sites, said there was no sexual side to his fetish, now says I never heard him right that yes, it is very sexual. 

Bottom Line, don't fucking trust a CD husband, no matter how much he says he's telling you the truth, & this is all there is to it. If you "respect his honesty & support his "little stress-reducing fetish", you are destined to a whole lot of crushing heartache. I'm now looking down the barrel of a dark, empty marriage, in the process of trying to figure out how to escape, after 2 decades of putting up with his shit. And let me tell you, there is certainly not anything sexual about it for the spouse. When u see your once manly husband, donning a wig, full make-up, tits, hips, ass, corset, nylons, all giddy because he gets to have a fun night out, you want to vomit, but you have been conditioned & broken down so much you tell them "You look good hon, have fun tonight" Then u sit at home, alone for the hundredth time, while you wonder what the fuck he's really doing out there. No good will ever come out of a TG/Str8 relationship. The str8 does ALL the compromising & bending while the TG lets you believe YOU'RE the lucky one.Besides, they're so far up their own asses they can't see/don't care how much it's hurting you or the family.

Just get the fuck out. Before it plows thru too much of your life.

Sorry, extra bitter/scared/hurt/lost/trapped/petrified tonight 

 

August 8, 2016 9:16 pm  #4


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Dear whatasham, please don't be sorry for venting and speaking your truth. It helps all of us.  And don't feel bad about knowing about his cross dressing before you married him.  How the hell does anyone know that they do it to get off, except them and people like us who are forced to learn about this perversion through no fault of our own. I am one of the spouses who found out by accident after a very long fraud marriage.  After the discovery he showed no remorse or guilt for what he did to me. He just continued to lie and sneak and do some really crazy shit.  It took me a year to research this mess and finally come to the realization that he was personality disordered and cross dressing was his compulsion/addiction/sexuality.  No matter when we find out, all we have to go on at first is what they say about it.  And because we assume that others generally think and feel like we do, we believe them, only to find out later that they lie.  We had absolutely no frame of reference for how someone with a personality disorder thinks and feels.  But we do now. 

     Thread Starter
 

August 11, 2016 11:29 pm  #5


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Sun, Bless you for that reassurance, I really needed that. It's been a seriously crappy week. Lots of crying, feeling like I'm actually going insane, so overloaded with stress, questions, discoveries that I am parilized with it all instead of plowing thru my lists. Evrywhere I look I see "what could have been"s. I have been depressed for a few years (anti depressants not working), but this? This is shear HELL! One minute I want to throw every legal avenue at him & hurt him twice what he has done to me, the next hr I wish he would claim sincere sorrow & pledge to make it up to me & the kids & change. But he can't even say "Sorry". If there is such a thing as Karma, I wonder what the hell nasty i did in a former life to come down for such never ending pain. 

This site has been a life line to me. I seriously don't know where i'd be if i didn't have you all to give me hope.Sharing, from your heart & your head of reason & experience, is such a blessing!!

 

October 20, 2016 8:45 pm  #6


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

..after my experience, i know autogynephilia can do immense harm to straight women in intimate relationships with men who suffer this paraphilia and also offspring, particularly adolescent daughters. (seems puberty in female family members often triggers the Agp to transition, also menopausal spouses) trying to accommodate these men by sacrificing your own identity and sexuality and living someone elses lie for the rest of your life leads to serious psychological harm.
did you seek professional help? if so, did they gaslight you too, or were they sympathetic to your situation? anecdotally, the 'transwidows' i know of, found that 'support' was only available to women who supported their husbands transition. the women who recognise their husbands problem as a sexual paraphilia, suffer the narcissism unwillingly and feel they have no option but to leave, find it very difficult to get others to understand the abusive and toxic nature of autogynephilia. wives are often ostracised by their own social circle while their husbands are celebrated for abandoning the family interests in favour of his own. they find themselves suddenly on the wrong side of so-called social justice and vilified as a TERF for so much as mentioning the fetishistic and sexual nature of hubbies obsession. its the loneliest place in the world to be. dont be silenced. contribute your story to trans widows blog. lets get a really good record together of womens experiences with these men. i think its really important we have a voice in this debate. not just for us, but for all future victims. there needs to be a much better understanding of what is really going on here, before they let them in the changing rooms refuges and hospital wards with vulnerable women and girls, we need to fight back against the 'no such thing as autogynephilia' narrative they keep preaching, when we know different. I will not be erased.  
 

 

October 21, 2016 9:16 am  #7


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Nel,
   Thank you so much for your post!  I share your determination that what I know to be true based on my experience can not be allowed to be "erased" by the dominant TG narrative, which does indeed demand that we "sacrifice [our] own identity and sexuality to live in someone else's lie."  I, too, am horrified to discover that after a lifetime as a feminist--which includes time as a director of a women's studies program--I am dismissed as a TERF (trans-exculsionary radical feminist) and labeled "transphobic," all because I am trans critical (a position, by the way, shared by some trans-women), a position that I have arrived at after living through the experience of a husband who decided at age 58 that he was transgender, and whose behavior and attitudes since are textbook examples of the outlines of AGP.  By the way, even the FAQ on Transgender on this site supports that narrative of a "woman in a man's body," although no one ever seems to be able to say how it is that a male with a male body who has lived an entire life as a man with accompanying male socialization and benefitting from men's position in society can have any idea what it is that a woman feels!  What they can feel is that they would like to be a woman, or that somehow they are in the wrong body--and they can feminize themselves by surgery and clothes, but they will remain biological males.  Transwomen, but not women.  (Yes, I reject the pressure to refer to myself as a cis-woman, as if trans and cis were simply versions of woman, to be placed in the same overall category; a trans woman and a woman are two different categories, and while we might have reason to ally ourselves on certain issues, on others we may have to disagree.) 
   My husband himself accepts that he is AGP, but insists that unlike some other sexual paraphilias, AGP is "harmless" because it takes advantage of no one.  Well, I'm here to tell you that it's not harmless, to the partner or to the AGP himself.  It's not harmless to me, because what was a marriage between two people has taken on the attributes of a threesome, with my husband accounting for two of the three of us, and dividing his attention between the two women in his life--the one he's married to and the one he's fantasizing that he is.  It's not harmless to him, either, because the more he manifests his desire to feminize himself the more he's driven to want it.  It's an obsessive compulsion, and highly addictive, with higher doses needed to achieve the desired high.  In addition, the more the AGP acts on his desire, the more he's driven by the AGP to believe in the "woman" he's dressing up as.  
   In the 19 months I've been living with him since he told me he was transgender, I've seen just how much his ideas of "woman" are convention heterosexual male stereotypes--mostly sexual in nature.  He wants to wear lace and satin lingerie and swishy dresses or to dress in 1950s slips while engaging in domestic chores (and fantasizes about cooking with me while wearing a Donna Reed-like apron); to act seductively and be coy; to be penetrated (the defining and quintessential female experience, according to him); to pretend that he's a lesbian with me in bed.  His sexual fantasies are so laughably conventional, so much like conventional heterosexual porn for men: a feminine and coy woman in lingerie, just waiting to be "taken," or two lesbians together.
  Nel, I have not sought psychological counseling yet, and for precisely the reasons you cite: I do not want to be lectured by a psychologist I seek out for my own health about my failure to "understand" my husband's trans-ness, or counseled from the perspective of "get with the program or get out of the way," a formulation that casts me as the obstruction in his "self-actualization."  If I arrive at "get out of the way" it'll be because I have decided that because our sexualities are so fundamentally mismatched, I can't live the rest of my life satisfied by a sex life that denies me full satisfaction while helping to fully satisfy his.  I have a lot of sympathy for him, because I can't imagine what it would be like to live in a body you disliked, and to reject your biological sex (I fully understand wanting to reject your gender conditioning, however).  I also didn't want to seek psychological counseling in lieu of telling others in my day to day life what was happening in my life, because I needed someone there for me as I went through my days to know me; talking to a psychologist only seemed to me too confining, too much like a little confessional window in my husband's closet, through which I might talk to a counselor, but essentially remain in his closet.  I told a longtime friend immediately (unfortunately she lives in a thousand miles away), and recently I told another, here where I live; I also found this forum, after 18 months, and it's been a godsend. 
  And I'm determined not to be silenced.  

 

October 21, 2016 11:51 am  #8


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Wow.  My head is spinning right now.  My husband started taking hormones behind my back when our older daughter started to go through puberty.  The timing of that did not escape my notice, but I had pushed that out of my mind until I read this.  He seemed to have another resurgence of TG activity when our younger daughter started puberty.  And now that I'm approaching perimenopause...yikes.  And I am really embarrassed to admit this, but I would have encouraged our younger daughter (who is in college) to get on birth control pills sooner, but I was so afraid he would start stealing them I did not.  Like I would rather her risk an unwanted pregnancy?  Crazy, I know. 

Unlike some in this situation, I have never participated in any of his TG activities.  I was afraid of providing positive reinforcement.  But yes, that means I haven't had sex in years.  Whatever he does, he is doing completely on the down low, I told him I did not want him to engage in it and I better not see any evidence of it.  That changed over the years to "if that's what you want to do, let's get a divorce, because obviously I can't stop you from doing it--but stop lying to me".  I did find out this summer he had been taking hormones again and lying about it.  We have more of a roommate kind of marriage (although separate bedrooms).  Honestly, I think of him as being seriously mentally ill although I think anyone who knows him would not believe me if I told them about this.  He puts up a great act.  In fact, I am a huge introvert who has relied heavily on his charm and extroversion in social situations.  That is embarrassing to admit.  He is very successful in his business.  The other night I had a dream that he came out, and while I thought everyone would be horrified they all supported him and they shunned me.  I know I have had this fear ever since he told me, and I think that keeps me from leaving him.   He insists he loves me, doesn't want to leave our marriage and wants to support me but sometimes I wonder if he is just waiting until his parents pass away (they are very social in their community) before he really comes out.  I do not trust him.  I don't want to trust him, but the danger in spending time with him means I start trusting him again.  And that is only going to lead to hurt.

But there is one other thing here that I often try to deny to myself, but wonder if anyone else in this situation has the same experience.  When my dad started having dementia, he became obsessed with this as well.  This was a horrifying discovery for me.  I found out because I had finally decided to tell my mom about what was going on in my marriage.  Imagine my shock when she said she was dealing with the same thing.  And that is what keeps me awake at night.  Wondering if my daughters are going to repeat this pattern of picking a man like this.  Because they don't know about their dad.  And I want to protect them from that.  But I also don't ever want them to end up in a situation like this.  I would love to know if anyone married to a guy like this suspects or knows that their dad might have had this issue.  And yes, I would say my dad had a lot of narcissistic traits as does my husband.  I did not really have a good relationship with my father, he always seemed to reject me.  He passed away a few years ago.

 

October 21, 2016 4:25 pm  #9


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Sun,
 I realized that I never answered your question.  What do I think my husband is fantasizing about when he's cross dressed and/or engaged in acting out his fantasy of being a woman?  He's told me.  He is imagining himself as the woman he would like to bring into being through his acts, the one he fantasizes about being.  Note: This is different than "the woman he knows he is inside."  My husband has never said he "is" a woman; what he's said is that he has a vision of the woman he would like to be if he were a woman, and by acting out and dressing up, he is "bringing her into being."  He feels sexy when dressed in a chemise, and vamps, because acting that way makes him feel closer to his ideal (because that's what he thinks makes him more like a sexy woman).  
  Sorry for this next, which is maybe too graphic, but it answers your question:  He also fantasizes during sex that he has a female body, and is feeling the sexual response a female does, and experiencing sex the way women do. He has told me he imagines the glans of his penis is a clitoris; he imagines his "breasts" are a woman's; he thinks being penetrated is giving him a woman's experience of "being taken" and "giving herself up."  
  I don't think, by the way, that he's perverted.  I think that for whatever reason--a physical condition in the brain, maybe caused in the womb during development--this is natural to him, his natural sexual orientation.  My objection to it is not that it is disgusting or shameful; my objection to it is that it has opened a rift between his sexuality and mine.  I am not prepared to think of him as a woman or to treat him as if he were one.  I am not opposed even to participating in his fantasies in bed, but I am increasingly dissatisfied that he cannot act as a male/man to me in bed.  His sexuality and mine overlap, but they don't match.  Every straight spouse, whether married to a GID or a TG, knows what it feels like to suddenly know that one's mate, one's intimate partner, has a sexuality unlike your own, and unlike that you always believed your partner had.  I'm all for gender bending, would have no objection to any of the acts--what I object to is that he genders them, rather than ungenders them!  AGPs aren't in any sense "exploding the gender binary"; they're embracing it from the other side.  
  Ok.  My two cents worth at the end of a long work day. 

 

October 21, 2016 4:34 pm  #10


Re: Cross dressers and transgenders

Oh, one last thought:
Tired, 
 I, too, mistrust my husband's claim that although he'd like to he won't feminize himself to the extent he would like to, by taking female hormones.  It's pretty clear to me that the reason he isn't "out and proud" is that he doesn't want to suffer the blow to his prestige and pride (he would never pass as a woman) he'd take if he did.  He's aware that it would affect his job and his marriage, but I suspect that once he retires and his father dies he will do it, regardless of how it will affect our marriage.  I suspect his obsession with wanting to feminize himself as hormones will is much stronger than anything else--and certainly more important than I am to him.  That's how AGP works: it constantly pushes them to the next step, and they are ever more involved with that new "self." 
   

 

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