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October 23, 2016 10:27 am  #1


Just found out my Husband crossdresses, so confused, help!

My Husband has always worn large sweaters and tights under his jeans in the winter. Yesterday we received a large package while he was working and upon inspection it was a rather ugly women's sweater with a HUGE turtleneck and a pair of tights to match. Usually I wouldn't log into my Husbands accounts (we have all of each other's passwords) but I had to see how much he paid for this monstrosity.  I found he had paid $77 for this fake mohair (acrylic) handmade (not) but the other stuff he bid on, a pink sweater dress, thigh high uggs, pink furry catsuit. He had me convinced last night that those were just fantasy and he would never go that far. Then this morning I find where he has been posting about being a cross dresser (which he told me last night he's not, that he just likes how it feels) and where he was thinking of wearing booty shorts, fishnets, and "what's the point of thigh high boots if no one sees them?" I have been crying off and on all day, I don't know what to think or do, how much can I handle? How do I be fair to him while being fair to myself? I asked him to only wear the sweater at home and he wore it to work, how do I tell him I find it repulsive and aren't physically attracted to him dressed like this without hurting him? Divorce has crossed my mind, then I think that would be stupid over clothes. I wish this would just stop. I've been reading both sides of this coin all day, aren't there others like me who just want to chat and have some support while we figure out who each other is now, and how/if those people can be together and happy. It did make me smile when I read that his favorite accessory is the extra long scarf his Wife made him. 

 

October 23, 2016 12:59 pm  #2


Re: Just found out my Husband crossdresses, so confused, help!

Dear Dieselcowgirl,
   I'm sorry this has happened to you.  I'm glad you found this forum; it's been a godsend to me, but also challenged me to see reality when I would prefer to look through hope-colored glasses.  
   I don't know if it's better or worse to find out that others have gone through and are going through the same thing.  When it's "just us" we think we can work things out in our individual marriage.  When we realize our husband's behavior has a pattern, and outline, and that his behavior will escalate, we don't want to know it.  At the same time, we feel relief that we have found someone to talk to who has gone through the same thing, and who understands what the hurt and panic and disbelief and the weirdness feels like.  
    Why do we always want to be "fair to him" and worry about "hurting him"?  I felt the same way, early on, when I also thought it would be "stupid" to divorce him when he just wanted to dress up and at home act in ways that he thinks women act.
   Given that you're in the "I'm worried about my husband and not hurting him" phase and not yet in the "What about me?" phase, what I'm going to say may sound pretty cold, but here it is.
   That you asked your husband not to wear the sweater outside the home and he did, and that in his post he makes it pretty clear he'll be wearing those "thigh high boots" where someone can see them, he is not going to stop doing what he's doing, and he's going to do it no matter whether you like it or not, or what damage it does to his marriage.  He does not and will not care that you find it "repulsive" and will defend his right to do it, turning his anger on you for your reaction to what he will say is "just clothes" and "he likes how it feels."  
   The fact is, to him it isn't "just clothes" and it isn't about how women's clothes "feel."  There are plenty of men's clothes that "feel" good, too--satin boxers, for one, but I'm betting that your husband, like mine, doens't want anything to do with those, and that's because the clothes are merely the means, the way he expresses his desire to be and act like a woman (a male porn fantasy of the sexually submissive woman..."booty shorts, fishnets").  The point of his wearing them is because they allow him to indulge his need to feel like a woman; they aren't "just clothes."  Believe me, I've had a shouting match with my husband over exactly this point, when he tried to compare my wearing an old pocket T-shirt he gave me to his sitting around in woman's loungewear in the morning before work.  The difference was that 1) I didn't go out and buy that shirt, 2) I was wearing it for its utility and not because it was a man's shirt (he offered it to me because I needed a T-shirt with a pocket to put my Ipod in while I exercised), and, most importantly, 3) in wearing it I wasn't thinking constantly about how I was wearing "men's clothing" or how delighted I was to be wearing "men's clothes" because it made me feel more masculine.    
    When you "figure out" who he is "now," you will not like it; and by the time you "figure out" who he is "now," he will already be on the next step. 
   I'm 19 months post-reveal, and I wish I'd followed through on my initial impulse to divorce him when I first found it.  With a very short window in which I was drawn into the sexual novelty of making love to my husband while he pretended he was a woman, most of that 19 months has been an agony.  It's also been necessary, I know, for me to see over and over again with clarity just how much my husband's fixation on his need to feminize himself dominates his vision and how he puts that before everything else, even as he claims he loves me and wants to stay married.  I read an essay yesterday by a MtF who later detransitioned who said he wished that instead of so many people cheering him on in his "transition" to live as a woman, someone had told him to focus his love for women on the real women outside himself.  I expect I will be saying that to my husband in the near future.
   I know you will take the time you need to take but from my experience, getting out sooner is better than staying later and later.

 

October 23, 2016 1:04 pm  #3


Re: Just found out my Husband crossdresses, so confused, help!

Oh...and read up on autogynephilia.  The work of Anne Lawrence, a transwoman who is a psychologist, is a good place to start.  

 

 

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