You'll Never Convince Me that its Harmless: How Cross-Dressing Destroyed a Marriage

© July 23, 2011

When television writers want a quick laugh out of the audience, they can count on dressing a man up in women’s clothes to produce it. There is something about seeing a bearded or burly guy in a dress that seems absurd and illogical enough to elicit a chuckle. Soon, the female clothes get tossed aside and the character returns to his regularly scheduled life. If only life imitated art quite so well.

In the real world, it might be worth a guffaw or two if a man becomes a woman for Halloween. However, when cross-dressing becomes a compulsion, it goes from becoming a joke to diagnosis 302.3 in the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is formally called Transvestic Fetishism. In spite of the official sounding diagnosis, cross-dressing in its many forms is something that is widely misunderstood. Perhaps the biggest misconceptioin is that men who cross-dress are gay or want to change their gender. That is rarely the case.

There are three criteria which must be present in order for an individual to be diagnosed with Dual-Role Transvestitism or F64.1, including the following:

• The individual wears clothes of the opposite sex in order to experience temporary membership in the opposite sex;
• The individual has no desire for a permanent change to the opposite sex.
• The primary motivation for donning the apparel of the opposite gender appears to be sexual arousal.

With diagnosis code 302.3, Transvestic Fetishism, the following criteria must be present:

• Over a period of at least six months, in a heterosexual male, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving cross-dressing.
• The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
• Specify if: With Gender Dysphoria: if the person has persistent discomfort with gender role or identity.

Both conditions are 20 times more prevalent in men than women. In contrast, diasnosis code 302.65 specifically relates to Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and is used to describe men or women who more strongly identify with the opposite gender than their own. However, someone who is experiencing GID is not called a transsexual unless steps are taken via hormone replacement or surgery to physically alter their appearance. It should also be noted that the person's own distress over cross-dressing or identifying with the opposite gender is critical in a diagnosis.

The majority of people exhibiting either of the first two diagnoses are heterosexual males who generally do not cross-dress in public. Public opinion on the topic is sharply divided, and religious beliefs tend to play a large role in whether people find this behavior acceptable or not. Some find it completely harmless and feel a man should be able to wear women’s clothes in private if it gives him pleasure or helps him relax. To those people I say, try be married to a cross-dresser and your opinion may change.

As you can probably guess by my last sentence, I was married to a cross-dresser. However, I didn’t know it until we were married for just over 10 years. It was a shocking discovery to say the least, but what was even more disturbing was the lengths he went to in order to hide it from me. It was no different from a drug addiction as far as I am concerned. He lied, spent money without thinking of the consequences, took increasing risks which could cause him to be discovered and needed more and more paraphernalia to obtain his fix. When I finally caught on to what was happening in my own home, the monthly cross-dressing bills were nearing $500. He had also recently begun taking breast enhancement pills for men, although they were not successful. They were not official hormone pills, and were instead ordered over the Internet by someone making a quick buck.

Most men don’t wake up one day and decide to start cross-dressing. It usually starts out innocently enough in childhood when he wonders what it would be like to wear the clothing of his mother or sister. Initially, that may provide comfort, but it eventually leads to anxiety because he fears getting caught. If he has already developed a pattern of cross-dressing behavior, it may be very difficult to stop and this can lead to extreme stress and additional problems with personality development.

Some theories state that cross-dressing comes about as a result of young boys being rejected by their mothers. Don’t the mothers always get the blame? He may perceive that his sisters receive more love and conclude that it would be better to be a girl. I know that in my ex’s case, he comforted himself with the silky feel of his mother’s clothes. Cross-dressing rarely starts out to be sexual in nature, but it can end up that way and get to the point where a person can not become sexually aroused without the various clothing and accessories.

I said I was married to a cross-dresser, not that I still am. Unfortunately, that means I divorced him and not that he ever got better. I am not convinced that he was not cross-dressing to some degree or at least looking at pornography in the nearly three years between my discovery and our divorce. Ultimately, it was not the cross-dressing itself that lead to my escape, but the narcissist behavior that is often associated with a habitual cross-dresser.

I am re-married and my ex-husband is engaged to a single mother with a 13-year-old son. Recently, I inadvertently discovered that he re-opened his account with Victoria’s Secret almost a year ago. Part of me wants to laugh, because I was told that I was the reason he did it, although he never elaborated on what was so revolting about me that he had to resort to basically having an affair with himself. We have been apart nearly three years, so I wonder who he is going to blame it on if he gets caught again. The saddest part of the whole situation is that there is another woman who is going to go through some of the deepest anguish a wife’s soul can know when she finds out who her husband really is.

Losing his first marriage and family wasn’t enough for him to stop cross-dressing and replacing me and our two daughters with a new family isn’t going to be enough either. I suspect that this addiction (and that’s exactly what it is) will eventually cost him everything.

One family destroyed and another about to be. Is cross-dressing still so funny?

This story has attracted a lot of attention, and many people who disagree with me have felt the need to post comments that were personal attacks and rather hurtful. What people seem to be missing is that this is my own story. My ex-husband's secret cross-dressing and accompanying emotionally abusive behaviors nearly destroyed me and they ripped our family apart. There is no way I will ever see his behavior as harmless.

There is nothing "normal" about spending $500 a month on corsets, bras, panties, leather boots, garders, etc, when your family lives in filth, doesn't have health insurance and there isn't enough money to buy school supplies and clothes for your children. There is nothing "normal" about preferring sexual relations with yourself rather than your wife. There is nothing "normal" about two young girls having to keep their father's secret to the point one of them struggled with severe depression. My ex's compulsion was a progressive sexual addiction and no one will convince me otherwise. It was NOT: expressing his female side, a reaction in response to anything I did or didn't do (a favorite accusation of the haters) or something he had the RIGHT to do at the expense of his family and above all, it was NOT harmless.

While your story may be different, this is my experience and I am taking what may be an unpopular and politically incorrect stance because I know there are other women who have been hurt by this who need to read that it's okay to establish limits and say that certain behaviors are not acceptable in a relationship. It's okay to leave a relationship when someone has lied all along about who they are, and rather than face his own issues, begins attacking you. That is actually a lot of what happened in the comments before I shut them off. I'm not looking for a repeat of how I was treated in my first marriage. My goal is to show there are two sides to every issue, and that what we do has a greater impact on others than we will sometimes ever know.