How Significant Others Feel About Their CD Partners

I have sometimes wondered whether I was glad to know that my husband was a crossdresser before we married or whether it would have been better not to learn and have had no exposure to it whatsoever.

As I write in my blog I had knowledge from the beginning of our relationship, and I accepted and encouraged his chosen form of self-expression. Still, I did not understand his desire to dress in feminine lingerie, and his erotic flavor of sexual interests was the foundation of a much larger and more dangerous addiction. Nor did I understand how being involved with someone with these passions would impact my life and my sense of my own feminine identity.

Recently, I had the opportunity to ask many of my cisgender women sisters whether they thought it was best to know about their husband’s interests or whether they would have preferred to have never found out. The results of my informal and unscientific poll were not altogether surprising, and here is a snapshot of the responses.

• Over 150 women opened the survey but only 89 provided responses. Each question allowed free-form comments to explain their answer or to provide context, and this is where the real insights were told.
• The women were located worldwide, including one response from war-torn Ukraine of all places. All respondents answered being legally married to their CD/TG/M2F partner, now or at some point in the past.
• All 89 were emphatic that knowing was better than not knowing. Not a single respondent said they wished they had never found out, even as disturbing as it was or how long it took to find out.
• Only 10% (9) knew of their husband’s crossdressing or transgender tendency before marriage. Like me, most considered it harmless at the time, but a few would only accept it under certain circumstances, such as keeping it private and out of the bedroom.
• The remaining 80 (90%) respondents did not find out until after marriage, most by accident or through suspicious behavior that prompted them into detective mode. Only 5 were told by their husband after marriage but before accidental discovery. (One woman found out after 26 years of marriage, and she was so shocked and traumatized that she became suicidal. Her story was beyond tragic.)
• When asked if they would have married their husband had they known from the outset, 74 (92%) of the 80 wives who reported not knowing beforehand said “no” that they would not have married him had she known then what she knows now.
• Most of these 74 women commented that they felt they would have wanted the choice to decide. 11 women said they felt cheated from having the partner they thought they were marrying or deprived of having a relationship based on honesty and trust — they felt they were married to a stranger or like me, were married under false pretenses. The word “betrayal” was frequently used in the commentary associated with this question.
• Of the 80 respondents who did not know, 29 (36%) eventually sought a divorce, another 8 (10%) live apart, and the remaining 41 are either sticking it out for children or have no other financial choice but to stay married.
• While a few wives were able to find some manner of acceptance (by ignoring their husband’s interests or setting strict rules on when or how it is done), most are “unhappy” with it, and a handful privately thought their husband’s pastime was immoral, dangerous, or downright disgusting.
• Of the 9 women who knew before marriage, 4 said it wasn’t the crossdressing that bothered them but rather what it “turned into” later. They described many of the same pursuits my husband was engaged in, involving sexual encounters with other CDs and men looking for the transvestite/shemale experience.
• 3 of the 9 who knew before marriage still supported their husband’s activities, but one confessed she has a secret male lover to “even the score.” (She didn’t describe what score she thought she was settling.)
• 75 (85%) of the 89 respondents sought the help of professional mental health providers at some point to deal with the shock and stress, while a few others admitted to “self-medicating” either through drugs and/or alcohol.

It’s fair to assess that disclosing these interests to your wife or life partner is a very personal and difficult decision, regardless of the timing. However, keeping it a secret brings an added risk — perhaps with devastating consequences, especially if the activity is unexpectedly discovered because you potentially lose the ability to influence the dialogue.

If you are considering unveiling your fem side to your wife or life partner, I have added a page to my blog entitled “Spilling the Saucer of Secrets to Your Significant Other” with some suggestions to consider before sitting down for that conversation.

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Tags: crossdressing, featured, partners

Category: FYI