Tell Your Girlfriend, But Don’t Tell Your Wife
“Honesty is the best policy.”
The common wisdom is that a crossdresser who is in a marriage or serious relationship with a genetic woman is best off finding a way to tell her the truth.
“It’s only fair.” “Somehow or other, you are going to get caught eventually anyway.” “Even if she is not supportive, generally she will be tolerant as long as you ‘keep it private, even from me.’”
And I agree with that common wisdom as long as you have not already married the woman.
But I don’t agree that you should tell your wife.
There are two reasons I feel this way. The second reason derives from the first.
The second reason is anecdotal: I’ve seen and read about too many marriages devastated (immediately or eventually) by the revelation. Often, the pain accompanying that devastation is all but unbearable. Conversely, I know of many crossdressers, even crossdressers who are out and about in our community, who have successfully kept their secrets from their own families for decades. They might have been happier to have been able to share their secret lives with those they love; but they have decided that the risk is too high. They have dealt with things as they felt they must.
As for the first, the prime, reason: I think it comes out of an obvious truth about all human relationships, even loving marriages.
Underlying all human relationships is a social contract. Although it is a contract with terms that are always open to re-negotiation, the terms of the contract usually remain stable for many years. Partners understand the terms. Everybody abides by the rules. Relationships stay happy.
The sad, inevitable truth about that contract is the very great importance of the clauses that have to do with relative power: for example, the complex clause in that contract called: Presumed Authority. (On this list of topics, my opinion carries more weight; on that list yours does.)
So what happens when a crossdresser lets the genie out of the bottle?
First of all, of course, once released, you can never get that genie back into that bottle.
And with the revelation, the crossdresser has irrevocably changed the contract rules, and especially the rules about relative power. Especially, he has given his wife an immense power token that he immediately regrets having handed over, a power token of great value even when unspoken.
Certainly, the marriage can be saved if the crossdresser simply accepts the rewritten terms of the contract. Generally, that means ceding power and authority in the relationship to the genetic woman.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a husband ceding power and authority to a wife. Such relationships can and do work well. But that doesn’t happen.
The crossdresser can’t accept the rewritten terms of the relationship. The crossdresser resents what he has lost.
Inevitably, there comes a time when the wife uses or threatens to use her new power token. The crossdresser gets very angry. The relationship is mortally wounded.
From then on, it’s a painful spiral down.
The reason the situation is different before marriage is obvious. The revelation is already assimilated into the social contract before the marriage contract is made.
In short, it’s not so much about the changed relationship itself; it’s about the consequences of the sudden, irrevocable change in the rules of the relationship.
In short, before or after marriage, don’t tell until you’ve thought long and hard, until you are sure you are being honest with yourself about your willingness to accept the new terms . . . forever.
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Cheryl Ann Sanders was a frequent contributor to Transgender Forum in the past. She has been absent for several years while writing and publishing a (quite successful) straight novel under another name. Many also know her TG novel A Woman’s Passion written under the name Alan Barrie. It was at one time the bestselling TG novel of all times. Although more than 15 years old, it still sells in dribs and drabs on Amazon.
Still others remember her essay that appeared here several years ago: “…And What I Wore.” An “occasional woman” at that time, this was a memoir of a weekend she actually spent as a woman with a man in New York City. That memoir can still be found in our archives. Unfortunately, the photographs that illustrate that archived version have been lost. A safe PDF version with its photographs still intact is available for download.
Cassie can be reached at alanbarrie@yahoo.com.
Category: Transgender Body & Soul, Transgender Opinion
About the Author (Author Profile)
Cheryl Ann Sanders was a frequent contributor to Transgender Forum in the past. She has been absent for several years while writing and publishing a (quite successful) straight novel under another name.Subscribe
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I’m sorry Cheryl – or Cassie, or whatever you call yourself – but you don’t know what you’re talking about. The ideas and philosophy you’ve put forward are clearly a sign of the time they were originally written – nearly 20 years ago, as you say. Times change, opinions evolve, and things move on … though it appears you haven’t noticed. The problem is that you’re so deeply in the closet that you can’t even IMAGINE the benefits of coming out. The fact that you referred to me – a person who’s clearly at ease using his male identity – using a female pronoun (twice) speaks volumes about how confused you are!
Yes, I live alone … but don’t be so quick to triumphantly dismiss that as the result of me not being able to find someone who’s willing to accept my lifestyle. For what it’s worth, my last relationship broke down because I got bored with the TG clubbing life my partner enjoyed, and we grew apart – not because she discovered that I spent my Saturday nights lying about what I was doing, where I was going, and who I was with. At this point in time, I have many friends, both male and female, gay and straight, any one of whom would be proud to be seen in public with me wearing a skirt as a man. And in case you think that I’m a sad, bitter old man, you should know that I have a very full and public social life … check out my Facebook page if you doubt me (I’m easy to find). But I CHOOSE to live alone.
The difference between you and me is that I pride myself on my openness and honesty with everyone I meet … with no exceptions. I have to ask what sort of a distorted relationship is it when your supposed closest friend and confidante – and the person who shares your bed – doesn’t know who you really are? And what value should anyone place on the advice you have to offer from such a position?
So you can go ahead describe your marriage as “ecstatic” if you wish, but you’re not fooling anyone except yourself. It’s hardly an achievement when your wife has no idea about the deep, dark, embarrassing secret you’re withholding from her. Would she also regard your marriage as “ecstatic” if she knew about your “other” life? No sir – I’d rather have no marriage at all than one which is a sham and a lie like yours!
Honesty is the best policy. Yes, always.
I stand by the argument in my column, originally written nearly 20 years ago.
Honesty is the best policy. Tell your girlfriend before you ask her to marry you.
But, having failed to do that, don’t tell your wife unless you are willing to accept a total change in the dynamics of your marriage, almost always to its detriment, often destruction.
In short, the difference in the net effect between “getting caught” and “confessing your long-kept secret after marriage” is small. The net effect on the marriage will be equally dramatic either way.
Since Graham felt comfortable using a single instance anecdote in support of her argument (her own life), I will too.
I dressed regularly for over 40 years. Many of my adventures were journaled in the pages of TGForum and can still be found (with pictures!) in its archives. (Click on the link above to read, or read again, “…And What I Wore.”)
Graham is “not in the market for another relationship.” I read that to mean that Graham is alone.
I’m still ecstatically married to the woman I’ve loved for enough years that the soccer games we go to watch now are not our children’s, but our grandchildren’s. And my wife? She simply doesn’t know.
Honesty is the best policy. Well, maybe, not always.
Wow. I know that Angela likes to post the occasional controversial piece on this site, but I can’t believe what I’ve just read. Are you serious?
Not revealing to a partner that you’re a crossdresser is all very well and good in an ideal world where secrets can be guaranteed to be safe and secure. But it only takes one tiny mistake – an unrecognised earring found down the back of the sofa, an inadvertent sighting of an unknown woman driving the family car, a trace of nail varnish on a hand or foot, a mail-order purchase arriving a day earlier than expected – and the secret’s out. You start telling lies to cover your tracks, then you have to tell more lies to support your earlier lies, and eventually the fake account of last weekend’s “fishing trip with the guys” unravels. Not only are you discovered to be a crossdresser, but worse, you’re now revealed as a lifelong liar. And what happens if that “fishing trip with the guys” results in hospitalisation following an accident? How would you explain to your wife what you were doing at a seedy nightclub dressed like a teenaged girl, when you were supposed to be asleep in a tent by a river with a group of middle-aged men? How do you pick up the pieces after an incident like that? Many women can understand why their husbands might want to keep their crossdressing secret, but they can’t tolerate the fact that they’ve been lied to. After all, honesty is one of the foundation-stones of any relationship.
Let’s turn this round. How would you feel if the situation were reversed, and you discovered that your wife had been lying to you since you first met so that she could spend time in a gay bar with other women dressed up to look like men? What has she been doing? Who has she been sleeping with? Has she picked up any sexual diseases? There are so many questions that you’re quite entitled to know the answers to.
To be perfectly frank, if your “secret” IS discovered, and your wife locks you out the house and throws your frillies out the window into the street, you only have yourself to blame. But remember that you’ve not only wrecked your own life by lying, you’ve probably wrecked hers too … and that wasn’t mentioned in what you glibly refer to as a “social contract”, which she might not have signed up to had she known the full facts beforehand. You say “the crossdresser can’t accept the rewritten terms of the relationship [following voluntary disclosure]; the crossdresser resents what he has lost.” Well, tough luck. If the contract was a lie from the start, and the wife terminates it on that basis, then I say “good for her”. There are two supposedly-equal sides in a marriage, and one side can’t expect to have their cake and eat it too.
I accept that at this point in time, there’s a legacy of married crossdressers out there – people who married perhaps thirty or forty years ago in the hope that “the love of a good woman” would stop them dressing. Certainly there was a time when crossdressing wasn’t talked about at all, and hiding it was essentially the only option to avoid public disgrace and possibly financial ruin. But things have moved on since then – at least in the world outside the crossdressing closet – and nowadays, there’s no justification for dishonesty, and you should never embark on a new relationship as a secret crossdresser. If you’re planning to spend your life with someone, you must be honest – you owe it not only to your partner, but to yourself … after all, if you don’t love yourself “warts and all”, how can you expect anyone else to love you? If your partner dumps you as a result of your revelation, then so be it – surely it’s better to happen before the relationship starts rather than years down the line when there are children involved?
But the chances are increasingly good that a prospective partner won’t dump you just for that. In most of the western world, crossdressing doesn’t carry the stigma that it once did, and if you’re open about it, and treat it like a fun inclusive hobby rather than a dark embarrassing secret which hangs around your neck like a millstone, it will most likely be treated in a similar manner. To put it in colloquial terms, if you play the victim, you can expect people to treat you like one … but if you strut around like you own the place, they’ll give you the keys.
That’s how I treat my gender-nonconformity … and having been out and proud for almost two decades, I feel that I can speak with authority on the matter. It puts me in control of the truth – I have no secrets, so I can’t be “discovered” and I can’t be blackmailed. What you see is what you get – and that’s how it should be. I have many friends who respect me for what I do, but I’m not in the market for another relationship … however, if I were, my gender-nonconforming status would be clear, and accepting it without reservation would be at the very top of my “social contract”.