DH and women’s underwear

[Needanothername1234]

Feeling a bit sick and need someone to tell me if I’m being horrible.
My DH wears women’s knickers. I first found out when I discovered some close up photos of him wearing my underwear on his computer (which I occasionally used with his permission) This happened after we’d been together for about 2 years and had moved in together. He said that it was a little kink when he masturbated sometimes, no big deal, so I asked him not to because he’d ruin my underwear.

Subsequently I found some knickers in the house after I’d been away. I immediately assumed he was having an affair, so was relieved to discover that he’d bought himself more underwear so that he wouldn’t fuck mine up. We talked about it, and I told him I felt upset by his furtive behaviour, and did he want to wear them during sex? I thought that by incorporating them into our sex life it would make him feel less ashamed. So we did that occasionally, and he openly had a few pairs he would wear with me, and I thought that would be enough.

We are now married and have been together for 10 years. During that time we’ve been through some really hard experiences including infertility, and our sex life has dwindled to almost non-existence. This is partly due to my libido disappearing (perimenopause) but also because DH makes no attempt to have sex. I’ve told him many times that I want to have sex with him and be intimate, even if my lack of libido means that I rarely make the first move. He swears that he still fancies me, and when we do have sex he still seems to be keen.

Over the last week we’ve been sleeping separately (insomnia/snoring) and I noticed that he’d shaved all his pubic hair off. I jokingly said that he was using the spare room as an opportunity to live out his sexual fantasies without my oppressive presence, and he just laughed and said it was more comfortable in the hot weather. Anyway, I lost something a couple of days ago and asked if I could look through his drawers to see if it was mixed up with his stuff. I then found two drawers full of knickers, stockings, etc. When I asked him about it it became apparent that he has now replaced me with masturbation, and he wears this stuff all the time and regularly buys it. I feel sick. It feels like he’s cheating on me, but not even with another woman. I’ve been cast aside in favour of a load of nasty polyester. The secrecy makes me feel so sick.

We’ve talked about it a lot, and it seems as though he wants to wear it all the time. I have no problem with him wearing it in bed sometimes as a dirty sex thing, but am really repulsed by the idea of him shaving and wearing it day to day. I feel like a horrible intolerant person, but I don’t know if I can fancy him if he goes down this feminine route. It really turns me off.

I am getting hrt to try and deal with my libido, but it feels as though he’s already written off our sex life. He’s a wonderful kind man and we’ve been through so much and I love him dearly, but I’m really struggling with the way he’s just written me out of his sex life. It’s crazy that I feel jealous. How do I deal with this?

Oh, my bad. I thought you knew every single trans person, ever.

@Haffiana

Oh, my bad. I thought you knew every single trans person, ever.

Oh that's ok, it's nice of you to admit you were wrong Thank you

Early morning insomnia meant that I was scrolling through MN and happened upon Tinsel Angel’s trans widow escape support thread. She links to this thread. It was interesting to read about myself in the third person.

It’s becoming increasing apparent to me that the experience of losing your DP to a new trans identity leaves you unable to accept that there can be any other outcome in life for anyone else.

So much pity for me and my hopeless naivety! But absolutely no respect for my ability to assess my own situation, and no willingness whatsoever to consider that their experiences do not determine the blueprint for everyone else’s.

I question how much support is really being offered here by the trans widow posters. They are so locked into their own viewpoint that any deviation from that is seen as a refusal to face facts. And anyone who contradicts them is accused of trans widow bashing.

I have repeatedly stated that I am waiting to see where this leads. I am vigilant. I have been working through my own feelings, examining where my boundaries lie, assessing the strengths of my marriage, asking myself how much of the secrecy is tied up in the fetish, and how much is the knock-on effect of a diminished sex life.

This has been going on for more than a week now - a gruelling and unhappy week where both DH and I have had to consider that this could spell the end of our marriage. We’ve discussed what that will look like financially, how that will be achieved. But we’ve also talked about strategies to save it. We both consider it worth saving.

Apparently none of this counts for anything. DH’s and my ability to listen to each other and be kind to each other and look for ways to make our marriage and sex life happy and mutually rewarding count for nothing. I’m just hiding from the truth. The truth that only they are clever and all-seeing enough to know.

These same women who pity me for my apparent refusal to listen to them are themselves refusing to listen to me and the other PPs who have experiences which contradict theirs. Their idea of support is disrespect for anyone who doesn’t agree with them.

Theirs is a very blinkered, very black and white world.

@VeryLongBeeeep

It's not because your husband likes wearing women's knickers that so many people are seeing red flags and similarities to the trans widows experiences, OP. It's because, despite how much you may want and choose not to see it, there is clear escalation here.

The secrecy.
The lies.
The photos.
The increase from the odd pair of your knickers to two entire drawers of underwear and stockings (the majority of which you obviously didn't know about despite your laid back shopping trips with him, or you wouldn't have had to ask him about them).
The shaving.
The desire to wear it all the time rather than just as the occasional thing (and even if that is 'all the time in bed' rather than 'every day to the office', that's more than you expected or originally agreed to or is fair, considering it's something you're neutral / accommodating about but isn't actually a kink you share).
The grandiose gesture of throwing it all out on discovery, classic purging.

You don't want to see it, so now you're minimising and trying to put distance between him and the early stages of the trans widows' experiences and I completely understand why, but he is already pushing at your boundaries. I hope you're right that this is just about him having one "failing - he wants to wear women’s underwear" but the evidence above suggests it's already a bit more than a harmless kink. I genuinely wish you well and I hope you don't end up having to live with any/too much cognitive dissonance and gaslighting.

All of this. Keeping it a secret and private thing despite having a really open minded partner who has already been happy to incorporate him wearing women's underwear in sexual situations means he has hugely escalated and / or actually thrives on the secrecy and deceit. It comes from a place of concern for you not being blindsided if he suddenly goes down the route many of us think is likely, not from a place of being horrible to you.

@youvegottenminuteslynn
‘ Keeping it a secret and private thing despite having a really open minded partner who has already been happy to incorporate him wearing women's underwear in sexual situations means he has hugely escalated and / or actually thrives on the secrecy and deceit.’

But we haven’t been having sex, and the main reason for that is that my libido fell through the floor.

I told him I no longer enjoyed sex in the same way as before but that I’d have sex with him anyway.

Does that sound like a turn on to you? Can’t you see how that might make him feel? Unwanted? Like he would be forcing himself on me? Like it would be better for both of us if he just masturbated instead?

I don’t think, in that scenario, that it’s unreasonable that he would have decided to masturbate instead, and the longer it’s gone on the more difficult it is to resume having regular sex, particularly when the issues haven’t been addressed.

My fear is that the secrecy is part of the attraction. He denies that.

I think the only way to be sure is for us to take steps together to raise my libido and make sex something that we’re both enthusiastic about again, and then we’ll see how things pan out from there.

At no point have I said that there is no possibility that he’s trans, or that this isn’t heading for disaster.
I’m keeping a very open mind because the good outweighs the bad in our relationship.
I appreciate that PPs don’t want me to experience the terrible things that have happened to them.

The most positive outcome for me is that I am able to regain at least some of my previous enjoyment from sex. That I have sex regularly with the man I love, and that he is aware that I want to have sex with him. That we stay together.

That’s what I want. It may not work. I understand that. I’ve been repeatedly bludgeoned with that fact throughout this thread. I’m not living in cloud cuckoo land.

But nor am I foolish enough to jump ship on from otherwise wonderful marriage without making a bit of effort first.

I don’t think PPs are being unkind to me. I think they’re genuinely unable to see things from any other viewpoint than their own.

I don’t think, in that scenario, that it’s unreasonable that he would have decided to masturbate instead

But the masturbation in these circumstances isn’t a substitute for sex with his wife though. It’s tied up with his fetish, the extent of which he’s kept secret from you. Two whole drawers is a lot of underwear and suggests he’s shopped on more than one occasion, with his fetish in mind.

I think it’s naive to think all of his shaving and private wanking in women’s knickers will stop if you have sex with him and he wears them then. This all seems to be an important part of his sexual expression and it’s completely separate from you.

If you are ok with the fetishy wanking but want to incorporate some of it into your mutual sex life then that’s great. But the resumption of your sex life won’t replace his fetish, not the need to engage in it.

You’ve falsely conflated two things: the lack of your sex life and the increase in his fetish. Correlation is not causation.

The fetish is not the result of your lower libido. You are both trying to address it as such because it shifts the responsibility from him to you. And you have low self-esteem so this seems to fit for you.

OP go post this on the relationship subreddit instead of here. Mumsnet is a lot of great things but it is also known as the online home of anti trans sentiment. Any tiny hint of a man being feminine will see him cast as evil autogynephile looking to wear your skin and spy on them in change rooms. It’s insane and frankly impossible to have any meaningful discussion like this here. It’s also destroyed the feminism board as everything revolves around their hatred of trans women.

Your response has been measured and logical and only you know your partner. I hope you guys make it through. Xx

I have low self esteem? Really? Because I’m not having a knee jerk reaction and divorcing my husband over what many people have confirmed is a relatively common fetish.

We are addressing it as a shared problem, because everything in our marriage is a shared problem. I’m not accepting responsibility for his fetish. I’m accepting responsibility for my part in the decline of our sex life.

If that doesn’t help to keep his fetish ‘in check’ then so be it. At that point I will probably take a different course of action. But we are not at that point.

@AlaskaSometimes
Thank you. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I’m fairly new to MN but am frequently shocked by the polarised judgemental opinions that people express, and particularly in relation to trans people. I never normally read those threads as I find them so unpleasant so I’m slightly enjoying the irony of having inadvertently created one myself.

Having said that, I’ve found the negative opinions of me and my DH really helpful. It’s really shown me what sort of person I am, what sort of person he is, and what’s important to me.

It’s such a shame that there’s no room for men to explore this fetish without a collective outpouring of disgust. No wonder they feel shame. No wonder they keep it secret.

OP, if you were as fine with it as you claim to be you wouldn’t have started this thread.

You are clearly a high intelligent and articulate person. But you’ve found the responses challenging because they don’t validate your DH and say that it’s you that needs to change.

It’s such a shame that there’s no room for men to explore this fetish without a collective outpouring of disgust

I don’t think that women need to be ashamed or embarrassed at thinking the thought of shaved male genitals in female polyester knickers is both pretty silly looking and gross.

But if it turns you on enough to incorporate it into your sex life, fair play to you

I started this thread because I’m NOT fine with it. I’m not claiming to be fine with it.
I’m fine with some aspects of it.
Some of it makes me really fucking sad.
I started this thread to discuss it with someone other than DH.
As I’ve pointed out multiple times, I’m grateful for the challenging responses. They’ve helped me to work things out in my own head.
I don’t need them to validate my DH. Some of the things he’s done are unacceptable to me. I’m not in denial of that.

If people on here can’t accept anything other than man in lingerie = instant divorce then that’s a shame, but it’s not my problem.

The PPs getting their metaphorical lacy knickers in a twist about me not agreeing with everything they’re saying are losing credibility with me because of their inability to take on anyone else’s viewpoint.

I agree with @PersonaNonGarter . You have written many posts where you talk about how much of this you are willing to accept and how upset you are about it all and of course you started the thread ! You have then backtracked and said it's no big deal. At times you are very flippant about it yet you say your week has been gruelling . You were seeking a place to discuss it but have very strongly hit back at anyone who has offered anything that does not match your perception of the situation - so why post ? It has even crossed my mind on several occasions that this is a reverse or someone enjoying talking about this. Regardless you are deliberately confusing what people are saying ie "this man has a secret part of his life that he prefers to do on his own" with people's disgust at him wearing knickers ...perhaps it makes it easier for you to think like this . They are disgusted at the knickers as opposed to living in a marriage like that .You have lashed out at everyone as opposed to the person who is causing you this pain.

The fact that some women personally feel disgusted about men in knickers is fine. But to insist that all women MUST also feel that way or they have low self esteem is frankly ludicrous.

I’m disgusted by fake tan, but if you like it then I probably wouldn’t continually insist that you were wrong because I can accept that we all like different things.

Having read the whole thread and thought about what you’ve said OP 2 things seem unclear to me.

You have discussed this a lot (which is a good thing) and you’ve posted about how he has broken your trust. You’ve written about what you’re doing to see if that will help with managing his fetish/ changing the behaviour of how he enjoys it by incorporating into your sex life, looking at your libido etc. But what is he doing to regain your trust? How is he going to win that back? He’s agreed to involve you, shop together etc but how open is he going to be? If you want to look through his drawers/work bag/whatever because one day you’re struggling with the “what if he’s hiding it” thoughts is he happy to be transparent and support you?

I’m sure some posters will think that perhaps expecting a partner to be ok with their other half checking things is not a reasonable thing to do but having experienced a very different sort of breach of trust myself I found it at times very hard to overcome needing reassurance and when I did my husband was happy to let me check and understood that having never been like this before it was generated by his breach of trust.

My second point (which I think another poster brought up) is why does he want to wear women’s underwear every day? If this is a link that he derives sexual pleasure from why the need/want to wear them daily? As adults we recognise that there are appropriate places/times for sexual behaviour and if he does indeed want to wear them during day to day life why is that if not for sexual gratification? And if it is because it gives him a thrill then that suggests he’s lost sight of appropriate behaviour.

@Needanothername1234

I started this thread because I’m NOT fine with it. I’m not claiming to be fine with it. I’m fine with some aspects of it. Some of it makes me really fucking sad. I started this thread to discuss it with someone other than DH. As I’ve pointed out multiple times, I’m grateful for the challenging responses. They’ve helped me to work things out in my own head. I don’t need them to validate my DH. Some of the things he’s done are unacceptable to me. I’m not in denial of that.

If people on here can’t accept anything other than man in lingerie = instant divorce then that’s a shame, but it’s not my problem.

The PPs getting their metaphorical lacy knickers in a twist about me not agreeing with everything they’re saying are losing credibility with me because of their inability to take on anyone else’s viewpoint.

but you only want to discuss it with people who think like you ?

What things has this thread helped you work out exactly ?

I haven’t lashed out at anyone. I’ve disagreed with inaccurate statements.
Several posters have explicitly stated that a man in underwear is a such a massive turn off for them that they would file for divorce.

I have not backtracked. I have listened and absorbed and considered how I feel, and then broken it down into bits I’m ok with and bits I’m not.

It’s ok for me for to have reconsidered some of the thoughts I expressed in my initial post. During the last week I’ve had the opportunity to research and question and listen. Unlike many of the PPs on this thread my opinions are not set in stone and I’m happy to examine them and change them in the light of evidence to the contrary.

@Needanothername1234

The fact that some women personally feel disgusted about men in knickers is fine. But to insist that all women MUST also feel that way or they have low self esteem is frankly ludicrous.

I’m disgusted by fake tan, but if you like it then I probably wouldn’t continually insist that you were wrong because I can accept that we all like different things.

By that logic, and your continued assertions that you're fine with it in principle, you should just accept your husband likes something different to you.

He likes wearing women's underwear / wanking in it in private. That's his preference. Yours is him not doing so during a period the relationship is lacking in frequency of sex.

You say everyone is different and that's fine so let him crack on.

I don't know what you want from this thread as you flip between being upset and betrayed then when people agree it's upsetting and a betrayal you say they are small minded and judgemental, then when people say well if it's not a problem why start a thread and you go back to saying you're betrayed and upset again.

I haven’t lashed out at anyone. I’ve disagreed with inaccurate statements.* Several posters have explicitly stated that a man in underwear is a such a massive turn off for them that they would file for divorce.*

So? If my partner wanted to have threesomes I would divorce him. It doesn't mean I think people who have threesomes are bad people, at all, I just don't want to be with someone who has that as a sexual preference or interest. It's ok for women to say they find something a deal breaking turn off. That's not phobic. It's agency.

@Needanothername1234

I haven’t lashed out at anyone. I’ve disagreed with inaccurate statements. Several posters have explicitly stated that a man in underwear is a such a massive turn off for them that they would file for divorce.

I have not backtracked. I have listened and absorbed and considered how I feel, and then broken it down into bits I’m ok with and bits I’m not.

It’s ok for me for to have reconsidered some of the thoughts I expressed in my initial post. During the last week I’ve had the opportunity to research and question and listen. Unlike many of the PPs on this thread my opinions are not set in stone and I’m happy to examine them and change them in the light of evidence to the contrary.

so how has this thread changed your opinions this week?

@Faffertea

Having read the whole thread and thought about what you’ve said OP 2 things seem unclear to me.

You have discussed this a lot (which is a good thing) and you’ve posted about how he has broken your trust. You’ve written about what you’re doing to see if that will help with managing his fetish/ changing the behaviour of how he enjoys it by incorporating into your sex life, looking at your libido etc. But what is he doing to regain your trust? How is he going to win that back? He’s agreed to involve you, shop together etc but how open is he going to be? If you want to look through his drawers/work bag/whatever because one day you’re struggling with the “what if he’s hiding it” thoughts is he happy to be transparent and support you?

I’m sure some posters will think that perhaps expecting a partner to be ok with their other half checking things is not a reasonable thing to do but having experienced a very different sort of breach of trust myself I found it at times very hard to overcome needing reassurance and when I did my husband was happy to let me check and understood that having never been like this before it was generated by his breach of trust.

My second point (which I think another poster brought up) is why does he want to wear women’s underwear every day? If this is a link that he derives sexual pleasure from why the need/want to wear them daily? As adults we recognise that there are appropriate places/times for sexual behaviour and if he does indeed want to wear them during day to day life why is that if not for sexual gratification? And if it is because it gives him a thrill then that suggests he’s lost sight of appropriate behaviour.

Thank you for your thoughts. The issue with trust is very much the worst part of this, and you’re right that it needs addressing. DH has answered all my questions fully without being obstructive or cagey. He has given me access to his phone, computers, hard drives etc, and has agreed without reservation to me being able to look through these and his other things at any point.

I am of the opinion, based on the many hours of discussion I’ve had with him, that his comments about wanting to wear lingerie every day were not based on him wanting the sexual thrill of that every day.

There are two elements to his interest:
He likes the look and feel of it on him during sex. This is the bit I’m absolutely happy to go along with.

The other element is that he likes the feel of the types of fabrics used in women’s underwear more than he likes the fabric used in men’s. He finds men’s underwear very dull. This is why he says he’d like to wear it every day. I pointed out that actually a lot of women’s underwear is scratchy and uncomfortable and gives you a wedgie, and he said that he would probably realise that was true after a couple of days and not want to do it anymore. At the moment I don’t think the desire for everyday wear is sexual.

There is another thread on MN the moment where women are asking about where to find comfortable underwear. Many of the responses recommend wearing men’s boxers. Last time I looked no one was jumping in and accusing those women of being perverts or suggesting that they were about to transition. So that’s an interesting double standard.

But to insist that all women MUST also feel that way or they have low self esteem is frankly ludicrous

There’s been a mixture of responses though. Some are, “My DH/ex liked to dress in women’s underwear and it escalated and this was a problem”.

Others are, “This would be a deal breaker because I’d find it really off putting and it would give me ‘the icky’.”

Some posters are, “My DH/ex dressed in women’s underwear and we genuinely enjoyed it together as part of our sex life”.

I think what you’re looking for is people saying, “My DH did this as well and I hated him masturbating in secret but when I agreed to incorporate it into our mutual sex life he kept it under control and stopped with his private wank dungeon. It didn’t do anything sexually for me but i wasn’t grossed out and it was worth it because it kept his fetish under control”.

And they’re not saying this, because his fetish is it’s own complete sexual act, it’s not enhanced by you letting him wear frilly things in bed with you.

There is another thread on MN the moment where women are asking about where to find comfortable underwear. Many of the responses recommend wearing men’s boxers. Last time I looked no one was jumping in and accusing those women of being perverts or suggesting that they were about to transition. So that’s an interesting double standard

Come on - you know that is not the same . They are not masturbating in a private fetish ! 🙄