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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Update for Crossdressing partner apparently given up

123 replies

Holdmeclosertinydancer2018 · 03/05/2025 11:49

Some of you might remember me from a few months back, the woman who found out my partner was into crossdressing. I found out myself while he was away in a hotel, via his search history which included a bid on Ebay on stripper heels, links to self bondage and sissy porn.

So, he swore to me he would never do it again. Which I genuinely believe he hasn't as he has had no time alone except for work within this time. However he continued to play it down, any time I brought it up. When quizzed about the heels for example, he stated that he bid on a pair because he saw them in a porn video and wanted to try them.

Part of me knew all of these denials, mimimisations were likely to be untrue so I have not stopped digging since. I have driven myself to the brink of insanity in an attempt to get to the bottom of it. And I now have.

I asked to see his ebay purchase history 3 days ago, he wouldn't let me have his phone. At this point obviously we all know there is more to hide. I eventually got him to hand it to me as I threatened the relationship would be over if he didn't. Well. 6 years worth of womens shoes, latex dresses, skirts, socks, gloves, straps, harnesses, chains, the lot. He continued to downplay it saying he has no desire to dress as a woman. I countered this by saying your purchase history says otherwise.

Thinking that must be the worst of it, I asked him to explain everything to me. Why he bought the clothes, why he lied etc. Good, open conversation ensued, with him eventually saying that he wants to make it work and so will be transparent and offer up some information. Showed me Amazon purchase history, he had ordered suspenders, stockings, a set of Pleaser ballet boots and a maids outfit. I looked at the date of the order and it turned out to be a weekday he was working, so completely sober. His story about only wanting to do it whilst using Cocaine no longer has legs.

He continued to insist none of it was sexual. I told him that if I find out it is, we are over. He insisted. Yesterday after having pretty much a breakdown he eventually gave me the truth- whenever we argue he feels disgusted and ashamed of himself, takes himself off to sniff, dress and bond himself up. He fantasised about me doing this to him, by the sounds of it, keeping him locked up in a cock cage and made to beg for my affections and interest again. To humiliate him further by dressing him up as a woman, binding him up in a degrading position and punishing him, verbally degrading him etc. Leading to pegging him whilst verbally abusing him. So, a forced feminisation, humiliation fetish.

I am livid. I have kicked him out and he has gone to stay with his Mum. The lies these men will tell to downplay their fetishes, the denial, the blame shifting, the gas lighting is astounding. I have literally been driven mental, panic attacks, headaches, TMJ from the stress, unable to function some days.

He's gone now and I feel like a weight has lifted. He keeps messaging begging for me to understand why he lied, kept it secret and minimised and begging for another chance. I know longer care. For the first time in a month I slept like a baby and woke up feeling at peace. I have a party later so will go and het a nice change of hairstyle and work on feeling better about myself as I have neglected myself within this time.

Thanks for reading and thank you all so much for your original support. I read them all through with a fine tooth comb and really took on board the advice. Unfortunately I am the stubborn type that needs to find proof and get to the truth myself.

OP posts:
CancelTheTableAlan · 18/09/2025 08:06

I dont know if he would want to be a woman, either - and the fact that cross dressers for sex are swept up in trans identity is one of the damaging and harmful things around the trans movement. Damaging to everyone.

BananagramBadger · 18/09/2025 11:21

Tell him you need him to go to counselling to unpick why he believes that femaleness is degrading and work on changing that belief.

Obviously never take him back regardless, but it would be nice to get one of these losers to actually do some self-improvement.

Tam285 · 18/09/2025 11:35

Grim. What is wrong with these men. How hard is it to just be remotely normal? Well done you for getting the fuck out of there.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 12:48

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Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 12:56

It really is a shame that in 2025 some men and women want to take us back to the 1950s. The same women who are so anti trans with by their support for right wing anti trans groups will take our reproductive rights away from us and put us back in the kitchen chained and bare breasted - just like the real misogynistic men who are ant to trans themselves want.

Turkeys voting for Xmas. I think these women know this but don’t want to face the reality of their support for these groups.

HermioneWeasley · 21/09/2025 13:20

how lovely, someone has turned up to call us trans phobes and dinosaurs for having boundaries.

more than one group of men can be misogynists. Just because they disagree on politics doesn’t mean either respects women are have our interests at heart.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 14:12

Stating that all crossdressers are misogynists and that it is fine king of perversion is so far away from the truth. By definition that does make you intolerant transphobes. Judge each individual not the group

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 14:14

Also what boundaries are you talking about? Are you stupidly saying your boundaries are not tolerating men who crossdress? Are you policing what others wear? That’s exactly what the real misogynists do with us. Telling women what we can and cannot wear.

Those boundaries are jog god you to decide how others dress of live their lives. Are you some kind of misogynist yourself?

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 14:20

You are saying that all men who crossdress is just silly and from personal experience is not rmtrue. That by definition is transphobic which is an accurate description. I wonder how many crossdressers you actually know personally and spend time with? We both know the answer there.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 14:26

And your politics regarding crossdressers and transwomen closely match that of Trump ahd the far right. Shame on you

Mochudubh · 21/09/2025 14:26

@Happyathome32 You sound a bit tired and emotional, maybe you should go for a nap.

frecklejuice · 21/09/2025 14:32

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You may find your husband attractive in a dress but I would find it repulsive and would be out of there quicker than you could say transphobe.

VoltaireMittyDream · 21/09/2025 14:35

Yay, more posters coming to remind women that we’re not allowed to have our own personal preferences, aversions and emotional responses to things that happen in our own intimate domestic and sexual relationships, because not celebrating whatever a man wants to do is man-phobic.

LeftBoobGoneRogue · 21/09/2025 15:10

Thanks for the lectures we certainly don’t need @Happyathome32
Women don’t have to do what men want or put up with them if we don’t want to. It’s called boundaries.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:34

Each to their own but to gain them misogynists is ignorant and innacurate. We all find different things repulsive. I find overweight men or men who smell bad repulsive. My husband also finds overweight women repulsive. Each to their own. But crossdressers and transwomen in general are not misogynists.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:36

Of course you are allowed to have personal preferences! Where have I said you go not. I posted that crossdressers and transwomen are not by definition misogynistic. Anyone who knows some personally know this.

some women find certain things repulsive as do some men. Overweight bad smelling women and men repulsive to both my husband and I. That’s a personal preference too. It doesn’t make them bad people or misogynists.

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:37

A man wearing a dress is his choice. It’s not for you to tell him he can’t. Are you seriously suggesting you can tell someone else what they can or cannot wear?

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:38

Are you telling me if I was out with my husband in a dress you would Hagerstown to come up to us and tell him he father that? Seriously if you did we’d laugh in your face. That’s not for you to decide is it.

Ereshkigalangcleg · 21/09/2025 16:54

I wouldn’t Hagerstown to come up to you and tell you he father that, no. I’d just go somewhere else, where you and your cross dressing husband weren’t.

Soontobe60 · 21/09/2025 16:56

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Oh dear…

Ereshkigalangcleg · 21/09/2025 16:57

oh yes, married cross dressing men are definitely exemplary feminists.

Soontobe60 · 21/09/2025 16:59

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:34

Each to their own but to gain them misogynists is ignorant and innacurate. We all find different things repulsive. I find overweight men or men who smell bad repulsive. My husband also finds overweight women repulsive. Each to their own. But crossdressers and transwomen in general are not misogynists.

No, they’re just women haters with a fetish.

Soontobe60 · 21/09/2025 17:02

@Happyathome32 what do you think a person in Blackface is?

FlirtsWithRhinos · 21/09/2025 17:15

Happyathome32 · 21/09/2025 16:37

A man wearing a dress is his choice. It’s not for you to tell him he can’t. Are you seriously suggesting you can tell someone else what they can or cannot wear?

Would it be ok for women to object if he wore a sexist T shirt? Because frankly I don't differentiate between a sexist T shirt and a sexist woman-suit.

If your husband enjoys the colours, textures and styles of clothing that are traditionally reserved for women and wants to expand things so that men can wear them as well that's wonderful. All power to him and I bet he looks great.

But if the attraction for him is not so much the clothes themselves but that they are specifcally women's clothes, and if the colours, textures and styles of clothing that he currently chooses to wear became as acceptable for men as women he would lose interest and switch to something that is still defintely seen as women's, then that is problematic because it's not really about the clothes at all, but about something he projects onto women.

CancelTheTableAlan · 21/09/2025 19:00

But a cross dresser's libido can't tell why the clothes are sexy to him! They probably are sexy because they are associated with the sexualised male gaze, and also because it is a taboo.

Just like a woman who might get turned on by wearing stockings, suspenders, a basque, under a raincoat and taking it off when she gets to the bedroom. Or removing her body hair because it fits with a particular erotic look (is everyone with a full Hollywood wax a paedo for example? Course not). Or wearing red lipstick to look sexy.

We are all in the thrall of the patriarchal male gaze and our libidos make sense of it however they can, however they must.

Not all cross dressing men are misogynistic, but some of them probably are, same goes for trans women, straight hetero men, gay men, bisexual men. (Trans men least likely, probably, as they are biologically women).

Check misogyny other ways than this.

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