In the first post with my current guest, Nancy, she talks about how she discovered her husband’s sexual fetish, something he had kept hidden from her during their long marriage. It was a startling discovery for Nancy who was left feeling it was her fault. She knew the standard advice for saving your marriage but if they were going to try counseling, she would have to confront him. Here’s Nancy:
I watched for a month and I became depressed, I was obsessed about it, I couldn’t believe it, I lost quite a lot of weight, I couldn’t eat. I think, judging by how much he was wearing women’s clothes, it had become a kind of addiction for him. It seemed he was doing it whenever he could, and he was always happy for me to go out with my friends. Now I think, of course he was, he was happy to get rid of me.
I told one friend of mine. She actually was my savior because she picked me up, we’d go back to the apartment we’d rented and just lie there on the floor…I couldn’t eat, I became clinically, severely depressed.
Later on, one day, I confronted him and he explained,
“It’s not like I want to be a woman or anything like that. I just wanted the fantasy of watching the ladies wearing this or that and tights or stockings and this or that miniskirt. It was just a little fantasy.”
Then I suggested we do some counseling. I told him it was affecting me a lot. I wanted to try to understand and to be able to cope with the situation.
He went once and didn’t want to go anymore because he was very embarrassed about it, so he said it was just a little fantasy. After that I realized why he didn’t have that sexual interest in me.
“Aah, that’s why. There’s nothing wrong with me, there’s something wrong with him.”
Even so I was really upset because I didn’t know this man who I trusted, who was my everything, and as a woman, of course, you feel jealous.
“He has pleasure looking at other women, what’s wrong with me?”
I had always looked after myself, my diet, after I had my second child I had breast implants, everything, always. I wouldn’t spend a day without creaming my whole body, this and that, always exercising, and I said,
“I’m going to try to teach him a lesson,”
because I was angry.
The Divorce Coach Says
Clearly this was a difficult and sensitive issue for both Nancy and her husband to deal with. Since they are in the divorce process (and have been for three years now) you know that they were not able to save their marriage.
In response to one of the comments on the last post, I asked at what point does a sexual fetish become harmful. I don’t know the clinical answer to that but from Nancy’s retelling here, her husband kept his fetish a secret and it developed into an addiction. It wasn’t soemthing they could share. Their relationship was suffering. Like any other addiction that is damaging a marriage, you can’t work on the marriage until the addiction has been treated and if the person with the addiction isn’t willing to seek treatment, then you have a choice: stay in your marriage knowing that this is how it is or leave.
I suspect Nancy’s devastation is similar to that felt by women who discover their long-term spouse is gay – something about their spouse that they never suspected. Kay was a guest who thought she was going to Vegas to renew her vows with her husband of twenty-five years only to have him come out to her on their last evening. That shook her to her core – she never saw it coming.
While Kay said, in some ways her spouse being gay made divorce easier to accept because she wasn’t competing with another woman, for Nancy, she was competing with other women, but women in photographs and online not in real life and that was where her hurt and pain was coming from. Next, how she tried to win her husband back.
What would you do in this situation?
Photo credit: Ko_An
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I realize that I don’t know Nancy and all of the intricacies of her relationship with her husband, so it would be ridiculous of me to try and comment on her relationship issues with him. However, I do feel that there is a place for me to comment on a few of the assumptions made here.
Dressing in women’s clothing is an addiction? Really? One that needs to be cured?
This is one of the most common fantasies of men of all kinds. I have a close friend who cross-dresses. He is the only boy in a family with five sisters. As a boy his mother routinely dressed the girls in frilly dresses of silk and satin. She preened over them doing their hair and makeup, spending time with them and lavishing attention on them. Is it any wonder he drew an association of self-worth, love and affection with that of women’s clothing and all that goes with it? I think not. In fact, it’s a very easy psychological jump to make.
From the story it wasn’t clear, other then a lack of interest in sex with Nancy, how the husband’s actions were indicative of an addiction or in any way detrimental to his relationship or his ability to function as an adult. It certainly didn’t seem to me to be something that he needed to be cured of. If so, then couldn’t the same things be said about Nancy’s obvious obsessive behaviors about her appearance? “…I had breast implants… wouldn’t spend a day without creaming my whole body… always exercising”. I would say it was her vindictive nature that had some responsibility in the demise of her relationship. “I’m going to try to teach him a lesson,”
Until she discovered it and even afterward, it does not appear that this was something he was doing to upset her, something he was doing to her, or to get at her. This was his thing. This made him happy. It seems she just couldn’t handle him being happy without her being at the center of that happiness.
I think maybe Nancy needed to do a little more introspection if she truly loved the man. This seems like a fairly minor thing to be able to share and get over. I don’t understand how it became the pivotal reason why the marriage ended. I understand the feelings of betrayal in that he had not disclosed this to her, but couples get over infidelities, children borne from adultery, all kinds of things. The fact that he liked to wear women’s clothing in comparison is not that big of a deal. In my opinion anyway.
Hi Jack – I have very little experience or knowledge about sexual fantasies such as this although writing this blog is opening my eyes. I’ve never had a conversation with a male about dressing in women’s clothes – are you telling me it’s more common than I would suspect? A question I ask in the previous post was when does a fetish become harmful? It seems to me that if you can share it and enjoy it with your spouse then there’s no harm. If you can’t or won’t, then it’s a problem. I think in Nancy’s case, it wasn’t the cause of the breakdown in her marriage – I think it brought the issue of lack of intimacy to breaking point.
And yes, “teaching him a lesson” did make me cringe but I thank Nancy for being honest enough to admit to her motives and breakdowns in long-term relationships don’t bring out the best in us. Hope you read the next post.
I would find it impossible to remain married to a man whose fetish was to dress in women’s clothes AND showed a lack of interest in me sexually.
Not because I have a vindictive nature but because I have certain expectations of a man and those expectations don’t include an appetite for dressing in women’s clothes and ignoring me sexually.
When someone fails to meet our expectations of how a husband or wife should behave it is only natural that the marriage begins to break down.
As far as fetishes go, this isn’t one that both parties to the marriage can partake in and enjoy and it does seem that his attention is placed more on the fetish than meeting his wife’s needs.
Nancy on the other hand keeps herself in shape physically, takes steps to remain attractive and as a woman who was married to a man who had a lack of interest in sex I will assume that her motivation for breast surgery wasn’t selfishness but a desire to attract her husband’s attention. Maybe even a desperate attempt.
Whether or not he was doing this to intentionally upset her is inconsequential. The point is, it did upset her and his response to her pain was inappropriate in my opinion.
If it was truly no big deal and something she should view in that way why was he too “embarrassed” to go to therapy? That tells me even he thought what he was doing was not OK, so why should Nancy not have the same right to feel it is not OK?
Now to answer the question, I would get out and do so quickly. This is a man who is more interested in living his fetish than building a marriage and relationship with his wife.
Hi Cathy – Personally, I really don’t know how I would react to finding out that the man I loved enjoyed dressing in women’s clothes. The idea certainly doesn’t appeal but would I be able to come to accept that if it was someone I loved deeply? I agree with you here though, that the real issue is the lack of intimacy between Nancy and her husband.
[i]I suspect Nancy’s devastation is similar to that felt by women who discover their long-term spouse is gay – something about their spouse that they never suspected.[/i]
You’re absolutely correct about that. I recognized my own feelings a great deal in Nancy’s story. (Yes, my husband’s secret was and still is that he prefers men. We were married for 18 years, have been divorced now for 4.)
I suspect that one reason Nancy’s husband didn’t tell her about this is because he didn’t want to hurt her but by not telling her and allowing their marriage to continue for so long, the pain was probably worse.