Marriage comes with many assumptions. One of them is that you’re one of the people who knows your spouse the best but that’s not always true. Discovering your husband’s secret fetish can be a shocking and startling revelation. Your spouse is not the person you thought they were.
I’m starting a new series today and would like to introduce you to Nancy. Nancy lives in England although she’s originally from Brazil. She went to England for a couple of months back in 1988 and ended up staying after she met the man who would become her husband. Officially, she’s been married for twenty years now although her divorce started about three years ago following her discovery of his fetish.
Nancy says she and her husband had been talking about schools for their eldest and like so many public schools here in the U.S., you have to live in the attendance area to attend a certain school. They didn’t live in the area for the school Nancy wanted her son to attend and since they didn’t want to pay for private school, Nancy and her husband agreed that she and the kids should move into an apartment within the school’s attendance area. That’s when the fun started. Here’s Nancy:
The apartment was an expensive place, we hardly had any furniture here and it didn’t feel like home at all, so I used to go back to the house in the day when the children were at school. I started noticing that my husband looked a bit happy and there was something that wasn’t quite right. One day I was putting his clean socks away and the drawer was stuck. I had to take the drawers out, and when I did, I had the shock of my life. The gap between the floorboards and the last drawer, it was full of women’s clothes.
Many of the clothes used to be mine, but from a long time ago. I used to put clothes I didn’t want into a bag and ask him to take them to the charity shop. Apparently, he used to keep them. Some of the items I didn’t recognize but everything nicely folded.
I didn’t know what to think at first…is he bringing women here when I’m not here? What is this? I couldn’t believe it. I had a hole in my stomach and my heart was racing. You always think that bad things never happen to us, but occasionally they do.
I went back to the apartment shocked and trying to understand, and I thought I’d go back the next day to investigate. Then the following day when I went back, the clothes had been moved. What was underneath was on the top. I didn’t think he could be wearing them so then I sniffed the clothes and couldn’t sense anything different. I turned the stockings inside out and then I found big long hairs. Then I knew that a woman wouldn’t have legs hairy like that, and I could see quite clearly that no woman had been wearing them.
I kept quiet and I watched him for a month, going to the house and checking if the clothes were in a different position, and they were, every day. I started investigating everything in the computer and found all these membership fetish sites, he would see the woman wearing certain clothes and he would do the same, he would mimic. So, he wasn’t wearing the women’s clothes as a transsexual but more like a fetish, to masturbate, because that would excite him.
I started looking at the history of the computer, and many things I had to learn because I was not at the time, very computer literate, but he had been going through this for many years. I could remember some of the clothes from my first year of marriage. Then I started seeing different clothes and I didn’t know where they were coming from. I started going through everything in the house and I couldn’t find them. Eventually, a couple of months later I found a compartment underneath the floorboards in the loft and in there were five huge bin liners full of clothes. My stomach started turning.
I felt like I never knew this man although I always had this feeling that there was something not quite right with him. He was very different than all the other men I’d met before. Sexually, he was not all that interested. He would rather cut the grass or do this or do that than have sex, and I always thought we’re married, we’re young, we have all that desire, and he was not owning to that. I felt it must be my fault, I’m not good enough, I don’t look nice or there’s something wrong with me, that sort of thing.
The Divorce Coach Says
In this situation there are three separate issues you have to deal with.
One is the realization that your spouse has been keeping a major secret from you. He may have been telling you lies, or you may simply not have been alert to the red flags. What’s likely going through your head is not only wondering about how your spouse has kept this from you but also questioning your own judgment. How could you have missed this?
Another is grappling with the secret itself. If your spouse has been hiding it, then it almost certainly means that it’s something they’re not comfortable with for some reason and it’s something that is typically viewed as outside acceptable norms. It could apply to anything – drugs, alcohol, affairs, money … it’s not just sexual fetishes or issues. You’re going to have to think through how you feel about the particular issue. You may react by thinking that you also have to keep it secret … that can be sign of your discomfort or embarrassment and fear that your spouse’s choices will reflect on you.
The third issue is deciding the impact this discovery has on your marriage. In Nancy’s case, it was not an automatic dealbreaker – she tried to play him at his own game. Another of my interviewees, Debbie discovered her husband was a pedophile and as she says, nobody stays married to a pedophile. It’s very situation specific and dependent on your own values.
Any major revelation is going to shake you and undermine your normal decision-making capability. That’s a sign that getting professional help and counselling would likely be extremely beneficial.
I’ll wait to read the next installment before making comment.
I’ll be interested to see your comments, Jack. Could be an interesting discussion.
WOW. It takes all types in this world, doesn’t it Mandy? Very interested to see what she did next!
All types, indeed. One question that kept going round in my head was how can you be married to someone for so long and not truly know them? I think the answer is that the relationship never felt safe enough for open, honest communication and that could be for a multitude of reasons. It goes back to Carlos’s point about communication eing the key to a successful marriage.
Another question that I’d love to hear your comments on T, since you do blog openly about sex – when does a fetish become harmful? Is it harmful because in this case, he excluded his wife and kept it hidden? If he had confided in Nancy and Nancy had played along, wouldn’t it just be of their sexual world?
what ever became of it.. sooo much i could say on this topic
Its shocking… becuase you feel like, “well… how can I fault them for liking what they like…” and then you make it out to be like you’re that bad one for snooping and finding this. I found my husband was into SCAT porn… (people giving eachother enemas, sh*tting on eachother…) and I haven’t said anything about it. I don’t know what to do, how to react. I feel like its my fault. I found this years ago… and it still bothers me. It hurts me. It makes me feel gross. Most people think hes the sweetest guy… but I feel like theres this other side to him that no one knows about. Its gross and horrible.
Dear Em, Definitely not your fault and there’s no reason for you to enjoy SCAT porn just because your husband enjoys it. How has your discovery affected your relationship? Why have you not said anything to your husband? I think if you were to open up a conversation about this it may help you figure out your feelings. You can start it by simply stating, without judgment, what it is that you’ve found and then see what your husband says. Possibly you’ve not had this conversation because you’re afraid of where it might lead?
Guys, my advice is this. Never EVER, lie to your spouse or significant other. You aren’t as slick as you think. The truth will come out eventually and the later it does the worse it is. Don’t drag someone into a situation that you even think they may be uncomfortable with. Be up front, be honest. You may be surprised or it may end, at least you don’t turn someone’s life upside down unfairly.
My husband told me he will store or hide his bass guitar & Amp because it reminds me of bad memories. When my mom died he chose to go play when i was grieving. Also he said if I let him play he won’t bug me about not having sex often. He says I am important & loves me very much but I feel different. When I first married him I did not know he was so in love with performance on stage. I hate it and resent him that I feel like I don’t want to be married to an entertainer.
Ever since my wife dressed me as a woman, I fell in love with being a woman. I started dressing up every day & all weekends. I became so obsessive with looking like a woman that I had my hair cut & styled in a feminine look, I had my ears double pierced & I got my eyebrows waxed into pencil thin, highly arched lines. I slept in nightgowns every night & wore panties, bras & pantyhose every day, even under my work clothes. All of our friends would ask my wife if I was turning into a girl. The final straw was when my wife caught me kissing a man at a Halloween party, of course I was completely dressed as a woman in a short dress. My wife divorced me shortly after this.
Seems to me, this is more about trust. Why couldn’t your husband talk to you, about how he feels? Also, I think it’s important to consider the “guilt factor”. How difficult would it be, to approach your wife with a “secret” like that? At any rate, I think you should consider the overall relationship, before any action.
This was a story about a man who had a fetish and that fetish is that he had this little secret of women’s clothing and how he got interestrested in what it would feel like in wearing them and seeing himself in womens cloting. We all have little secrets and we have a little fetish of some kind. But from one of the comments I read was being honest with his wife. Yes this is a area that most men will not be brave enough to do and this is opening up and talking with his girlfriend before he married her to tell her he had a little secret and he just didn’t know how to tell her that he was atractded to womens clothing and under garments.. And how he got started wearing them for his own pleasure. I was very lucky for I had a very huge secret in my child hood and it never left me or my brain and the I still have this little secret from family members but I don’t have much family members alive as of today. But when I met my girlfriend I waited for about 4 months to tell her about my letter secret and yes it was scary and I did not want to loose her we had good talks and we loved hanging out with each other. The last thing that I wanted to do was not hurt her or deceive her in anyway at all. In the months we were good friends first a we liked eachother and yes we and I mean we and me I was always honest with her she just didn’t know about my lettle secret but we were not living together as of yet. So one day I told her that I needed to talk with her about something she thought I was going to break up with her or end our friendship with her but instead I told her I had a lttle secret and it’s something I had for many years and I have a fetish I have had since I was 7 years old. And I did not want to do this behind her back like so many men do, yes so so many men do or live out there little secret fetish behind there girlfriends or wives back and never brought there other half into there little secret life they have. I told her that I had this AB/DL thing and that means that I like roll play as a toddler by wearing diapers and plastic pants and adult size toddler clothing and just hanging out like this she turned to me and said is that all and I said yes, I could feel my face being hot and my ears burning hot with ok what is she going to say or do. She just said I thought it was something real weird or something real freaky but she said you like playing like a little boy still in diapes and pla;ying with toy’s and I said yes and told about this fetish that there are so so many people that I know that are into this fetish men and women who love wearing diapers and have there wives or husband play mommy or daddy to them it’s very innocent in grown up play. But the whole purpose of this is to be honest with that special loved one and don’t do anything that could jeopardize your relationship with that person or heart that heart be honest and if they are not into you littler secret then you have to walk away as friends because most men will say ok I will not do this anymore but they start to do it behind there backs and that just gets worse and before you know your the jack wagon so it’s ok to have our littler secrets or fetishes but always be honest with that spcial person. my wife has no problem diapering me or treating me like a toddler still in diapers and even when we go out in public she will diaper me and put a pair of plastic pants over my diapers and put a nice pair of baggy sweat pants so nobody can tell I’m in diapers we have this great marriage she has her own little secsret and she loves having sex in her garter belts or corsets and sheer nylon stockings and heels so she sees to my and yes I love seeing to hers. Enjoy your secrets and little fetish that all you might have be honest about.