The house was quiet when I let myself in after an evening out with friends. I walked into the living room, expecting to find my husband, Anthony, on the sofa watching TV. Instead, there was a strange woman standing there, waiting for me. She was tall and slim, with blonde bobbed hair. It took my brain a second to register that this was not a woman, but a man. And then, with shock, that this was no stranger.
It was my husband, in full drag. He was wearing a fitted dress filled out with a padded bra, black tights and heels, and a wig. His face was covered in full make-up, with thick foundation, mascara, eyeliner, and bright red lipstick, and his nails were painted in matching red nail polish. The transformation made him look much older, somehow. In fact, he now looked rather like his mother, my mother-in-law. Shocked, I reached for the sofa as I felt my legs buckle beneath me.
That was how I discovered that my now ex-husband, who worked as a lawyer, was a cross-dresser. It was the moment when his lifelong secret also became my secret, and our marriage changed for ever. Most cross-dressers are straight men, often married or with long-term partners and, in daily life, they wear male attire. Cross-dressing, once known as transvestism, is not the same as identifying as the opposite sex.
A biological male who cross-dresses is not a trans woman. He is not innately uncomfortable with living as a man. Most are straight men, often married or with long-term partners and, in daily life, they wear male attire. A few decades ago, transvestism was widely viewed as a form of fetishism, with female clothing as the fetish. Despite this, I have only ever met one woman who confessed to me that her husband did it. That evening, in our living room, my ex-husband chose to reveal his secret to me because he felt secure enough to do so.
He wanted my approval, my blessing, to do what he must have been doing covertly for three years, the entirety of our relationship at that point β and in his previous relationships. The anxious, pleading look he gave me made it clear he needed me to say how gorgeous he appeared. The truth was, I was repulsed.
