Chapter 12 — The 'Ick', Fear and Understanding What Is Really Happening

Davina: I completely understand why she felt that way. Nobody expects someone they've known for years to suddenly tell them they're a crossdresser, especially their husband. She knew me as me, and nothing about the person she saw every day suggested there was this other side of me.

And that's one of the reasons many of us don't come out.

For me, there was also the question: Was it really a big enough deal to risk everything by telling her?

At that point, my dressing was occasional. There was no Davina persona, no makeup, no full transformation. It was simply something personal I'd done for years.

Then my wife dressed me, doing my makeup and helping me explore that side of myself, and things evolved. I discovered that I really enjoyed presenting fully as a woman and that there was much more to it for me than I'd previously understood.But with that came the fear of rejection.

What if I told the woman I loved and lost her because of this?

And there's another horrible question that can sit in your head: If I'd told her before we got married, would she still have married me?That's a frightening thought when you already have a life together a marriage, children, memories, a home and everything you've built as a family.

Would all of that really be worth risking because I sometimes enjoy presenting as a woman?

Thankfully, we've found that it doesn't have to be that way.

People can work around this. Couples can talk about it, establish boundaries, find compromises and gradually understand each other.

Crossdressing doesn't automatically have to mean the end of a relationship. It can simply mean there's another side of someone that their partner didn't know existed.

And perhaps that's the real lesson from my experience: sometimes the thing we're most frightened to reveal isn't actually big enough to destroy the life we've built around it.

Anna - Does it really matter what that would make me, or what that would mean for me?

Davina - Now this is something my wife worries about, not so much what it means for the relationship between the two of us, but what it could mean for her, for us as a couple and for me if anyone ever found out I was a crossdresser.

She had eight years to think about what all of this meant for us.

Initially, I continued crossdressing privately and tried to leave absolutely no evidence behind. Then we moved to a stage where she knew I dressed, so she wouldn't suddenly come home and find me dressed or catch me rushing around trying to change back.

Onto the next chapter..