The book I finally gave my wife

For those of you who have followed Why Do I Crossdress? for a while, you’ll probably know that I’ve been talking about writing a book for quite some time.

Well…

I finally did it.

And more importantly, I finally gave it to my wife.

I suspect some of you have been waiting for that moment almost as much as I have.

Some of you have asked about the book, some have encouraged me to publish it, and others have told me that you would genuinely like to read it.

So this blog is partly an update for all of you.

But it is also about why writing it became so important to me in the first place.

It started with a conversation

After Christmas 2025, my wife and I were in Cardiff and ended up sitting in our favourite pub.

We had one of those conversations about Davina that we don't always have.

Nothing dramatic.

No big revelation.

Just two people talking honestly about something that has been part of our marriage for a very long time.

At one point she said something that really stuck with me.

She wondered whether perhaps she had always looked at Davina in the wrong way.

Instead of thinking of her as “my husband in a dress”, perhaps she could think of Davina more like a female friend.

That sentence stayed with me.

Not because it suddenly meant my wife wanted to go out with me dressed.

She didn't.

Not because it meant everything had changed.

It hadn't.

But because it felt like she was trying to understand the person behind the clothes.

And that was important.

Very important.

A few days later I started writing.

Originally it was just going to be another blog.

A reflection on the question that has been at the heart of everything I've written for years:

Why do I crossdress?

But my thumbs had other ideas.

The blog grew.

And grew.

And before I knew it, I had written page after page after page.

Eventually I realised that this wasn't really another blog post.

It was a book.

It became much bigger than crossdressing

The funny thing is that the book isn't really just about dresses, tights, heels, wigs and makeup.

They're obviously in there.

There is plenty of Davina.

There are some funny stories.

There are some embarrassing stories.

There are some moments that made me laugh while writing them.

There are memories of my childhood, discovering femininity, the awkward teenage years, the sexual and fetish elements that became part of dressing for a period of my life, the secrecy, the fear, the eventual emergence of Davina and the evolution of my understanding of myself.

But underneath all of that is something much bigger.

Masculinity.

The expectations placed on men.

Being the strong one.

Being the protector.

Being the husband.

Being Dad.

Being the person who fixes things.

Being the person who is expected to cope.

Being the person who doesn't always stop and ask:

“How am I actually doing?”

I've spent much of my life being very comfortable being “male me”.

I'm still very much that person.

I don't want to give that up.

But I've also discovered that there is another side of me.

A softer side.

A more expressive side.

A side that enjoys femininity, fashion, makeup and the whole process of transforming.

And somewhere along the way, I realised that Davina wasn't simply about dressing.

She had become a way of stepping away from the constant noise in my head.

A reset.

An escape from the pressure of always being “me”.

Not an escape from my wife.

Not an escape from my family.

Not an escape from being a man.

Sometimes simply an escape from myself.

The book also had to be honest

One of the things I wanted to do differently this time was tell the whole story.

Not the sanitised version.

Not the version where I pretend that crossdressing has always been some perfectly understood form of mental wellbeing.

It hasn't.

My relationship with it has changed enormously over the years.

There were innocent beginnings.

There was curiosity.

There was sexuality.

There was fetish.

There was confusion.

There was secrecy.

There was guilt.

There was experimentation.

There was the emergence of Davina.

And eventually there was a much more settled understanding of what this means to me now.

It's a journey.

And I think that's important for anyone trying to answer their own “Why?”

You don't necessarily have one answer.

The percentages change.

What crossdressing means to you at 18 might not be what it means at 30.

And what it means at 50 might be completely different again.

That has certainly been true for me.

Then there was my wife

The hardest part of writing the book wasn't actually writing about myself.

It was writing about us.

Because my wife didn't sign up to marry a crossdresser.

She has told me that honestly.

And I understand that.

When we got married, this wasn't part of the plan for either of us.

Over the years she has had to deal with something she didn't fully understand.

She's worried.

She's questioned it.

She's sometimes been dismissive of it.

She's sometimes been curious.

And at other times she's been incredibly supportive.

She's helped with makeup.

She's helped with wigs.

She's seen me dressed.

We've had girls' nights.

She's even walked out into the world with Davina once.

There have been laughs.

There have been awkward moments.

There have been boundaries.

And there have been times when we've simply put it to one side because life was more important.

That's marriage.

It's not always neat.

It's not always predictable.

But through all of that, we're still here.

Why I needed her to read the book

Twenty years ago, when I first tried to explain this properly, I wrote a letter.

It was honest.

But it was also rushed, frightened and defensive.

I didn't really understand myself.

So how could I possibly explain myself properly to her?

This book was my chance to finally do that.

Not:

“I'm a crossdresser.”

And leave it there.

But:

“This is how I got here.”

This is where it started.

This is what happened along the way.

This is what I thought it meant.

This is what I was frightened it meant.

This is what I understand now.

And this is where Davina fits into my life today.

I wanted my wife to see the whole journey rather than just individual moments.

I wanted her to understand that Davina isn't a rival.

She isn't another woman.

She isn't somebody I'm trying to become.

She's a part of me.

A part that I have finally become comfortable with.

And then came the scary bit…

Eventually I had to actually give her the book.

That was probably harder than writing it.

I'd spent weeks thinking about it.

Would she read it?

Would it upset her?

Would she think I'd gone too far?

Would it make things worse?

Would she understand it?

Would she see me differently?

Eventually I decided that I couldn't keep putting it off.

So I gave it to her.

She read it.

Cover to cover.

She also saw the more recent photographs of Davina that I'd been nervous about showing her.

And, as you'd probably expect, her reaction wasn't some Hollywood movie moment where everything suddenly changed.

She was quiet.

She told me honestly that she still wouldn't have chosen to marry a crossdresser.

She still doesn't want to go out with Davina again.

She doesn't want to meet other crossdressers or their partners or become part of that world.

And you know what?

That's okay.

Because acceptance doesn't necessarily mean participation.

Understanding doesn't mean wanting to do it yourself.

And loving someone doesn't mean you have to love every single thing they do.

What mattered to me was that she had read the whole story.

She now knows far more about what's inside my head than she did before.

And she knows that I don't expect her to become somebody she's not.

Something else happened

She told me I should write more books.

That made me smile.

Because I suspect when I started this whole thing, neither of us expected that “Why Do I Crossdress?” would turn into what it has become.

A blog.

A forum.

A community.

Conversations with crossdressers.

Conversations with wives and partners.

People contacting me privately because they've finally found somebody who seems to understand what they're going through.

People telling me they've shared my writing with their wife.

Wives reading from the beginning because they're trying to understand the man they love.

And now…

A book.

Will you get to read it?

That's the question I suspect some of you will be asking.

Maybe.

The current book was written specifically for my wife.

It's personal.

Very personal.

There are things in it that were never intended for a public audience.

It contains our history, our marriage, my childhood, some very private experiences and things that belong to us rather than the internet.

So I don't want to simply throw the whole thing online.

But I do want to publish a version eventually.

A proper version.

One that keeps the honesty, humour and emotion but is edited for a wider audience.

I'd probably cut some of the repetition.

I'd probably remove some of the very private details.

I'd probably restructure parts of it.

But the heart of the book would remain.

Because the heart of it isn't really:

“Look at me. I'm a man who crossdresses.”

It's:

“This is what happens when a man spends his life trying to be strong and eventually discovers that being softer doesn't make him weak.”

And perhaps even more importantly:

“This is what happens when the person who loves him tries to understand that part of him too.”

So what's next?

I'm not suddenly expecting everything to change.

I'm not expecting my wife to suddenly want to go shopping with Davina.

I'm not expecting her to become fascinated by the crossdressing community.

And I'm certainly not expecting her to participate in something she isn't comfortable with.

What I do hope is that we keep talking.

That's probably the biggest thing the book has taught me.

Communication matters.

Silence allows fear to fill the gaps.

Talking allows understanding to fill them.

And after all these years, perhaps that's what I wanted most from the book.

Not permission.

Not encouragement.

Not validation.

Just the opportunity for my wife to finally see the whole picture.

And for us to be able to talk about it without shame, guilt, fear or pressure.

To everyone who has followed this journey…

Thank you.

Some of you have been around since the early days of Why Do I Crossdress? Some follow the forum going back much further Why do Men Crossdress?

Some of you have only recently discovered it.

Some of you are crossdressers.

Some are wives or partners.

Some are trying to understand themselves.

Some are trying to understand the man they love.

And some are simply curious.

I've always said that I don't have all the answers.

I still don't.

I'm just one bloke trying to make sense of something that has been part of his life for decades.

But perhaps that's why the conversations have connected with people.

Because I'm not standing here pretending to be an expert with all the answers.

I'm just telling you what happened to me.

And perhaps, somewhere in my story, you recognise a little bit of yours.

So yes…

The book finally exists.

My wife has finally read it.

And, for the first time, the person who has lived alongside Davina for all these years has finally been given the complete story.

That feels like a pretty big milestone.

And maybe…

just maybe…

it's the beginning of the next chapter.

Davina ❤️