I was in bed with my ex-husband, with six years of sub-par sex playing in my mind like a silent movie.
The beginning of our relationship was all roses and walks on the beach. Literally. As time went on, we'd made it to our 30th date, when we bought a mattress together. We carried the new double mattress up three narrow flights of stairs and he flopped sweaty and red-faced backwards onto it. I imagined him reaching out to me in passion – and he did. But instead of breaking in the bed, he drew me towards him in a way that can only be described as chaste.
"This will be so much more comfortable," he told me. It was like sex wasn't even an interest.
Fast forward several years, and the conversation that ended our marriage began like this:
"There is something I need to tell you – something I have never told anyone before," he said.
We were still in the honeymoon phase at this point, literally and figuratively. We were laying side by side looking at the ceiling after another quick and unsatisfying interlude – which I'd gotten used to, somehow.
"What is it babe?" I asked. I could barely get the words out over the lump in my throat.
He was silent. The time stretched and slowed. And then he flat-out said it: "I can only get turned on if I am in women's clothes."
Strangely enough, my first instinct was to comfort him. I was thrilled that he trusted me enough to share his darkest secret with me, and I actually thought there was no way this would end our relationship. I even celebrated how open and accepting I was. Even though I knew cross-dressing was not a bad thing, the news struck me like a diagnosis of cancer or depression. I could never walk away because my partner was struggling with something like that.
But it turned out my positive response was short lived.
The next morning I woke early and reached for him. By now I was worried that sex wasn't in the picture at all. So I took control.
I spent a few days online reassuring myself that cross-dressers were often heterosexual. I researched size 12 high heels. When the enormous box arrived in the mail he was floored. He had never felt so supported and so comfortable.
Despite this, as he grew closer, I pulled away.
On the surface, I was more involved than ever. My parents had a house in Provincetown, MA which was a mecca for sexual freedom and the accessories to support personal choice. Together we even went to a store which specialized in women's wear for men. We bought a corset and a second pair of heels. He chose a gown and lipstick. At home he gently hung each item in our shared closet. I looked at his sequins and patent pumps and realized he was better outfitted than I was. I convinced myself that partnerships are about so much more than sex. We were best friends and I decided I didn't need more.
The first time he dressed for bed in his finery he looked ready for a black tie gala. I was in stained PJ bottoms and a tank top. As he reached for me I pulled away – unsure of how to feel. But I then carefully corrected myself and embraced him.
It was horrible.
His smooth muscular chest was covered in a lace corset. His tan athletic shoulders were looming over his constricted waist. All of the places that I held him were covered and pinched. I hadn't realized how much I loved his male body until he twisted into something different.
I wasn't worried that he was gay. I was worried that my sex life had changed – I was now having sex with a woman, for all intents and purposes. It was still him. But it wasn't him. As he began to shave and primp I wanted him to be far away from me. I didn't want him to love his own feminized body – I wanted him to love mine. I began to dread what I would find under his clothes and between the sheets. I wanted his hairy legs back.
I'd lay still as we had sex. He was so excited by his corset and fishnets that sex was, well, quick. Lying beside one another, looking up at the same ceiling, he was cooing with pleasure and connection and I found myself squirming away from him.
Afterwards, we'd lay in bed half-dressed – me in a grubby tee-shirt, my husband in a lace bra. He had one hand on his chest and one on mine. As he touched my body, I realized that he was imagining it was his own.
I was ashamed to realize that I was repulsed.
During the light of day I tried to talk myself out of this new mindset. I gave myself pep talks: "You love him, you want him to be happy, and you already decided that sex was not the defining feature of your relationship."
For instance, I thought, he loved sci-fi movies…I did not. That would never tear us apart. Why would a sexual fetish be more divisive than that? The alienation I felt embarrassed me; I wanted so badly to love him unconditionally. I wanted to accept his differences. But what I wanted most was to go back in time to our crummy sex life – before he played dress up.
Ironically, he became obsessed with sex. He had spent a life fantasizing about this – and finally it was real. He would wear lingerie under his clothes and was ready to go at all times. But with each sex act I withdrew more.
That's when I realized that he didn't notice I had a problem that I couldn't fix alone. One day I told him, "We need to talk about your cross-dressing." He instantly withdrew his hand from mine.
"You said you were OK with it," he said sharply. "I would never have done it if you weren't OK."
"I have more information now. I realize as much as it turns you on it turns me off," I admitted.
He was silent.
I asked if he could just cross-dress on his own. To that, he said nothing. What he said next was the end. He wanted what he wanted and I was an accessory to his life – as well as sex life. I was a less valuable than his corsets.
"I won't go back to vanilla sex," he told me. He would find someone else if he had to, he said.
In a matter of weeks, I left everything behind – the house, the car and the size-12 gold shoes.
It wasn't until I was decorating my apartment with as many girly things as possible that I let myself realize how upset I had been. At first I felt unlovable and unattractive. Then I felt angry. The whole six years lost their meaning. I had married him despite being unsatisfied with our sex life, yet he gave me up when he realized how unsatisfied he had been.
After I left, we met just twice more. Once when I returned my engagement ring and once at the courthouse. After the sound of the judges gavel we hugged goodbye, and I thought I felt the ribbed wire of the corset beneath his button-up shirt.
