The End of Days

This is a post which I have been dreading to write for a very long time: the one where I talk about the end of my marriage.

Despite my very best efforts, my marriage has ended. And the ultimate reason is my cross-dressing. I guess by posting this I can both help myself to go through the necessary grieving process, and also help other people out there who might be contemplating similar problems.

What it feels like when your marriage is ending

My wife and I met in continental Europe in the early nineties. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was living in another country, and spoke several languages. She was artistic and adventurous, where I was scholarly and conventional. We were both students at the time, and we were both seeing someone else. But there was definite chemistry. In the days before the Internet, we wrote long letters to one another. By a series of very unlikely steps, we saw each other again. I graduated, took a job, and in my first holiday, I went to visit her. By this time, she was living in the US, and we were both single.

I persuaded her to come to the UK, which she did, and we immediately moved in together. We married in the late nineties. My family adored her. My uncle (an academic) praised how clever she was. My grandfather said she was the most beautiful bride to walk down the aisle of our local church. Many people have, over many years, complimented me on how lucky I was to be married to someone like her.

I knew all along, of course, that my gender was not completely congruent with my apparent identity. I have known this ever since I can remember. I can remember wanting a pink blanket in kindergarten and being told I had to have a blue one. But I did not tell my wife any of these things.

Grotesque: Corporal Klinger

Partly I did not tell her because of shame: I was in my mid-twenties, and I knew next to nothing about my gender. Wherever I looked, crossdressers were figures of scorn, of ridicule. They seemed grotesque, repulsive. A great example would be Corporal Klinger, the MASH character who is trying to convince everyone he is crazy by dressing as a woman, so they will throw him out of the Army (har-har, what a wheeze). My internal identity was completely different to that. She already had a name in my mind. I pictured Vivienne as being like a wild animal, trapped and roaring in an unbreakable cage. Although I didn't quite know who Vivienne was, I knew that she and Klinger had nothing in common.

The other reason I didn't tell my wife was that I believed that being married to her would cure me. My trans feelings largely disappeared when I was with her, and I believed that I could choose to put crossdressing aside permanently. ("When I became a man, I put away childish things"). This was (I now realise) a very naïve belief, but nonetheless a fervent one. I was trying very hard not to be trans.

Of course it didn't last. About three years into the marriage, I broke down in tears, and told her my secret: that sometimes I like to dress in women's clothing. She was utterly shocked and horrified. That was the inflection point, the point which marked the start of the downward slope which has led to the end of the marriage.

At first things didn't really change. I purged. That didn't last. In all fairness, my wife tried to have a look at crossdressing, and see what it's about. One time we even went to a transvestite ball (I was in male mode) and she spoke to the other people to hear their stories. She was fascinated, sympathetic, charming. She made a very powerful impression on the people there. But as we came out, it was as if the door slammed. We got in the car to drive home. She didn't want to talk about it; didn't want to acknowledge it. Sitting in the darkness, I realised that she was probably shocked, digesting the implications of all of this. But she would come around. In a few days, we would be able to talk about it. But we never have; not one word from that day to this.

Never mentioned: crossdressing

And then there was the Dolly incident. My wife went to Manchester with her friend for a girly weekend. Unknown to them, their hotel was hosting an extravagant transvestite event in the ballroom. It was big, brash, loud and undeniable. My wife and her friend, both very attractive women, were cajoled to join the fun, and they did: laughing and dancing the night away with glamorous trannies. The following day, they got talking at breakfast to a few of them, and my wife said she was amazed by how normal they seemed: ordinary, pleasant guys. One of them, "Dolly", gave my wife his website details. She checked his website a day or so after coming home (without telling me) and was horrified to see pictures of him pouting in lingerie with his penis on display.

This one individual didn't intend to harm me, but did so very severely. What was he thinking? That she would be aroused? That she would think it was cool? Instead, she formed the very solid (and hard to dislodge) impression, that crossdressers, even the nice ones, even the "normal" ones, are not just after glamorous frocks, drinking and dancing, but are perverts behind closed doors. Thanks, Dolly.

It took me a while to realise how my wife has the ability to compartmentalise things in her life. It is as if she can take the idea of Vivienne, and all the trappings, all the accoutrements, and put them in a box, which is never acknowledged, never opened.

My wife came from a non-Western culture, where the behaviour of both men and women is rigidly proscribed. Even though she has lived in the West for decades, there are certain things which, to her, were not negotiable, and one of those things was that her husband mustn't wear a frock. It was even OK for other people to do that, as long as it wasn't her husband. She expected an alpha-male: indestructible, unshakeable, always in control. Never uncertain. Never vulnerable. Never tearful. Such a man would make her feel safe. That seems not wholly unreasonable, but there are two problems with it. The first is that I am not that man. I am not him today, and I have never been him. The second problem is that such a man doesn't actually exist.

Trapped: Vivienne

So she put Vivienne into that box, sealed the lid tightly, and pretended that Vivienne didn't exist. But it seemed that the harder my wife tried to suppress Vivienne, the harder Vivienne demanded to be expressed, to be heard, to be acknowledged. I searched for ways to explore Vivienne's identity without threatening my marriage. I joined the Beaumont Society, in the hope of opening a dialogue with like-minded people, but (as I say in my article) that didn't help much. I explored dressing, and had one or two makeovers. Eventually I started this blog.

What I wanted, most of all (and still do, I suppose) was simply acceptance. I wanted to be able to express this tender, vulnerable side of myself to the person who mattered most to me in the world. Vivienne wasn't just about the clothing; she was about the roles and expectations placed upon me because I happened to be born a boy. I wanted to have conversations with my wife about it, not strangers on the Internet. I wanted to dress at home, not in makeover shops in other cities. I wanted to be accepted for who I am, not for who she (and in fairness, everyone else during my upbringing) told me I ought to be. I wanted to enjoy being myself, being whole.

Instead, she insisted that this side of me was disgusting, unbearable. It must never be spoken of, never acknowledged, never accepted, never tolerated. But gradually that disgust, that poison, began to leak out of the box. It began to be aimed at aspects of me which were not associated with Vivienne. My wife began to gradually shut me out, to express John Gottman's Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: the evocative name he gave to the behaviours which start to appear when the death-knell of a relationship is ringing loud and clear. We were four for four. And it was utter agony for me.

It didn't matter that I put rigid boundaries around my dressing. Four episodes a year, or less, and always, always in complete secrecy. We could not go shopping to a department store without her fearing that I was looking at the female mannequins and picturing myself in their clothing. She came to view Vivienne as the other woman, the one who came first in my affections.

It didn't matter that the other aspects of our lives were good: I had a good job and provided a good standard of living; we lived in a lovely house and had lovely kids and lovely friends. I didn't have any other obnoxious habits: gambling, drinking, drugs. That was all outweighed by the fact that I was not the alpha male that she thought she married.

Corrosive to relationships: fear

I see now that she was motivated by fear. Fear that I was going to start having sex with men. For the record, this was never my plan, and still isn't. Fear that I was going to start taking hormones and having surgery. Again, this was never the plan, and it still isn't. Fear that I was going to completely come out, and start showing up at the school parents' evening in a skirt and heels, where I would be a figure of contempt and ridicule (no matter how polite they might be to my face), and a cause for the kids to be mocked or bullied. Fear that other people would look down upon her: what on Earth possessed you to marry that freak?

The antidote to fear is communication, and this was another sticking point: she just would not communicate. The prospect, the existence of Vivienne, was so terrifying, so repugnant to her, that she could not have an ordinary conversation about it. I would talk, and she would not listen. I would listen, and she would not talk. It wasn't just that she didn't talk to me. She didn't talk to anyone: didn't confide in a close friend. Her fears were grinding around inside her, destroying her on the inside. On the outside, she began to shun me openly. The intimacy dried up years ago. To describe what happened, I can't do better than the words of Yoda:

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering".

But we still pretended, to the outside world, that everything was fine. For myself, I did everything I possibly could to keep the show on the road. I moved us here to New Zealand. But coming here permanently, we brought Vivienne, and all the other problems, right along with us.

Fabulous but unworn: shoes

In among all the agony were glimpses of hope. Just occasionally, she would buy me girly gifts, such as this pair of fabulous wedge heels. As soon as I opened the box, I was excited and I wanted to try them on. But the look of disgust on her face, as I did so, made me instantly take them off, and I have never worn them since. I think she was really trying to make it work. But in one sense, these glimpses of hope (she bought me the shoes; she must hope I liked them) were actually worse than nothing at all, because the false hope, and the let-down afterward, were especially difficult to bear.

I started to take antidepressants. They were not a solution, but they helped me cope with the daily grinding agony of my life. I am still on them. And I took us to counselling. Good counselling, with a highly-recommended professional psychologist, who saw us for two years, together and separately. But even with his help, we were unable to negotiate, to compromise. My intake of alcohol and comfort food jumped sharply upwards.

In order to illustrate my despair and agony at my situation, I often used the phrase burning to death to describe how I was feeling. I was trying to show how desperately miserable I was in my life: I was desperate to change, to move, to get out of where I was. But, in a very real way, I was also being consumed. Each time we had an argument; each time she stonewalled my feelings, I lost a bit more energy, a bit more commitment. I knew I could not hold on much longer. I knew that one day, the last bit of energy would be gone, and the marriage would be dead.

It didn't matter. My wife was unable to change. And I don't mean this harshly. I realise now that, whether she chose to or not, she could not change her feelings. As for me, I had played my last card. I had nothing left to offer.

I remember the exact moment I realised that the marriage was over. For years, there had been two paths in front of me: the path to stay and try to fix things (which was painful, and exhausting) and the path to leave and start again (which was painful, and exhausting). But always, when I looked at those two paths, the path to leave always seemed the more painful. But one day, the see-saw just tipped the other way, and it has never tipped back. I realised, with sudden clarity: I was never going to be happy if I stayed in this marriage. The realisation was terrible but inescapable.

I can't heeeeeear you!

When I told my wife it was over, she was astonished. Where did this come from? she wanted to know. Didn't you hear me when I said I was burning to death? I replied. But it turns out she didn't get it: she couldn't grasp it. She had denied it, pushed it away, in the same way she did with Vivienne: it's too painful to contemplate, so I will pretend it doesn't exist.

Since then, her anger has gone from being red hot to being blue hot, like a blowtorch. The thing she feared most, that her husband would leave, has come to pass. She cannot--yet--accept that she helped to bring this about. She cannot accept one iota of responsibility for what happened. It's all my fault; that's her truth. And it's OK.

I have called this post The End of Days, because it really feels like that from my point of view. I am losing my lovely home, and I now live in a small rental house. I will get shared custody of my children. That cosy image I once had, of having a nice job, a nice wife, a nice house, and nice kids, and being happy, has turned out to be an empty dream. And unfortunately that dream ends here.

This blog has been profoundly healing for me in so many ways. It has helped me to crystallise my feelings about myself, and my gender, and my identity. Although it's long, this article is only a drop in the bucket compared to thirty-odd volumes of hand-written journals. That banner at the top of the screen? That's one of my journals, and one of my collection of fountain pens. I write every day, when I get the chance, and I have used those journals to explore every possible avenue, every possible way, to keep the marriage on the road, to keep myself sane until the kids got a bit older, to conceptualise my wife's behaviour in different, more manageable ways. I know I am leaving this marriage having tried my absolute best to save it, using every resource I possess.

I also offer these experiences to you, my readers, in case some of you are in a similar position, and these insights help to crystallise your position.

I know that all is not lost; that there will be a new chapter in my life soon. But I don't know what it will look like, and that uncertainty is a fresh kind of agony for me. Where will I live? What will I look like? What will I wear? What will happen to the kids? What will happen to my wife? What role will Vivienne play in my life? I have no answers to any of this, and discussion will need to wait for another day, and another blog post. Meanwhile, let's close the book.

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Addendum

Katie Robbins wrote a powerful and thought-provoking article, with a similar theme, which you can read here. And hers is a lot shorter!

High heels!

High heels! Could there be a more tangible object of crossdressing desire? A clearer icon of feminine aspiration?

I've been thinking about them a bit lately. Pondering high heels tells me, I think, something about my own femininity. But first, let's take a look around.

Impractical: heels

Wikipedia tells us (correctly, I am sure) that high heels started off as a form of male attire, as a means of preventing the heel of the boot from slipping out of the stirrup when riding a horse, like a cowboy boot. That makes a lot of sense for me. Later, in several countries, stacked heeled footwear was fashionable for both sexes as a symbol of status and wealth, from which comes the phrase "well-heeled". Wikipedia tells us that high-heeled shoes became fashionable for only women from about the mid 19th century onwards. This fits with some of my beliefs about crossdressing, that things only started to get interesting for us from the Victorian era onwards. But for that, you will need to wait for another blog entry.

So much for the official history. How about this one? Oscar Kiss Maerth, in a distasteful pseudoscientific work from the 1970s, called The Beginning was the End postulated that modern humans evolved from a more primitive species of cannibalistic, brain-eating ape, which nonetheless had several behaviours in common with modern humans (though being unclothed, cross-dressing isn't among them):

Maerth: The rape of the female apes was... no simple matter and the mating could not be carried out as is usual among apes, that is, with the male animal entering the female from behind... Therefore the females normally had to be pulled to the ground by several cannibal ape-men and laid on their backs so that they could be raped... The legs of the females being raped were raised when they lay in this position and the tips of the feet were extended forward at the moment of orgasm so that the ball of the foot was pushed up. This was a sexually exciting sight for the males... and has remained in their subconscious right up to the present. That is why female legs with the tips of the foot stretched downwards and the [heels] of the feet raised are still sexually stimulating today. This is the origin of high heels.

Man the pumps!

Sorry to put you off your dinner with this. This is only one of a hundred junk science theories to explain human sexual behaviour. Before we move on, Maersk has a point: high heels are no longer about height, status, or horse riding. They are about sex.

The best book about crossdressing ever written is, in my opinion, My Husband Betty by Helen Boyd. This book is simply stunning: insightful, articulate, powerfully written, forthright to the point of agony, deeply sympathetic and yet occasionally ruthless. I couldn't finish it in one go, since the book told me so many things about myself that I couldn't confront them all at once; the book still makes uncomfortable reading, since it so effectively demolishes the facade I live behind. You can find Boyd's blog, which is regularly updated, here, and I intend to explore many of her other points in future blog entries.

Here she is, in typical style, giving it both barrels. Watch also her deliberate use of pronouns.

Boyd: Meredith tells me that her husband Victoria claims to be more comfortable in women's clothes. "How can he tell me that? They're not comfortable. I have to wear them. I know they're not comfortable. He's full of it." I can't help but agree. High heels, bras and pantyhose are not comfortable, and the types of lingerie many crossdressers really love-- garters, stockings, and corsets-- are something close to sartorial torture. What I've learned is that Victoria means he is psychologically comfortable, and that dressing as a woman satisfies him so deeply that the physical discomfort is immaterial. 

Ouch! Once again, Boyd hits home here. After a lovely day of crossdressing, the next day I sometimes get a twinge (say in my ankle) which reminds me of the previous day. It may be physically uncomfortable, but since these episodes are few, I welcome reminders of them. And high heels are painful! And awkward to balance in. Despite much experimentation and very careful balancing, I still can't walk comfortably or naturally in stilettos, although wedge heels are easier to balance and walk around in.

High heels have become a powerful expression of femininity. This is associated with the traditional (outdated!) notion of women being delicate and sensitive creatures, ill-suited to coarse manual work. It's also associated with beauty (since high heeled shoes are deliberately highly crafted with lots of gorgeous detail); with reward (since they are expensive, women reward themselves with buying new shoes); and with sex appeal (for which high-heels are practically a synecdoche). High heels make you feel fabulous.

So women don't wear high heels for comfort or practicality; they wear them because they value the associations which the shoes have more than the drawbacks, which is that they are gloriously impractical, quite amazingly uncomfortable, and eye-wateringly expensive (at least the good ones are).

Alluring: Emma Bunton

For many women (such as the model with the red shoes in the picture above) the shoe causes the forefoot to be a linear extension of the calf, which accentuates the apparent leg length. But a few women, such as Emma Bunton, (always my favourite Spice Girl) pictured here, can hyperflex the ankle, so that the contour of the ankle is slightly greater than 180 degrees, and this is powerfully alluring (I am sure it is quite intentional).

So where does that leave me? I flatter myself that, for me, crossdressing isn't a fetish. It's simply about expressing a side of me which would otherwise be suppressed. And yet, I can't find a pair of flat girl shoes I like, no matter how sparkly, or how elegant, or how flattering. I would rather wear high heels every time.

What this tells me is that, one way or another, crossdressing does have a fetishistic component for me. If it were not so, I could simply wear clothes that women themselves wear, and that would suffice. The fact that this doesn't satisfy me reveals that simply wearing what women wear (which is flats or trainers almost all the time) isn't enough. This is a powerful (and, if I am honest) uncomfortable truth about my own crossdressing.

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Addendum: 12th March 2012

X-appeal.

I've been thinking a bit more about this post. I haven't changed it, since I wrote what I was feeling at the time. However, for me, cross-dressing is an unusual event. It doesn't happen every day; not even every month, and therefore I want it to be as special as possible. I suppose for a real woman, going to an unusual event (a particular birthday party, or a family celebration) she would want to wear something special too, and turning up in trainers or flat shoes might not be it.

A small number of women seem to want to wear high heels all the time: on long-haul flights, for example, one would think that high heels would be extremely impractical, yet one still sees women wearing high heels on such flights.

But most women wear high heels on special occasions, and so do I. I honestly think that if I could crossdress freely every day, I would very shortly change to more comfortable footwear, or perhaps invest in a pair of bionic ankles. So maybe my interest in high heels isn't so fetishistic after all?

Addendum: 28th January 2013

Just this week the good old BBC have run an article on their website about this very subject, entitled Why did men stop wearing high heels? You can read the full text here. And the BBC also has an interesting magazine article here, called Sex on Legs: The Stiletto.

Addendum: 23rd December 2016

More about high heels from the BBC. I am beginning to think they may be obsessed. There is a wonderful podcast called The Why Factor, presented by Mike Williams. The Why Factor is a series of short (15-20 minute) explorations of "why we do the things we do". I hope to discuss the episode which discusses crossdressing, in more detail, in a future article. However, this one is about high heels. (Interestingly, the episode on the BBC website is an abridged, 12-minute version. The full, 18-minute episode which I heard came from iTunes). This podcast confirms the things I discuss above: that high heels were originally worn by men; that they became a symbol of wealth, and then they become an image of sexuality.

Interestingly, Williams turns up for a lesson in how to walk in heels. In her dance studio in London, Sarah Toner runs workshops to teach people (and freely admits some of them are men) how to walk elegantly in high heels, and of course Williams does poorly.

But the new insight, which I found unexpected and slightly disturbing, came from Toner herself, when she discusses why high heels are popular.

Toner: I also think it has to do with the way that you can't really run away. You become a more vulnerable person in a sense, and I think that also has something to do with it.
Williams: I hadn't thought of it like that but when you consider it like that, the fact that the woman is more vulnerable, it's quite sinister.
Toner: It is quite sinister.

This is an interesting take on the phenomenon of high heels, coming as it does from someone who makes her living (at least partly) out of teaching people how to walk in them.