Secrets, Lies, Sexting, and Cross-dressing

Hello everyone, thank you for taking the time to read this.. I recently found out that my boyfriend of about 20 months was holding on to a lot of secrets from his past. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't affecting the present, and our relationship. Because we are together 24-7 including at work we had gone on a break for 2 weeks for reasons outside of this post, not cheating or lies, just needing personal space.. We got back together and I found out that he was messaging other women on Kik and sending photos as well..the bathes messages and pictures were sent after we gor back together.. The most shocking part was not the "**** pics" but there was a picture of him wearing my bra, and referring to himself has a bisexual cross dresser.. So, this is what it started as... I confronted him about it and he says he used to cross dress but it was a long time ago, and that he only went back to that because he was hurting and the picture in my bra was old.. I told him I knew it wasn't old because it is my bra in the photo. He insisted that it was from the beginning of our relationship so I asked him to show me where he got the picture from if it was old.. he then showed me a website that had about 50 photos of him cross dressing in women's clothing and lingerie. At this point I am blown away and in shock..but the picture I had asked about was not in this mix.. so it made no sense to me and I asked where it came from.. after asking several times and telling him I just want to know the truth so I can try to process the whole situation he finally says he did it a few days earlier because of being lonely because of the break.. he said it made him do that.. this wasn't making sense to me because I couldn't understand why he would go back to cross dressing unless it was something he liked doing. over the next couple of days I couldn't stop thinking about it, trying to analyze it.. he said he isn't bi and doesn't like to cross dress so I was beyond confused, just wishing he would tell me then truth so that I would know how to move forward.. when I asked him multiple times if there was anything else, just to please come clean because his story wasn't making sense, he told me that his first sexual relationship was manipulative and he was forced to do a lot of things like cross dress or sexual acts with other men and that it was a very traumatic experience. So this was what he had to base all future sexual experiences off... so after begging and lie after lie (it's hard to explain all lies in detail, after so many even I can't keep them straight) he told me he dated someone after that first girl who was also into a lot of stuff including crossdressing and that he continued in that relationship. He said he spoke with the first girl after they had broken up, and into years later when we were together. He said he spoke to her and sent her sexual pictures up until the 8th or 9th month of our relationship. This is absolutely heartbreaking to me. So, at that point this is all I was told, true or not.. we went to a therapist and they said we shouldn't be together because he should be alone while he figures out who he really is and what he wants, but if we don't break up that he needs to be completely transparent so passwords and phone access completely open.. after the therapist a couple days later I wanted to move forward and find a way to trust him again so I looked through his computer and found explicit text message logs from months before we had gone on the break... my world stopped..i know he just sounds like a lying jerk from the information i have provided about these events, but outside of this he really is very generous and sweet.. anyways, i asked him what it was and he then said he has a problem.... he had been texting, messaging, and emailing explicit things at least back to the 13 month mark of our relationship. He is going back to the Therapist on his own to try and get help but I don't know what I should do. I love him so much, but I don't know how to trust him anymore. Now that he said he has an addiction I feel that it all makes more sense, or maybe it is just a cop out, I'm not sure. I am fearful that I will stay and be hurt in the end, but I am also afraid to lose what we have because it really isn't all bad.. maybe I am naivel hopefull. I am looking for any advice.. how do I move forward in my relationship without putting up too much of a wall that there is no point in staying.. do I shut off all physical contact? Do I nurture the relationship in a normal way and just continue to remind him that I have not forgotten and try to find ways to help him work on the problem? This is all very confusing and hurtful to me, I just don't know what I should be doing now. Feel free to send me a private message or reply publicly.

I am so very sorry that you're going through this. I wish I had some good advice for you but I don't, having never been in this type of situation.

Please remember that you have your own self to look after and perhaps it would be a good idea to evaluate whether you would be better with him or without him.

I am sorry that you're struggling so.

Hello sadpanda808: I'm not supposed to be posting in the women's forum. So I apologize in advance. However, your Thread is so close to my heart, I feel that I must reply.

I'm so sorry you have run into this difficulty. Before I comment further, I want to just tell you a couple of things about me so you have some idea of where my thoughts are coming from. I'm in my mid 60's. I have been transgender all of my life. Although I am biologically male, I always felt as though, inside, I was female. However, I never did anything about it such as going on hormones or having gender reassignment surgery. I have lived a largely male life. In fact, I managed to keep my transgender psyche a closely guarded secret until just a few years ago.

Obviously your boyfriend has a problem... actually maybe several problems. And cross-dressing is not necessarily one of them. Many people enjoy dressing in the clothes of the opposite gender. There have been times in my life when it was the only thing that kept me marginally sane. The problem your bf has, I think, is he doesn't appear to know what is motivating him to do this &, most importantly, he appears to be embarrassed & confused by it. I'm pleased to hear he is seeing a therapist. This is important. I do hope the therapist he is seeing has experience working with individuals who have gender-identity issues. From what you wrote, it sounds as though the T your bf is seeing is on the right track.

The other problem, however, is your bf's involvement with uploading pictures onto the internet of himself cross-dressed & his persistent lying to you about the whole thing. Perhaps it is because of my age, but it strikes me that uploading all of these pictures onto the internet is a much more troublesome issue than is cross-dressing. I don't think I can even speculate with regard to what the motivation is there. This is something for your bf & his T to figure out. As far as the lying goes, this may simply be because of his embarrassment & confusion. But it does suggest he is not above deceiving you in order to be able to protect himself. (Most of us "gender-confused" types develop this propensity.) The chances are, I would say, he's likely to do it again in the future if circumstances warrant.

My experience tells me that gender-identity issues are, by-&-large, tenacious. (Mine certainly has been. I always hoped that, as I aged, my gender-identity issues would fade. They have not. In fact, they have become even more overwhelming as I have aged. And I have read that this is not unexpected.) Other kinds of gender-identity issues, such as cross-dressing I believe tend to be similarly tenacious. So, even if your bf & his T are able to sort out why your bf is doing what he is doing, this is unlikely to mean your bf will stop doing it. What it means is he will better understand what it is that motivates him to do it. He may also learn ways in which he can satisfy his compulsions in a safe manner, which is important.

If in the end, your bf should conclude he is transsexual, it's possible he may decide to undertake some sort of transition. On the other hand, if he concludes he falls somewhere else on the gender-identity rainbow (there are many resting places & many labels) he may decide that he must follow some other path besides the traditional male one. What pathway that may be remains to be seen.

So what does this all mean to you? Well, I don't know. And, to some extent that is the point. No one knows. So, if you intend to stay with your bf, you are going to have to be both flexible & forgiving for some time to come while your bf & his T figure out what's going on. And there's no guarantee where it will all end up. So, from my perspective, what you must figure out is whether or not, & to what extent, you are up for going along on this journey. It could be exciting & have a happy ending. Or, in the end, you could be left with a handful of nothing.

So these are my thoughts at this point. I would be glad to correspond further with you either here in the forums or via private message, should you wish to. I wish you all the best as you continue to struggle with this dilemma.

Yes, the lying and secretiveness is quite worrisome, but I won't get into that issue.

My concern is about the abuse in his past. Abuse of a sexual nature can cause profound changes in us. It is VERY hard to talk about all of this, not just for the obvious reasons, but because its not very PC....well, at least in my case. Nobody wants to hear that sexual abuse could cause someone to be gay/lesbian. My sexual abuse caused SO much sexual confusion, and I had nobody to talk to about it. When I did try to open up I just heard a bunch of crap about how it was ok to be gay and how I needed to accept myself as I was. (I say crap not because I am homophobic, rather because nobody understood what I had been through or how it affected me, and that I was indeed straight but EXTREMELY confused.) The whole mantra these days is "born this way" and if you dare speak out about abuse causing sexual confusion or even completely changing ones orientation, you're pretty much an affront to the entire "not completely straight" community who says its all a matter of being born this way. (I did my research, and I have found studies which show gay men are 7 times more likely to have been abused than straight men as children. Yes, I knew I wasn't alone in all of this!) I doubt such studies would be replicated again as you'd have people protesting in the streets about how homosexuality isn't a byproduct of abuse, but I digress. My point is that this stuff is VERY hard to talk about, and quite likely that he doesn't know anyone in his situation. It took me YEARS to find the validation that I was looking for (on another forum) when others were actually able to say hey, the same thing happened to me!

The uploading, fascination of pictures of the self and wearing the bra sounds more like a sexual problem than gender identity dysphoria. This is what I tried to describe on here once where crossdressing turns into a sort of perverted sexual addiction. Your boyfriend was busted so he was quick to go into denial feeling overwhelmed by guilt and shame. I have been there so I know. I'm 52 years old. please feel free to ask any questions.

I doubt that the T is good. The T suggested complete transparency, so the T is treating this issue as a behavioral modification - transparency is used in an attempt to change the pattern of behavior. I do not see any effort on the part of the T to get to the root of the confusion and surrounding issues. Maybe a longer term T is needed, as there is no quick fix to this.

You are right to suspect that citing abuse and addiction may be cop-out attempts; of course, they may be valid, too, but you never know. I think you should shut off physical contact only if you suspect that he might have been sexually active with someone other than you and might have become infected and thus a danger to you. Otherwise, if you feel drawn to him and he, to you, there is no reason to shut off physical contact. You have to be reasonable and avoid knee-jerk reactions.

I would not spy on him - just tell him that he has three months to figure it out, and during that time he can message/text etc. however much he wants while also going to see a T in order to collect information that would help him, jointly with the T, get to the root of the problem. Maybe have him keep a spreadsheet where he lists how he feels before he sends a picture of say, him in your bra, the type of picture sent, and, the reaction after he sent it - his feelings right after, an hour and three hours after. Make him be a lab coat researcher, etc., trying to figure out what is going on. If you personally want transparency (rather than the T), you can ask for access to the spreadsheet.

Pictures taken on modern devices, such as smartphones, are usually dated and timestamped. It should not be difficult to date the picture of him in your bra. That he tried to say that it was sent months before it actually was sent shows that either your bf is desperate, or that he thinks that you are technologically naive, or both.

I know a book that you may benefit from reading. It's called My Husband Betty, about a straight woman/crossdresser relationship. For him The Lazy Crossdresser by Charles Anders

Thank you Skeezyks for your answer! It helps, I relate well to the woman who posted the question. I am married to a man who is a cross-dresser and bi-sexual, however, it took a lot of patience and crying and even a little yelling to get the information. I will give a little of my story.

I travelled on occasion for business so it wasn't unusual for me to be gone for a few days at a time. My self esteem isn't always perfect so I worried that my younger husband may have been cheating. I had found dating sites, texts, pics etc also. Called him on it and he told me I knew where the door was. It hurt but I decided to try to work it out. After a couple of years you want to at least try. In any case, I came home early and he ran around taking trash out etc. Since this wasn't a typical move I checked it and found an outfit package in the trash. I cried and couldn't understand how he could cheat on me. Asked him how long it had been going on because you don't buy those types of things for random people. He told me it wasn't what I thought it was and I decided to give him a second chance. About a year later by accident I walked in while he was cross dressing and taking care of himself.

That's when I really yelled. I told him how dare he allow me to believe it was him cheating on me when it was just this. He knew my favorite movie is Rocky Horror, I am adventurous and not a prude. This was not a big deal for me at all. I was so pissed that he didn't tell me the truth. But I stopped and realized, that there is a stigma to it and he probably had been keeping the secret a very long time. So I asked. He said his mom knew but they had never talked about it, he had been doing it for years. I told him I was ok with it but no more hiding or lying. There haws still been some but I think as the gentlemen above stated, it's more about him feeling embarrassed or unsure so I don't yell anymore. He has actually allowed me to participate in his dressing only once so far but it went well.

I love my husband and he loves me, we made a decision to have an open marriage. I know I can utilize it myself but don't choose to. But it give him the permission he needed to be with another cross-dresser(same-sex) when he felt the need to. And it took a very long time for him to admit that he was bi as well. I have my own fetishes, and issues. But I do believe that in most cases you are born the way you are. Circumstances can alter how you deal with who you are, but in a relationship their has to be understanding and compromise. The choice is yours, you have to decide if whatever you find is something you can live with and I mean truly live with. Not tolerate and then get sulky or mad later. You have to accept them for who they are and love them for the same reason, even if you are not the only thing that they love or need.