What is transvestism?

When a man is a transvestite he has a strong inner drive for feminine self-expression and role, for instance by dressing as a woman, putting make-up on, body language and the expression of the feminine role. This drive for feminine self-expression starts usually in the childhood or in the early teens. The emotions and meanings of transvestism change and develop throughout the life but the drive for feminine expression usually remains as a permanent feature. Transvestite feels he is a man yet he has an occasional need for feminine self-expression.

Transvestism is oftentimes a very erotic experience for a teenager. For an adult transvestite the overall pleasure, relaxation, stress relief and momentary liberation from the pressures of the man's role are oftentimes important instead. If the erotic arousal stays as the main motivator for crossdressing the concept “transvestic fetishism” is used. The border between transvestism and fetishism is in practice fluctuating and possibly changing in the course of life. Often when a man starts to express his transvestism in a social interaction the fetishistic component starts to fade out.

When a transvestite does not follow his desire to dress and act in a feminine manner he becomes depressed, there is increased anxiety and stress and possibly even the loss of joie de vivre and energy. For this reason the denial of the urges and the limiting of the feminine self-expression due to social constraints are usually doomed to fail.

The empire of the transvestite meanings and experiences is always unique and individual. Some stress the erotic pleasure created by the enactment. Some want to dress from head to toe in feminine apparel; for some using lingerie under male clothes is enough. For some it is important to be seen and met socially en femme. The need for enactment can vary individually and in different stages of life from daily crossdressing to crossdressing few times a year.

The majority of transvestites are heterosexual men – some have a bisexual identity or bisexual experiences and fantasies. The gay transvestism is in many ways psychosocially different from heterosexual transvestism since in the gay community and subcultures crossdressing is interpreted differently.

Few transvestites feel that their femininity is very strong while they see that their masculinity is a given role rather than an inner feeling. Their world of experience comes near to a transsexual woman's world of experience which means that they have to ponder their relationship with transgenderism and transsexualism. In this case self-exploration is unavoidable for defining your own identity, gender experience and for making the right choices of life.

Transvestites do not differ statistically by their personality and mental health from nontransvestic controls. Some studies have shown a slightly increased frequency of neuroticism, which could be explained by minority status and the stressfulness of the dual-role life. The family background and social class vary. According to studies in the western world transvestites comprise one percent of the population.

In our culture femininity in a male person is a taboo so the process of self-acceptance development for a transvestite in the fields of emotions, cognition and weltanschauung are challenging.

Coming out when in relationship Keeping transvestism hidden from your spouse and coming out after establishing a family and living together for years or even dozens of years usually leads to a crisis in relationship. It is usual to hide transvestism from your spouse, because the transvestite can understand his transvestism himself, get liberated from the bonds of guilt and shame and accept himself usually no earlier than in his middle-age. Most have struggled with it for decades alone and the shame and the fear of rejection have hindered them from coming out to their loved ones.

The situation and feelings of the wife or the partner after coming out

It comes usually as a great shock for the spouse if the husband or partner comes out as a transvestite. The coming out may be followed by a shock during which the spouse has sleeping and eating difficulties; the basic safety seems to be in shambles. This is usually followed by an intense period of working around the subject together by discussing, arguing and emoting. This will take from one week to some months. There could be celibacy or intense sexuality. Working out the relationship takes all the energy and running the business as usual may seem difficult.

The partner goes through conflicting emotions in the shock period. She can feel that her husband is familiar and dear and yet alien at the same time. The feelings of love, acceptance and bonding many times coexist with the feelings of being profound wounded, fright and anger. The spouse feels insulted that there existed a such a secret. She is disappointed with her spouse who has cheated her by keeping important aspects of himself hidden. The lived and experienced closeness and trust in the relationship seem to be questioned. The spouse can find transvestism an alien and disgusting subject. The spouse can seek information about transvestism or avoid all information as a means of self-protection.

The usual transvestism-related worries of the spouse include the worry of husband becoming gay or bisexual. The spouse could have a vague fear of what else is there to hide or that husband is a totally different kind of person than what the wife had thought and the lived life is a lie. The spouse can feel shame for his transvestism and “queerness”. She could be afraid that others will find out that her husband is a transvestite. In this case she can feel anxiety about him going out to the support group or the city. The worry of the quarrelsome family situation and the queerness of the father affecting the children's upbringing is common. The spouse can be angry about husband's use of authority – he has not given her the freedom of choice whether she should continue to share her life with a transvestite husband or not. Husband did not tell it in the beginning of the relationship but has kept crucial characteristics of himself hidden. The knowledge of transvestism could have influenced wife's choices of life: choosing spouse, choosing to have kids, career choices, location choices to the point of choosing the homeland.

The expression of sexuality and gender roles and expression is rapidly changing into a sensitive subject. The spouse could find her husband sexually deviant – especially if experiencing transvestism for him means a lot of erotic feelings and activity. This could feel filthy and make it difficult to experience eroticism together. The spouse can also be afraid of being a target of such sexual demands or needs that she does not want to meet. Partners to whom femininity and masculinity and heteroeroticism when particularly based on the ideas of gender difference can find that the newly found feminine side on the male makes him less attractive.

The femininity of the spouse could be threatened – the wife ought to have been respected, unique and wanted as the woman of the family – not the husband. The wife can feel that something intimate femininity belonging to her is being ripped off. The husband can almost feel like a competitor in the field of femininity. Nervous feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy can surface for the wife as a woman – especially if his husband is beautiful and charming en femme. She can suffer from the fantasy that her husband's transvestism was due to her inadequacy as a woman. She can feel that she has failed in some way as a woman and a spouse.

The wife often misses an understanding and supporting discussion partner that would understand her feelings and her situation while the husband has the social network of the gender community supporting him. The woman can feel transvestism such a shameful issue that she dare not seek help from her friends, relatives or even a counselor.

Getting acquainted with other transvestites and their spouses can ease and normalize the situation –both transvestism itself and her own feelings in the situation – but also create feelings of irritation. The spouse can feel bad about being seen as “the spouse of the transvestite” which does not feel like your own identity. The spouse could be irritated by some people's joy and straightforwardness in expressing transvestism when she feels that the situation is complex. She can be jealous and envious about her husband's friends, pals, participation in communal projects and him having a good time. This is especially so when she has no chances in meeting transvestite's wives in the same situation and sharing her experience with them.

When you want to continue in the relationship, both will have challenges in developing. In the reorientation phase the challenge for the spouse is to renew her idea about her partner and her self-image and the idea about them as a couple, possibly her concept of gender, masculinity, femininity and sexuality. This is a in many cases a slow and often a painful process.

Husband's situation and feelings after coming out

For the husband it comes as a great relief to come out to her partner as a transvestite. If he hasn't told but she has caught him of transvestism the situation is often more complex. Then the husband does not necessarily feel ready to process transvestism as a fact of the relationship.

Often the transvestite has come out at his free will to his spouse. He feels relieving to not to carry the burden of secrecy and feel shame about his hiding. He has lots of hopes and needs for more open self-expression and great fears and expectations as to wife's reactions. The fear of being totally rejected and abandoned and divorced inspires anxiety. Sometimes he can see that the divorce is a very probable outcome and he can have the fear of the spouse trying to hinder his custodial rights or to stigmatize him within the family and friends.

The dream goal could be to have his wife accept his transvestism or even to rejoice about it as he does himself. He sees that he has shared an important, sensitive and intimate point about himself and his need to be accepted as he is, is great. Possible sexual rejection in that situation may feel wounding.

The husband does not feel that he has been secretive – on the contrary he has fairly come out and is otherwise ready to tell everything about transvestism that she wants to know. For him it may be hard to understand her being so profoundly hurt about him having kept it secret. He can also feel that he has tried to tell – by indirect discussion topics such as proposing fetishistic sex or by playing with the idea of dressing up as a woman in a discussion or by starting to talk about transgender matters in general level. When she has been amused or negative he has crawled back to his shell.

He often feels that he would have come out as soon as he was ready to come out. To come out earlier could have been out of the question when his own development was incomplete. In the emotional plane his wish could be that she could understand and even be proud of his development. He feels that he has grown as a human being and might wish that she would see his growth and she would appreciate it. He can even be impatient with her because his need for nearness and safety and he wishes the return of the positive firmament in the relationship soon.

He has a need to direct his attention to the present and the future while she has the need to reconsider the past and the history of the relationship until this day. If he is unfamiliar in feeling and expressing emotions as a man, her emotions might scare him and he would be longing for a sensible and argumentative style of discussion. The open expression of negative emotions when working out the subject may make him nervous. He could see her great negative emotions as a threat to himself and the intensive expression of emotions as a loss of control in particular.

It could be hard for him to identify with her experience of him becoming a stranger of sorts. He feels it as an abandonment on the emotional plane. It is hard for him to see her agony when he sees his identity as continuous. He feels that he is and he will be what he has always been.

He often loves his wife and he doesn't like to see her suffering. He wants to understand and support her. Her suffering makes him feel guilty. He can feel himself guilty and guilty for making her feel bad and simultaneously be mad for being accused of being who he is. He can feel helplessness in not knowing how to help her. He can try to protect her by keeping things secret.

Hiding the truth will often prevail as his survival strategy in a new hard situation. By hiding the facts he can aim to protect his partner but also himself. Oftentimes he feels he needs wife's acceptance so much that he can't be totally honest in the future either. He may aim to speed up and direct her development process. Seeking discussion partners could be an important way to fill the needs for support for the spouse. But “filtering the information” – which is that for instance he seeks and finds positively biased reading materials about transvestism for her – can be seen as manipulative and she can become opposed. The continued secrecy can also mean that he feels that he needs room to be himself. He can feel that she is too needy or demanding and tries to limit or control him. Then he makes room for his development by hiding things.

The husband's challenge is often to see his own needs for change and development as a partner as he has now grown as an individual.

The relationship challenges

Many have fantasies about the partners in a relationship automatically understanding and mutually supporting each other in all goals in each other's lives. A transvestite has a wish that the wife will understand and become interested in his transvestism and accepts it as an integral part of the relationship. This may happen already when he has just come out if his transvestism serves her developmental needs. That is not often the case and this is when the relationship drifts into a crisis.

The delusion of the relationship often is that the partners fantasize that by the way of relationship they become one and the other partner could fill all of your own needs. In reality, however, in the relationship there are two separate people with life histories, needs and feelings of their own. Husband's relationship with his transvestism is one of the developmental projects of his life but it does not necessarily serve her needs of self-actualization. Husband's transvestism in itself is a great question in the relationship. However, it is also important to understand what sore spots pertaining to the wife and her personal history the crisis touches.

The relationship is not only a blissful fulfillment of love. Especially in a longer relationship everyone has to face the fact that the partner can not be a panacea for the inner child as regards to the needs of security, acceptance, eagerness and the seeking of the meaning of life for instance. The crisis can help each partner to come in grips with these personal inadequacies better. Husband's transvestism does not only create the feelings of questioning the relationship but it has a yet more profound effect on the wife's life. Transvestite's wife has to question her entire life especially when –as with people usually- the work with self-realization is unfinished. Just talking about transvestism in the relationship or with a counselor is usually not enough but she needs help for working the sore spots that the crisis has revealed in her. There is not always energy in a crisis for working out your own feelings without outside help. Growth and self-realization seldom are painless processes.

A transvestite has usually gone a long way with his transvestism before coming out and has gotten contact with this part of his life. He could be impatient with his wife; she should accept the new image of the husband right away. When crisis concerns the entire personality it will take it time - usually years. The wife can force herself to understand his transvestism, but on the emotional plane the crisis remains unresolved when your innermost is not worked out. The denial of feelings or skipping them altogether cause symptoms like sleeplessness, anxiety and drifting apart in the relationship. Discussion in such an intimate level with husband demands wife's trust, which she feels has been violated by the husband's perhaps years lasting keeping of secrets. Openly expressing feelings could lead to progress even though it might be difficult in the situation that is in crisis. Often the outside help and a possibility to discuss with other wives of the transvestites will help the wife to get a contact with her own emotional experiences.

Crisis coming with transvestism puts the relationship into re-evaluation. Some relationships will come up with new solution to continue living together, some break up. For some relationships transvestism is a richness for some a separating factor. Finally it comes to whether husband's transvestism responds to her world of experience. The wife should ponder in an open-minded and honest manner what her needs are, what is it that she wants and does not want what does she need and does not need. Some couples find compromises that are fitting. The wife can then choose by her own liking which parts of his transvestism she wants to be involved with and which parts she does not want to be involved with. Even though in the beginning the question of transvestism can rise to gigantic measures, many wives see the other aspects of their husbands and the shared life so important for themselves that they do not want to break up because of transvestism. It is good if you can go through openly with yourself and together with your partner what the expectations for the relationship are if you decide to continue or what hinders the continuation. The needs actualized through a relationship are countless and so are the solutions individual to each couple. There are additional factors that keep the relationship going in addition to love and partnership such as parenting, economical status and the fear of surviving on your own. A successful solution regardless of the continuation of the relationship is one with which you can feel at peace and honesty yourself.

Maarit Huuska & Kari Kaimola

Sources:

Benestad Esben/Pirelli, Ester (2000) Being openly transperson and coming out process. A public discourse in TransHelsinki 2000-seminar arranged by the Transgender Support Center, 9/23/2000 Helsinki, Finland

Woodhouse, Annie (1989) Fantastic Women: Sex, gender and Transvestism Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick.