In my interactions with recovering crossdressers and their wives over the years, a certain issue has come up frequently. At times a wife may think she should stop dressing in a feminine way for fear of triggering her husband’s crossdressing desires or arousing his lusts for certain feminine objects of clothing or cosmetics. Similarly, some men who have committed to give up crossdressing think that their wives dressing too femininely will divert their minds to be focused on their old pattern of autogynephilic crossdressing arousal or stir up their cross-gender longings.
From the outset, I want to applaud these wives for being willing to sacrifice for the sake of their husbands. To be willing to change how you dress to help your spouse have an easier time at pursuing holiness in his life and in the marriage, that is certainly an act of great love!
However, I personally believe this is the wrong approach to take. I say so because of my personal experience in recovering from autogynephilia but also for the following reasons:
1. To ask a wife to deny her feminine way of dressing is unfair and inappropriate according to what I see in the Bible. Of course there are the biblical passages about dressing modestly. That is an important principle that should be followed. (Though at home away from the public, there is no need for a wife to dress modestly for her own husband). But we are not talking about modesty here. It’s completely different to ask a wife to dress in a gender neutral way. The Bible teaches that we should dress as men and women according to the customs of our culture for men and women (see Deuteronomy 22:5 and 1 Corinthians 11 posts for more on this). Remember that is part of the whole problem of our crossdressing in the first place!
A woman’s dress is not only about being attractive to you as a husband. That can be part of it. But a woman’s dress is more fundamentally about dressing according to her identity and biology as a woman. Wives should be allowed to dress in a way that fits their feminine body shape. They should be able to dress in a way that the culture sees as normal for women.
The last point I will add here is that there are biblical passages that seem to affirm the goodness of feminine clothing for women. Remember that in 1 Corinthians 11:15 it says – “14 Does not the very nature of things teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him, 15 but that if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For long hair is given to her as a covering.” Long hair is the glory of a woman; do you want to deny your wife her glory? Maybe long hair isn’t the most common part of dressing femininely by your wife that is causing you issues. But I think this verse by extension applies to the whole issue. There are certain ways of dressing that make your wife beautiful, and feminine, as a woman, and that is part of her glory as a woman. Do you want to deny that of her? Additionally there are Bible passages that indirectly affirm the goodness of women dressing beautifully and femininely. For example, I think of the biblical imagery God uses to talk about his people as his bride. In certain passages, he talks of adorning his bride with beautiful feminine clothing and jewelry (see Ezekiel 16 and Revelation 19 and 21).
2. Remember that although crossdressers are aroused by their crossdressing, they are still at heart heterosexual. Autogynephilia is about being aroused at the thought of yourself as a woman. The problem is the location, looking to self rather than to real women. But the object of affection and attraction is still heterosexual, attraction to women. Part of a man’s recovery process I believe is about feeding his heterosexuality and starving his autogynephilia. The man needs to learn to cultivate his heterosexual attraction and focus on that, and not indulge his autogynephilia. This is not conversion therapy. The man is heterosexual already. He just needs to focus on attraction to real women, not himself as a woman. And if he is married, and is a Christian, then of course the man should focus on cultivating his love and attraction to his wife, and no other.
This means that we want to help men who are fighting their crossdressing desires to be even MORE attracted to their wives, not LESS. So having the wife dress in a gender neutral boring way will perhaps succeed in arousing less crossdressing desires in the husband, but it will also result in arousing less attraction to the wife. I would love for couples to look at the situation together and realize the solution is more closeness as a couple, not more distance. I would love for a wife to think about how she can keep her husband so excited by her beauty, that his desires for a false fake woman will decrease and ultimately disappear.
I am NOT placing the burden of the husband’s recovery process on the wife. Ultimately it is up to him to make the changes he needs to make with God’s help. And I am NOT saying this to place a burden on wives to become something they are not, that is to start dressing in a new way, with extreme femininity or by trying to live up to the impossible beauty standards of our culture. Rather, I’m saying wives should continue to dress femininely and beautifully, as they have ALWAYS DONE, and not throw out her skirts or her makeup, etc. She should not stop dressing femininely out of fear of her husband’s issues. The husband should keep his attention on his wife’s beauty and look for ways to be intimate with her. She should be the object of his desire, not her clothes, and not the false female of his own making. (See my post on reconceptualizing female clothing for how husbands can work on this).
3. Husbands need to learn self-control rather than trying to control others. I think about the men who blame women for being raped because of the way that they dressed. Or men who blame women for causing them to lust. Yes, there are women who don’t dress modestly. Yes, there are women in churches who are not going the extra step to help men but rather flaunting their sexuality. But regardless of how women dress, we as men should be able to have self-control and not give in to our lusts. The same applies here. Husbands should be able to exercise self-control rather than trying to control how their wives dress. Don’t put the blame on how your wife dresses when you fall into sin. Even if I’m wrong in this post, and your wife dressing femininely truly amps up your temptations, ultimately you are still able to exercise self-control and not give in to your sin.
4. We cannot remove all temptation. The goal cannot be to eliminate every object in the husband’s world that might make him think of crossdressing. That is impossible. The goal should be the husband learning self-control. This is a very neglected virtue and character trait in our culture.
Jesus says in Matthew 5 to remove the hand that causes us to sin, which means we should be ruthless about removing triggers that will tempt us. But in the case of crossdressing and autogynephilia, we can only go so far. It is impossible to remove all temptation because unlike other sexual issues, men like us can be triggered by any female clothing that we see anywhere, even very modest female clothing (sometimes especially modest clothing). In our case it doesn’t necessarily matter how attractive or unattractive the woman is who is wearing a certain article of clothing. It could be clothing worn by our wives, our coworkers, our sisters, our mothers, our neighbors, the women on television, the women walking by on the street, or women magazine pictures. In our culture we cannot fully flee such triggers. The only solution is learning self-control and reconditioning how we see female clothing.
Even if we left society and lived in a monastery and never saw a woman again, we would still be triggered to crossdress at times in our minds. We would still think about turning our bath towel into a skirt. We would still see our chest in the mirror and be tempted to imagining breasts. My point is not to be fatalistic or hopeless. All such temptations and thoughts can be overcome. Recovery is possible so that these thoughts come extremely rarely! Change can happen! But my point is that these temptations are overcome through walking with Christ and through learning self-control, rather than simply fleeing all possible things that might trigger a thought of female clothing.
There are other more productive and practical ways to severely limit temptations and triggers which I’ve written about extensively. See this page listing all my posts under the category of dealing with temptations.
I’d like to give one caveat or exception to what I’ve said above. If there is a very specific item of clothing or cosmetic that is particularly troubling because it has become a fetish object, something you fixate on, something that instantly arouses you as a separate object from your wife, then you may need to avoid it completely. For example, the one most troubling item could be high heels, or painted nails, or very short skirts. In such a case, it might make a lot of sense for the husband and wife to discuss and agree together that the wife could avoid that one small thing in her normal dressing. But this is not a fundamental change in her whole wardrobe, but rather removing just the one most fixating item that the husband especially lusts after. (see my post on lusting after feminine objects).
This post reflects the approach I have followed in my fight against crossdressing. However, I’d really appreciate hearing feedback and critique from others in case I’m missing something. But for me, I count this as one of the important factors in my recovery process. My wife, like other wives, dresses very femininely in certain ways while avoiding particular items of clothing or cosmetics that she doesn’t like as much. I know every woman is different and will have different preferences. But whatever little ways that a wife dresses femininely will help the husband, so she should not stop dressing the way that she is used to. My wife’s beauty and dress keeps my attention focused on her. I appreciate her femininity so much that I feel no need to go after an alternate femininity when she is around. Almost the only time I am ever even tempted to indulge my autogynephilic desires is when my wife is traveling and not around for a few days. That’s how powerful this is. And it’s not even about physical intimacy and having sex. It’s enough just to see her, be in her presence, and talk to her. (for more on this point see this post on connecting with femininity).
I want to end with an encouragement for wives. For wives who have husbands who are trying to give up their crossdressing, please give your fears over to the Lord. Live with trust in God rather than living in fear. Trust that God is working in the heart of your husband and that he is making progress in his recovery. Trust that as you continue to dress in the way you have for years, that God will turn your husband’s eyes towards you rather than the woman of his fantasy. Don’t live with anxiety, second guessing every little decision about your clothing choices each morning. And remember, as your husband sorts out his own issues with God, you can continue to be yourself. Continue to dress as the woman you are and leave the rest up to God.
For those wives with husbands who are not repentant, and who refuse to give up their crossdressing, my heart goes out to you. You are in a horribly hard situation. Post a note here to ask for prayer and I will pray for you. Consider joining the wives group. Don’t give up. Put your trust in the Lord as he is the only one who can soften your husband’s heart to convict him of his sin. But as you pray for your husband, consider also a simple strategy of printing out some of my posts to ask your husband to read and discuss with you together. He can also print out things for you to read from elsewhere to make it equal. If he can try to approach the topics with an open mind, he may just end up changing his view. But as to the content of this post, if your husband is constantly crossdressing anyway, then you don’t need to worry about what you wear triggering him. And maybe just maybe when he sees you dressed well as a woman, he will better notice how ridiculous he looks in comparison when he wear women’s clothing. May the Lord guide you and comfort you.
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