The Most Terrifying Night of My Life

As promised, here’s my wife’s first post of hopefully many more to come. I’ll leave you now with her story:

One afternoon, my husband and I went for a walk, and as we were walking, he brought up an article he'd read about a married man who had decided to start wearing high heels and skirts to work and how even his wife and daughter actually helped him coordinate his outfits. That started a whole conversation of which I don't remember every detail, but I do remember we concluded that I wouldn't mind at all if he wanted to dress like that. If it made him happy and comfortable, why not? After all I do believe clothes don't define a person.

We got home, went through our normal evening routine, everything as usual, nothing out of the ordinary, we prepared everything for the next day, and went to sleep. It was an ordinary night. We had even managed to go to bed early because we were both exhausted, so by 2:00 AM, I was deeply asleep.

Suddenly I don't know what happened but something woke me up, I don't remember what it was but I began to feel something strange that made me wake up.

Slowly more asleep than awake, I opened my eyes and squinting through the dark I saw my husband inches from my face, completely awake, staring into my eyes. I have no idea how long he had been sitting there watching me sleep. Bewildered I murmured, "What's wrong?", frankly wanting to go back to sleep far more than I wanted an answer.

At that moment he told me, "I have to tell you something." Never in my life, never in a million years, could I have imagined what he was about to tell me. Never, ever, ever. He took a breath and asked: 

"What would happen if I told you that I also want to wear women's clothes?"

I really didn't understand what was he telling me. I think I had him repeat it to me like four more times, I was still half asleep but I also expected him to tell me anything else but that. It took me a long time to process at that moment what he was actually telling me.

I need to make a pause here to explain my shock because my husband until that moment had never been a person overly concerned about his wardrobe or grooming. For me he had always been a man in every sense, he wore jeans, T-shirts, sneakers, baseball caps, he had a beard, etc.

Nothing in his physical appearance or his mannerisms had ever suggested me he wanted to be more feminine or even had a slight interest in femininity. I used to have to practically force him to wear sunscreen because supposedly he hated the feeling of lotion on his skin! How then was I supposed to imagine that he wanted to use creams, makeup or women's clothes?

I couldn't just connect the ideas. What I knew about him and who he was telling me he wanted to be and what he wanted to do, made no sense. It felt like as if he was talking to me about someone else entirely. But what terrified me the most was that as he was telling me everything, he was crying and in all our years together, I couldn't remember ever seeing him cry.

I remember asking him if he wanted to dress like the person we had talked about in the afternoon and wear heels and skirts to work, or if what he was really trying to tell me was that he was gay. 

He immediately replied no. He assured me that he loved me deeply, that he was intensely attracted to me as a woman, and that he had never felt any kind of attraction toward men, but that he liked women's clothes and maybe being able to wear women's underwear. He explained to me that was the reason why he liked to buy me underwear, because he liked to see it and would love to be able to wear it.

Seeing his level of anguish, the truth is that I had spent those few minutes imagining the absolute worst. I thought he was going to tell me he was having an affair, or that the conversation would end with him confessing to me that he was gay which would inevitably affect our marriage. So hearing that this tearful confession was "only" about wanting to wear a little bit of feminine underwear actually made me feel quite relieved.

I held him, reassured him, I gave him a kiss and told him that I loved him, that he didn't have to feel anguished or ashamed and that if he wanted to wear feminine underwear he could do it, I wouldn't feel uncomfortable or upset about that.

Having seemingly "resolved," the issue we went back to sleep. However again, nothing could have prepared me for what came after that night. I am a heavy sleeper, so from what he told me, frankly I could only retain the idea of women's underwear. Little by little I would come to fully realize what he was telling me that night really meant.