CD and Divorce

[Vera Lynn]

As some of you know I am in the beginning stages of what is a VERY nasty divorce. My STBX has already outed me with my children, Employees, Family, Friends, Community, and anyone else who happens with-in her voice

I have a minimum 3 months to go before my divorce is final. I know for a fact she has been compiling information on me and my "Sick, Perverted, Sex addicted obsession with Cross Dressing" She has posted on other forums stats on just how much lingerie ,she thinks I have (Grossley exagerated in some instances) I am tryin to lay low and just not piss her off too much until the deed is done, but I know anything I do between now and then will be put out there to the court and my community for all to see.
On one hand, now that I live alone, I am experiencing new freedoms, Free to dress, and purchase items with no quilt or fear of ridicule. On the other hand I am leary that I am digging myself further, and just giving her more ammo against me.

I guess i should just stop for a few months, but honestly,being able to be who I really am, is really helping me through these very difficult times

[Jasmine Ellis]

Sorry to hear this. But you need to hold your head up high and be the stonger person than she is.

[MelissaAndProudOfIt]

I have heard of cases like this before, you know the one thing that really makes me sick about those who make such comments, nine times outa ten are women who wear male type clothing themselves... and if you don a dress, then it's oh me charley!!!!

Firstly though you should have been honest with her about your crossdressing, this would have given her the opportunity to think if she would have anything against it, this would have saved all this hassle you have now... but alas cannot cry about spilt milk now, I am so sorry it's come to this..

Outside of this if she was actually in love with you as a wife would be, it's hard to think how she could be so cold towards you, when i am feel so sure good cool down over the matter and communication might have brought the matter to a satisfactory conclusion and saved your marriage....

once again so sorry to learn of this...

[Vera Lynn]

I have heard of cases like this before, you know the one thing that really makes me sick about those who make such comments, nine times outa ten are women who wear male type clothing themselves... and if you don a dress, then it's oh me charley!!!!

Firstly though you should have been honest with her about your crossdressing, this would have given her the opportunity to think if she would have anything against it, this would have saved all this hassle you have now... but alas cannot cry about spilt milk now, I am so sorry it's come to this..

Outside of this if she was actually in love with you as a wife would be, it's hard to think how she could be so cold towards you, when i am feel so sure good cool down over the matter and communication might have brought the matter to a satisfactory conclusion and saved your marriage....

once again so sorry to learn of this...

Thanks for you comments

I was honest with her, for 21 years, she never was thrilled about it but was usually supportive, until I became involved with another woman (Friends only until seperated mind you)

As far as being cold to me now, she feels betrayed and rightfully so, so I guess I do have all this coming to me anyway

[Jenny Beth]

Sorry to hear what you are going through. I can't say I know how it feels because my wife has always been supportive but one thing to remember is crossdressing isn't illegal so you shouldn't be ashamed to face those who she has vindictively told. She is obvoiusly trying to destroy you but if you come across as if nothing is out of the ordinary, especially since she was once supportive, then she has no ammunition to hurt you further. Just my 2 cents!

[Daintre]

Hi Vera, you are telling a story I know all to well, when my divorce happened, I was outed by the EX, and went through my own hell. My advice to you is to get the best lawyer you can, it can be unpleasant and your lawyer can represent you in court saving you a lot of embarrassment.

Jenni

[Drucilla]

A good lawyer can get all the proceedings "sealed". Does not prevent those in the room at the time from hearing things but does make it a contempt of court charge if anyone under the sealed hearing discusses or disburses any information covered. Worth a try.

[vbcdgrl]

If I were you, I would "lay low" ,as far as CD activities are concerned ,until the divorce proceedings are complete. No use rubbing salt in the wound.

Vikki

[DonnaT]

I suggest printing off all the posts she's made outing you or what ever she's said. Then give them to your attorney so he/she can decide how to use them against her, like slander, etc. Your attorney may want to get depositions from those she's told as well. If you can show hardship from her outing you, it may bode well for you. Just don't show any embarrasment or indicate you are ashamed to be trans in front of the judge.

Many judges don't even want to hear about the CDing from her or her attorney, since it's not against the law.

[rosiegurl]

you need to remember, despite what the soon to be ex is saying, there really is nothing wrong with been a CD, not legally. YOU never forced it on your kids, she did so any repercusions there fall directly at her feet, legally speaking.

as donna says, I would make copies of everything she has posted online, lists of who she has told etc... you can't stop her telling people, but you can show the judge a pattern of vidictiveness aimed directly at doing as much harm to you personally as possible, and cover your ass as much as possible on everything else, don't give her any more amunition.

the main thing to remember though, been outed as a CD may be embaressing, but it ain't in anyway shape or form illegal

[Kaitlyn Michele]

so far my cd'ing has not come up in my divorce

we'll see...i havent told my lawyer and i dont beleive my wife has told anyone really...

i am aware from reading websites that x-dressing is not relevant to alimony but we have kids and i'm sure it might be considered relevant to that..(sure it might???lol)...

anyway..i feel for you and i can only hope you make it thru still feeling good about yourself..thats the struggle i'm having now and i know its tough

[Jodi]

so far my cd'ing has not come up in my divorce

we'll see...i havent told my lawyer and i dont beleive my wife has told anyone really...

i am aware from reading websites that x-dressing is not relevant to alimony but we have kids and i'm sure it might be considered relevant to that..(sure it might???lol)...

anyway..i feel for you and i can only hope you make it thru still feeling good about yourself..thats the struggle i'm having now and i know its tough

Michele, Having been there and done that, I would tell my lawyer (I did). He thanked me for letting him know. My theory is--no surprises. In my case, it was not a problem. Think--what happens if her lawyer springs it for leverage, and your lawyer is blindsided.

Jodi

[sparks]

Not mush to add the above comments summed up my thoughts. Hopefully everyone ends up OK with your CDing especially the kids. Depending on their age it could be ahrd on them.

[GG Vanya]

I suggest printing off all the posts she's made outing you or what ever she's said. Then give them to your attorney so he/she can decide how to use them against her, like slander, etc. Your attorney may want to get depositions from those she's told as well. If you can show hardship from her outing you, it may bode well for you. Just don't show any embarrasment or indicate you are ashamed to be trans in front of the judge.

Many judges don't even want to hear about the CDing from her or her attorney, since it's not against the law.

Just a reminder that slander (spoken word) or libel (written word) must be false to be a litigious offense. One must be able to *prove* either one false.

This could be one of those proverbial slippery slopes.

I do agree that it's a good idea to print out any inflammatory posts and present them to your defense attorney.

Forewarned is forearmed.

[BeckyCath]

Does everything in this life have to be based on revenge and retribution?

Vera, it's a shame your marriage has broken down, and it's a shame that your ex is lashing out at you, but is she worth stooping to the same level?

Please consider your self respect. Your male colleagues will expect you to take the upper hand and take some long lasting revenge, but ask yourself, is that the honourable thing to do?

I think you've got to see past how your ex feels about your new partner, and how she feels about your transvestism, and look deep into yourself and try to work out the real reason why your marriage failed. I think if you can work that out then you won't end up bitter, twisted and feeling like a victim.

FWIW, i am seperating from my partner purely because i am in transition. Divorce doesn't have to be acrimonious and vicious.

I hope you sort things out to your satisfaction, but remember, vengence isn't necessarily a good thing.

Rebecca

[Debbie GG]

Vera,

Fortunately for me I will never go through exactly what you are experiencing. I am an SO. Having said that, I cannot imagine ever getting to the point that I would do whatever I can to hurt or embarrass Bernice. Most of us have things we would rather not have made very public. Divorce is obviously not pleasant - you are admitting you failed. (Well, at least one of you is giving up. The other may have no choice.) I have seen this kind of thing before where no one brings up cding. The result is always bad.

I have never known a relationship that didn't have good times and bad. Even at the worst time, when it did look to me like going our separate ways might be the best answer, I never considered doing anything designed just to hurt or embarrass Bernice. I would say your wife needs help. There could be a lot of reasons for this behavior. I am new to the forum. Has your wife known about the cding for a while? If not, maybe she's hurt and somewhat in shock still not sure how to deal with this new reality. Certainly what she is doing is not the answer. In any case if you don't let her hateful behavior hurt you, it can't. It is much more likely to hurt her in the long run.

My advice to you is to work on the relationships you can keep - your children, friends, employees, other family. Don't retaliate in kind (you didn't talk about it but don't). Down the road you will be able to look in the mirror without shame about the way you behaved. As for cding, I would say you have to decide what to do. I don't think you need to stop dressing in your own home when you are alone. That seems ridiculous. Since everyone knows, you could look at this as freeing you to do as you please in public. It might be better to lay low with others for now. You are in a better position than anyone else here to judge how your friends, children, etc. would react to seeing you dressed. (You also haven't said how old the children are which could make a difference.)

As others have said, you have done nothing illegal here. I would add you have done nothing immoral - or fattening. (Sorry if the younger members don't understand that reference.) Try not to let this vengeful woman change who you are or how you behave. Hang in there. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers.

Debbie GG

[Melanie R]

Vera Ann, you will survive and prosper. She probably will not. With my first wife she did what your wife is doing with the divorce. This was in 1979 when she and her attorney thought they would take me to the cleaners. Wrong! The divorce was granted but I ended up with full custody of the children. Five years after I married Peggy and two weeks before the first wife's sudden death at age 42, she told me that she had made a horrible mistake and should have remained in the marriage. She was looking for her white in shining armour but realized that she had that knight who just happened to enjoy feminine attire. There is someone out there for you. Watch our story on WE this weekend and see that it can work.

Hugs,

Melanie

[tammie]

Hi All: Listen dear U just hold on, everything will get better, the Rx is tincture of time. I h ave been divorced 2 times, and neither one was over CDing, in fact my 2nd X used to have me in her bras panties makeup and heels. However both were very costful and painful.

Once I had a hispanic girlfriend find myu lingerie and go off on me. She called me names despite that I never once turned her down for sex or didn't satisfy her. Moreover I never cheated on her of gave her any reson to think I was interested in men. Never the less she told everyone who know me I was gay and wore women's clothes. The result was not one person ever asked me to verify any of the acusations. She looked and sounded like a vindictive woman.

The result will be this; U will be happy and anyone who doesn't want to continue a relationship with U will not have been worthy of one. Good Luck and just continue a day at a time and tehna week at a time. U will survive and prosper and be happy. As others have said, its not like U R a rapist or child molester, U just like womens clothes.

[GG Vanya]

Vera Ann, you will survive and prosper. She probably will not. With my first wife she did what your wife is doing with the divorce. This was in 1979 when she and her attorney thought they would take me to the cleaners. Wrong! The divorce was granted but I ended up with full custody of the children. Five years after I married Peggy and two weeks before the first wife's sudden death at age 42, she told me that she had made a horrible mistake and should have remained in the marriage. She was looking for her white in shining armour but realized that she had that knight who just happened to enjoy feminine attire. There is someone out there for you. Watch our story on WE this weekend and see that it can work.

Hugs,

Melanie

She realized too late that shining armour *can* be unisex.

[sandra-leigh]

Just a reminder that slander (spoken word) or libel (written word) must be false to be a litigious offense. One must be able to *prove* either one false.

Sorry, but that's a big misrepresentation of the law in Canada and the UK, and turns out not to be the case in the USA either. Even to the extent that it is correct in the USA, it is noticably misleading.

The person you are replying to might happen to be in the USA, but it is Plus Ungood to make absolute statements about law without at the very least qualifying the statements by the jurisdiction.

The misleading part with respect to the USA is that you said "litigious offense". "offense" in that context refers to violations of specific laws or regulations and to government prosecution of those violations. Traditional state libel law in the USA provides for certain defenses, but those defences, even the strong defences, are not necessarily relevant in cases of civil lawsuits -- which is, if I understand correctly, the way that most libel and slander suits proceed in the USA. Civil suits have a test of "the balance of probabilities", not of "beyond a doubt", so in a US civil suit, depending on the state and court level, it is sometimes enough merely to show that the person who made the statements cannot prove them.

The "turns out not to be the case in the USA" is that there is a relatively new US federal offense of criminal libel, which may be prosecuted by showing that the statements were made with reckless disregard of the truth of the matter. In criminal libel cases in the USA, it is not necessary to prove the truth or falsity of the statements, only that the person making the statements did not take reasonable care to discern the truth. The truth of a statement is not an absolute defence in criminal libel cases in the USA. The criminal offense was created mostly so that people (especially celebs) could sue tabloids for inventing stories about them, without the suers having to specifically disprove each claim. Without the offence, celebs essentially have to shut up and let anyone write anything about them, or else end up establishing the validity of particular claims according to which claims they do not sue about.


Libel and slander, in Canada and UK law, are offenses dealing with damage to reputation, not offenses of fraud (the category that would be used for the gaining of something of value by making false statements.) In Canada federal law, the truth of any particular statement is never an absolute defence. The law in Canada specifically indicates that no matter what is said, that it must not be more than is "reasonable under the circumstances" -- so, for example, if someone didn't hold the door for you, and you took out an ad in the newspaper telling about some of the less enlightened things they've done, then even if they had done everything you had claimed, the publication would not have been proportional to the triggering offence. When it comes to private persons, in Canadian criminal "libelous slander" law, there more or less has to be a reason to damage a person's reputation -- such as, for example, just enough to establish that people should not give serious credence to someone who has said something about you. The relevant law also has an interesting array of "public interest" defences in which the truth of the statement is not a key factor: there are defences of "fair comment" about issues of public interest, and there are defences of comment about matters of public interest when the person making the comment "reasonably" believes the statement to be true (even if it is not.)
UK libel law is a harder for an outsider to understand, and is evolving, but traditionally was based upon the principle that a person's reputation is one of the most important things that they possess, and that therefore one needed to have a very good reason to publically damage that reputation, even if what was said was generally "well known" to be true. As best I've been able to determine, the rule of thumb for many years in the UK was to ask, "Did you need to damage this persons reputation, for substantial common good?" and if the answer was "No" or "No, the damage to others by not speaking up would not present a serious danger to society", then the person whose reputation was damaged would win even if everything said or written had been exactly and provably true.

In Canada and the UK, libel is deemed to occur when the person's reputation is damaged, and the defences have to do with establishing that it was reasonable to have damaged the reputation under the circumstances. This is different than the usual US state-level criminal law understanding that "if the statement was true then no libel occured".

These differences in libel laws can be important even to US citizens: there have been some cases where parties have successfully sued for libel in the UK with respect to remarks made electronically by people who were in the USA: if the remarks made electronically become available in the UK, then UK law deems them to have been "published" in the UK.

As for libel laws in some of the other places that this forum reaches... legal codes in some places are not what most of us would tend to think of as "fair".


Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer; I have not studied law, and a lot of this field gets into "case law". I have, though, paid particular attention to laws relevant to rights and communications.

[stacey4fun]

that happened to me but we were just about married (2mths before the wedding). she could not be my lover anymore but she is still a great friend , she even gave me some of her old cloths and helped me with makeup and that style of stuff . I hope you can get over this .
best of luck
Stacey

[mysteryhorn57]

I am about to consider divorce myself. CD is only the tip of the iceberg...I am no longer attracted to her, and have an overwhelming desire to be by mself and greatly simplify my life. Maybe even get a job on the other side of the country.

Good luck.

[Shiny]

That's just about number one on the hit parade as to why I remained single! I feel sorry for your predicament but unfortunately the "CD" bit is the first thing a wannabe ex-wife will go for in a divorce. Whether or not the clinical book, the DSM IV still regards cross dressing as a paraphelia or an OCD anymore makes no difference in most jurisdictions.

If a man can't perform sexually, for instance, and didn't tell his wife about the problem until after the marriage that is grounds for divorce because of the integeral nature of the problem. CDing today is mostly passed off as an unusual or "quirky" trait but in court a wife's lawyer won't hesitate to bring out all the sickening or embarrassing traits associated with cross dressing whether cliche, fact or urban legend. Anyway, in most courts being a "CD" is still enough of an oddity to get a divorce settlement and something like this cannot, cannot be striken from the record or sealed if it is the basis for the divorce. This is a tragedy and I feel sorry for you.

I would recommend as others have said "downplaying" this curious "hobby" you have and laughing it off if it hasn't caused problems with your job or your children or your ability to provide for your family. They'll look at your job performance and your standing in your cummunity as well.

The divorce will probably go through. And after such a trial you might not ever want to be around your former SO ever again. I would suggest moving more than a couple states away and after laying low, starting over after a time. Best of luck!

[Tiana]

so i assume your ex has never worn anything masculine in her life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, hope everything works out i feel sure in a year or two you will be able to look back on this time as being worth it x

[Sky]

I know for a fact she has been compiling information on me and my "Sick, Perverted, Sex addicted obsession with Cross Dressing"
...
I guess i should just stop for a few months...

Then stop.

Yes, you have all the right to wear what you want. But you know not all people think the same way. Get a good lawyer, dress in navy blue suits, fight till the end and after you got the best settlement possible, then knock her door in a glittery pink tutu and golden wig. But for now just wait. It's called "delayed satisfaction".