After 16 years of marriage, my husband decided to tell me he wanted to cross dress. He was in groups on the internet that encouraged it and joined a local group where fellow cross dressers met and went on outings together. He began harassing me to help him buy the shoes, clothes and lingerie he needed to fulfill this desire. I couldn’t do it. I stayed for a year - we went through counseling and it wasn’t going to change. He would stop for a while then always start up again. I finally left when he started pressuring me to let him dress up around the house while I was there.
We still haven’t divorced but I’ve been living on my own for the last 8 years.
How does one address a situation like this with the church? There are no pat answers for every situation.
I’ve been pondering what the Church should do when a spouse goes off the rails. Should a priest take him or her aside and remind them of what they signed up for when they married? I’m inclined to think they should, but I’m not sure how many would do it.
I also think maybe we need to support each others’ marriages better. Shouldn’t your husbands’ father, brothers, friends, cajole/persuade/shame him into dropping this selfish whim that has harmed a Sacramental marriage? Is our community too reticent to talk with each other about embarrassing matters, or are we supposed to stay out of it while people we love are being hurt?
Of course, you’re still fully in communion with the Church, as you have not divorced and have kept that door open, if only a sliver, for the chance that your husband will someday wise up, like Hosea’s wife. I guess you must find it easy to empathize with Jesus in the Agony in the Garden, where the people he loved left him standing there alone.
God bless you. I do wish there was a pat answer, but sometimes there is not. There is only healing, in God’s time.