My ex-husband was so secretive that I don’t know much about his sexual preferences. Actually his interest in sex seemed to be weak at best and declined after the birth of our daughter. He didn’t cross-dress. Five years before he left he had a face-lift without warning or explanation. That was the beginning of “la Terreur”. He waited until the year of his departure to leave a dress from Dorothy Perkins, a pair of women’s shoes in a size 9 and a credit card in a female version of his name in a cupboard where I was sure to find them. And when I challenged him about these items he said simply: “It’s true. I’m a transsexual”. Nothing more. He walked out on us 4 months later
I have been exposed for many years to gas-lighting as he picked fights with me about anything and everything and then said triumphantly: “You need an anger management course”. He created so much tension you could cut it with a knife. He was trying to make me hit him, but I never did. This, I now know, is narcissistic abuse. But I was not exposed to cross-dressing or cross-sexual practices. Yet later in an e-mail exchange he wrote two sentences by way of explanation: (1) he had been abused by a headmaster at one of his schools and (2) his aunt encouraged him to cross-dress. His secrecy and his dishonesty are the overriding characteristics. I say “autogynaephile” because he was charming and very attractive to women, but he went about systematically destroying three marriages. He played on his charm to lure victims. He also defrauded the DWP of £15K. So many of the comments on Mumsnet describe manipulation and control: my ex-husband certainly used people until he had extracted what he wanted out of them. This is maybe not the sexually obsessed AGP, but it is the calculating AGP.
