In the Shadows of Lotte:A Journey Through Shame and Self-Discovery(Part One)

This story will be shared in several parts, and what you read below is part one. Thinking and writing about this is still incredibly painful for me, but I feel it’s time to open up and share it here on my blog. 

PART ONE 

The story starts back when my youngest daughter was still a baby. At that time, my wife didn’t know about my crossdressing, and I was edging closer to a complete breakdown. I was consumed by confusion, overwhelmed by shame, and exhausted from carrying a secret that felt too heavy to bear any longer.

Behind my wife’s back, I had been building up a secret world for Lotte, my other self. I spent money recklessly, hiding my purchases in the attic: cardigans, dresses, leggings, heels, boots, a growing collection of things that represented who I was but couldn’t be. The attic became a museum of my hidden identity. Each new item brought a moment of relief followed by a flood of guilt, not just because of the secrecy, but because each piece of clothing reminded me of what I truly was, a crossdresser, and how deeply I despised myself for it.

It was a vicious circle I couldn’t escape. When I felt low, I’d drown myself in the pink fog, that intoxicating haze where fantasy takes over. I’d browse women’s clothing sites, ASOS, New Look, Peacocks, and lose myself in the idea of being the woman in the photo wearing those clothes. For a few minutes, I felt whole. Before I knew it, I’d clicked add to basket again, convincing myself that the next outfit would somehow make everything feel right.

But the relief never lasted. When the clothes arrived, so did the self-hatred. It wasn’t just guilt over the lies or the money, it went deeper than that. I hated myself for being this way, for wanting what I wanted. I’d hold the clothes and feel torn apart, one part of me quietly thrilled by them, another part disgusted that they meant so much. I couldn’t understand why something so simple, so harmless, could make me feel so wrong. I’d stare at what I’d bought and feel the weight of shame settle back over me, whispering that I wasn’t supposed to be like this.

And yet, when I finally had the chance to dress, when I slipped into the clothes, felt the fabric against my skin, saw my reflection soften, something inside me settled. For those moments, I wasn’t pretending. The noise in my head quieted, and I could breathe. It felt like the inner me, the one I’d spent so long hiding, finally had a voice. I felt complete, as though, for the first time, the inside and the outside of me matched. That fleeting peace was everything, and I clung to it, even though I knew it couldn’t last.

I thought love, marriage, and fatherhood would cure me of it, that becoming a husband and a father would make that part of me vanish. But it didn’t. If anything, the need grew stronger. I’d walk through the women’s aisles in Tesco or Asda, looking at clothes I really liked and imagining how I’d look and feel wearing them myself. The thought alone would send a rush through me, that familiar pull I could never quite silence. I’d tell myself no, not this time, that I didn’t need it, that I’d stop. But before long, I’d find myself at the checkout, another dress, another cardigan, another secret to hide. Each time, I promised it would be the last. Each time, it wasn’t.

Eventually, the shame became unbearable. I’d cry the entire drive home from work, feeling trapped inside a body and a life that didn’t match what was inside me. Work distracted me during the day, but the moment I got into the car, the mask would fall away and the storm would begin again. I hated myself for lying, yes, but deeper than that, I hated myself for being me.

And then came the thoughts, dark, quiet, relentless. I’d imagine driving up to the Lake District, that wild, beautiful place filled with lonely peaks. I’d picture myself parking the car at dusk and walking up one of the mountains as the light faded. I’d reach the summit and sit there, watching the last orange glow sink behind the ridges, the world falling into shadow. I’d imagine staying there as the temperature dropped, letting the cold wind bite at my skin, the numbness spreading slowly, mercifully.

It wasn’t about drama. It wasn’t even about escape. It was about silence. The thought of surrendering to the cold, of letting hypothermia take me gently, felt like a kind of peace, a way to fade without violence, without noise. A way to stop being what I was.

But then, as that image played again and again in my mind, I’d see my wife’s face. My children’s faces. I’d think about the hole I’d leave behind, how my absence would destroy them. That thought pulled me back, over and over again, from the edge.

There was one night when I came close, far too close, but something inside me, some tiny flicker of instinct, made me turn the car around. I went home. And that night, I made the hardest decision of my life: to tell my wife the truth.

Telling my wife about my “dirty secret” wasn’t difficult in the end. By that point, I think my body had already said it all, the tears, the shaking, the look of absolute despair. She could see I was breaking.

She listened quietly as I told her everything, the spending, the guilt, the shame, the obsession, the wigs and makeup, the constant urge to rid myself of body hair, the relentless need to look and feel as feminine as possible. Every word felt like peeling away a layer of armour I’d worn for years.

She was hurt, of course, especially about the secrecy and the money,  but when I finally stopped speaking, she just looked at me, took a breath, and said she was relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t sitting there to tell her I was leaving her for another woman. That caught me completely off guard.

Then came the questions, the ones I knew would come. “Are you gay?” and “Do you want to be a woman?”

I understood why she asked. How could she not? To her, it probably seemed like I was chasing something that didn’t fit the man she thought she knew. I told her no, I wasn’t gay. And as for wanting to be a woman, that was harder to answer. I didn’t want to replace myself; I just wanted the freedom to be all of myself.

She was under the impression that it was all about the clothes, the textures, the fabrics, the way they felt against my skin. And while I couldn’t deny that those things mattered, it was more than that. Much more.

When I dressed, something inside me aligned. The noise in my head softened. It wasn’t just about looking feminine, it was about being at peace. It was as if the part of me I’d been hiding, suffocating, finally had room to breathe. For so long, Lotte had existed only in secret, in the shadows of the attic, in my imagination, in guilt. But when I dressed, she wasn’t imaginary any more. She was real. I was real.

That night, sitting across from my wife, I felt lighter and heavier all at once. Lighter because the truth was finally out there; heavier because I didn’t know what would happen next. I’d handed her my deepest vulnerability and could only hope she’d see that underneath it all, I was still the same person, the same husband, the same father, just someone who had been silently fighting to exist.

Seeing me the way I was, her first thoughts were that I needed counselling. She believed I needed professional help, someone who could guide me through the thoughts and feelings that felt like they were eating me alive, and help me control my compulsion to buy women’s clothes. At the time, I agreed. I did need help. I wasn’t sure where to turn, but I knew that if I didn’t do something, I’d drown in this.

I made an appointment with my GP, and sitting in that sterile office, trying to explain what was happening inside me, was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life. I felt raw and exposed, like my soul had been laid out on the table for scrutiny. It was hard to put the words together, to explain this part of myself that felt both alien and so deeply me. But in the end, I did it. I pushed through the embarrassment, because it was the only way forward.

While I waited for the formal counselling sessions to start, I sought help through my workplace’s occupational health scheme. I was assigned to a lovely old lady who I could tell genuinely cared. We spoke about my spending, the compulsive need to shop, the shame that followed, and the overwhelming pull to dress. It all boiled down to one central question: Want or need? Could I separate the two? Was it a desire that I could simply control, or was it something deeper, something more permanent?

I went through Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), and at first, I thought maybe it would help. But it didn’t. The female part of me, the part I had hidden for so long, was too determined. When she wanted something, when she needed to express herself, nothing could stop her. CBT felt like trying to tame a storm with a whisper. My therapist was kind, but the truth was clear: this wasn’t a compulsion I could simply reframe or reason away. It was a part of who I was, and no amount of thinking through it or reshaping my beliefs could change that.

It was the same when I finally started counselling through the referral at the GP. Same old CBT, same tired framework of “want or need.” I’d sit there, trying to explain that I never needed what I bought for my alter ego, but my alter ego always wanted them. That wasn’t something I could fix with logic or reprogramming my thoughts. It wasn’t a habit I could break by simply rewriting my beliefs. My alter ego wasn’t something I could erase or control, no matter how much I tried to frame it as a “want” I could simply resist. She was part of me, and nothing about this was ever that simple.

In the end, those sessions felt like a waste of time. I found myself trapped in a cycle of surface-level talk, the same questions, the same conclusions, over and over again. I never really got to talk about the real issue: my gender questioning, the turmoil I felt in my own skin, the crushing weight of shame, guilt, and self-hatred that constantly hovered over me. No matter how much I tried to explain, those deeper feelings never seemed to be the focus. It was as if no one really understood that the problem wasn’t just a compulsion. It was my identity, a part of me I couldn’t deny, but that society, and even I, couldn’t accept. 

In the end, what stopped the compulsive purchasing wasn’t therapy or any breakthrough, it was the simple fact that there was no more room. The house was full, and my secret life had nowhere else to go. I had no choice but to pause. The cycle had hit its natural limit. For a brief moment, there was a lull, a temporary break in the storm of urges I couldn’t control. 

This chapter closes here, but watch out for part two coming soon.

Thanks for reading,

 Lotte x