A Petticoated Husband, Or...? By Princess Pervette
Dear Susan,
I first became acquainted with my husband Gene when he and his mother moved into our school district. We were both freshmen in high school, and I met him in our English class. He was a quiet, rather gentle boy, a welcome contrast to the rude hobbledehoys who were most of my male classmates, and I found him attractive even before I had actually gotten to know him.
One day, when I had been out sick and I needed to find out what our reading assignment was, I went over to Gene's house to ask him. When I rang the bell, the door was opened by his mother. In the background I saw a rather pretty, subdued looking girl. When I explained what I wanted, she smiled pleasantly and invited me in. She said that while I knew Gene at school, I had something new to learn about him now. She motioned to the girl, who came forward and said, "I'm Jean." (I'm spelling it that way, because that's how his mother spelled it and how I've come to think of him.)
Well, as you can imagine, I was shocked. But fascinated, and not put off by his appearance. His mother explained to me about the practice of petticoating boys to keep them docile. Gene had been a holy terror until she decided to try petticoating him about three years ago. "It was a terrible tussle the first time," she said, "but a neighbor woman and I were able to overpower him. He's been a perfect angel ever since." She then got out an album of photographs, all of Gene, or Jean, taken over the years since he had been petticoated. She told me that I must not say anything about Gene's other life in school.
Jean sat quietly through all of this. I couldn't tell whether he was embarrassed or not, but I thought he must be. Did he really want a classmate--and a girl, at that--to see him in dresses?
No, he didn't, he told me the next day. He stopped by my house on the way to school, and we walked to school together. He was upset, not surprisingly, and repeated his mother's insistence not to say anything in school. I felt sorry for him, and promised I wouldn't.
Well, Susan, I'm going to have to cut this short or I'll go on forever. Jean and I became friends, walked to school every day, and dated when his mother decided we were old enough. Gene wore boy clothes in school all the time and Jean wore dresses at home all the time. I felt equally comfortable with him in both modes. We went to college together; I majored in English and he majored in computer science.
One evening shortly after we graduated, his mother drew me aside. She started talking about petticoating, and about what a lovely child it had made Gene, and about wives who petticoated their husbands. Suddenly it dawned on me: she was proposing to me! She wanted me to marry Gene, but she had taken the matter out of his hands and was proposing to me on his behalf! Her plan was to pass Jean on to me, or rather, to pass control of Jean over to me.
Susan, I must admit I liked the idea. I told her I would have to think about it, but that was just a matter of form: I wanted Jean, and I wanted him in dresses, the way I had always known him.
Then, on the honeymoon, Jean told me something that rocked me on my heels. He liked being petticoated! "It seemed the most awful thing that ever happened to me, at first," he told me our first night together. "Then I discovered how nice dresses felt. I discovered how the air felt circulating around my legs under my skirt. I discovered...oh, so many things, and I loved them all."
He said that every day, no matter how trying school had been, he was at peace again when he got home and changed clothes.
"But if Mommy learned that I liked dressing like a girl, she would stop making me do it. And she might think of something worse to do to me that I wouldn't like at all. So I pretended to hate it. I whined and moped around, and as time went on, I pretended to be reconciled to it.
"Stacey, I've been living a lie for eleven years. But I'm not going to lie to you. I love you and I won't have our marriage start out with a lie."
Susan, what am I to do? I realize now that Jean's mother was training me, over all those years, in a more subtle and indirect way than she had trained Jean. She had trained me to want a petticoated husband and to like keeping a man in line by keeping him in dresses. And now this. I'm at a complete loss, and I can't go to my mother-in-law for help, because we agreed that she must not be told. What should I do?
Stacey in California
Stacey, I've never heard of a deception practised on this scale. A boy who loves being petticoated and pretends to hate it in order to continue to be petticoated! Nevertheless, you can count yourself lucky to have such a sweet and subservient husband, already trained for you by his mother. And notice especially that while he was willing to deceive his mother, he wasn't willing to deceive you. I think this is a very good sign. So the first thing you must do is simply count your blessings.
As for what else to do, clearly you want to continue to enjoy the attentions of a properly trained and sissified husband. The question is, how much further do you want to take him? Two alternatives suggest themselves right off. First, you can make her your sissy servant, doing your housework for you while you relax. (Did she do housework for her mother? You never told us.) Second, you can require her to dress like a girl twenty- four hours a day, not just at home. I think she should do this. It doesn't matter whether she can pass, not in California. You said her degree is in computer science; from what I've heard about computer companies out there she should have no problem finding a place where she can work en femme. I've been told that there are programmers and designers at Adobe who come to work wearing womens' clothes. If Jean can find work in a company like that, he need never dress as a man again.
The only problem I see is that, now that you know she enjoys dressing like a girl, you have no hold over her in case she gets obstreperous. In that case, maybe a little work with a strap-on, or the attentions of one or more husky male friends, should bring her into line. One of the women I've corresponded with sends her husband out on the streets to turn tricks when he misbehaves. That may be a stronger measure than you care to take. If all else fails, I suppose you could force her to dress as a man, but that, in my view, is a counsel of despair.
Susan
Princess Pervette March, 2001