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First please may I add my voice of sadness to those of many others, and extend my sincere condolences to Susan's family and friends. As a longstanding reader please accept this detailed account of our marriage as our tribute to Susan's passion and promotion of Petticoat Discipline. Both Edward and I grew up in fairly old-fashioned families where good manners and conservative values were important, sometimes enforced by traditional methods of correction. We have now been married for four years, of which the past two have been blissfully happy as we developed our own version of domestic petticoated discipline. Not only did we not live together before getting married but we were also both virgins on our wedding night. After our first year together, although he protested his love and commitment, I began to notice how Edward was gradually losing interest in me. I also noticed that items of my lingerie were sometimes not in the neat state that I had left them. My suspicions were confirmed after I rifled through Edward's wardrobe and drawers where I found rather garish female underwear hidden right at the back. I had heard of men who were transvestite and I had read newspaper stories of wives who were apparently happy for their husbands to cross-dress. However I felt betrayed and trapped by what I considered his sick behaviour, having vowed in church to remain with Edward in sickness and in health. There was no particular urgency, and I chose my moment to confront him. Meanwhile I confided in my best friend, a widow some ten years my senior, who had been my supervisor in a previous job. According to Diana, many men have secret tastes of this kind which she herself considers perfectly harmless. As she went on to describe such tendencies as fetishes, I realised that Edward's neglecting me was almost certainly connected with gratifying himself. So I began to feel angry, not only about his self-abuse, but also that he seemed content to practise such deceit, which I felt was as bad or worse than if he had been conducting a clandestine extramarital affair. I felt guilty at my thoughts of leaving or divorcing him, and it was Diana who dissuaded me from such ideas, offering instead to help if she could to keep us together. So it was, after I had confronted Edward and after I had threatened to leave him, that he begged me to stay and help him overcome his fetishistic interest in female underwear, which I found so repellent. Over the evenings that followed, Edward and I were often in tears, and we both knew that neither of us wished to separate. I wanted him to see our doctor or a psychiatrist, but he refused outright which, in hindsight, was probably the correct decision. Then, when I told him that I had confided in Diana, he was horrified at first but then agreed with me to invite her to help us through this crisis. Having done some reading in the interim and having discussed the situation as I saw it with Diana at some length, I knew that we would need to find some acceptable compromise because Edward's predilections would not evaporate as if by magic. In exchange for my withdrawing all threats to separate or divorce, I insisted in advance on Edward's total honesty and complete disclosure of his shameful behaviour and his covert fantasy life. Before sitting down as a threesome to begin negotiations, I discussed with Diana what I could and could not foresee myself acceding to. I did propose to Edward that he could invite a male friend of his choosing to these discussions, a suggestion which I knew he would decline. Although he must have felt outnumbered two to one by Diana and myself, he clearly was the guilty party. Looking back on those meetings both he and I recall her determination to be scrupulously fair, and how pleased we both were not to have involved any professionals or other outsiders. Edward admitted his lifelong fascination with feminine attire, not just underwear but also the more theatrical or fantasy kinds of female clothes made of materials such as satin and taffeta. Without dwelling on the finer detail, he also admitted that he secretly interfered with himself instead of paying me the attention that a wife rightly expects of her husband. Although I was far from convinced, Edward was supported by Diana in asserting that his wearing female clothes was harmless in itself. By contrast I was impressed and greatly reassured by his obviously genuine expressions of shame and remorse for having secretly gratified himself. Over a series of weekly meetings Edward and I agreed that this practice was the most serious betrayal of his marital vows. Indeed it was not long before he was actually asking me to help him abstain if at all possible. Diana and I would discuss progress between meetings and, with her encouragement, I could feel myself taking charge little by little of the marital relationship. By the time of the fourth meeting Edward had been sleeping in the spare bedroom for four weeks, and I was surprised how confident I was feeling, yet how little I was missing his presence in our bed. I was pleased to notice that Edward was responding to my more assertive tone by helping with the household chores without having to be asked or badgered, and that there were promising signs of his becoming more attentive towards me in general. At this stage I must give him full credit for speaking frankly about his arousal problem when cross-dressed. I know that he had to overcome intense feelings of shame and embarrassment to talk about his attempts to resist self-abuse and how this struggle always eventually ended in a loathsome loss of self-control. I do love Edward despite his less attractive shortcomings, and I wanted us to reach a compromise which could make him happy without having to betray my own principles. Having carefully considered his wish or compulsive need to cross-dress around the house, I agreed on the strict condition that he would cease interfering with himself and that I would assist him in every practical way possible. In his view the way to break the link between cross dressing and self-abuse was for him to wear female clothes but without any opportunity for overstimulation. So it come about, after he had donned satin panties and nightdress, that I began tying him hand and foot to the corners of the spare bed so that he spent each night face-up and loosely spreadeagled. During the process of fastening him down, I was quite amused but Edward was very embarrassed by his obvious arousal. When I reported this to Diana at our next meeting, Edward was absolutely mortified and agreed without hesitation to her suggestion that he should add a pantie girdle under his nightdress. Sensing a strengthening of my position over him, I told Edward that we could shop together for his new girdle. On the following day, which was Saturday, I manoeuvred him into Marks & Spencer's lingerie section, picked out a firm longleg pantie girdle in what I reckoned was his size and instructed him to pay for it at the nearest till. As he queued, I looked around at the racks of corselettes and realised that he would need one of these if he was to stand any chance whatever of looking less ridiculous in female apparel. So, on his return from the till, I took Edward, now blushing uncontrollably, on a more detailed tour of the foundation garments on display. To recount every detail of what happened subsequently would make this narrative even longer than it is already but, suffice it to say, from that evening onwards Edward has never spent a single night without wearing a pantie girdle under a pantie corselette. Soon after this I bought two high necked long-sleeved floor-length Victorian-style heavy cotton night dresses for him and me to wear as a condition of his return to the marital bed. At our next formal threesome meeting, which took place just before Edward's birthday, Diana surprised him (and surprised me) with her gift of a Victorian maid's outfit. Apart from the white cap and white lacy apron bought to match, she had made the dress herself totally out of heavy black satin, floor length with a high neck and long sleeves, fully lined with two layers of taffeta. On the accompanying card Diana had written: "So that Edwina can properly appreciate her new position in the home and so that Edwina can guarantee to provide her mistress with complete satisfaction". This also marked the beginning of the end of our formal meetings. Soon Edward (I still cannot call him Edwina although Diana does so whenever possible) was taking on more domestic chores under my instruction, and soon I enjoyed imposing penalties on my new domestic servant for any work that was unsatisfactory or slipshod. His regular tasks involve cleaning the bathroom and kitchen including keeping the oven clean, running a regular washing machine and hanging up the clothes and bed linen. Since I have taught him to iron, Edward has taken over all ironing, a task which I used to hate. In exchange for all this hard work, I allow him to dress in one of his several maid outfits, all of them floorlength and some moderately impractical. To prevent accidents caused by excessive arousal, I have modified his foundation wear. After he showers on returning from his office job, Edward has to step into satin panties (stains would alert me to any unauthorised emissions) followed by a heavily boned, high waisted, longleg pantie girdle which fastens at the side with a zip over hooks and eyes. Then comes a pair of ordinary tights followed by a pantie corselette. All these are now of the zip-fronted variety which not also gives him a better figure but also allows me to attach a short strap which runs from the zip pull, around the back of his neck and forwards again to a padlock on the closed zip. Lower down I have added D-rings to either side of the crotch opening, and these are also linked with a padlock. Once locked above and below, Edward cannot escape from his controlling foundation garments, and he has to call on me for toilet release purposes all evening and each morning. I have never carried out my threat to despatch him to the office locked into his corselette but, at his own suggestion, I have fitted Edward with a chastity device which he has to wear ten hours each day, five days a week, to guarantee to me that all misbehaviour is prevented outside the home. We see this as a temporary measure because of plans to launch our own home-based small business in the near future which, if successful, will allow Edward to give up his office work and commute. His current schedule at work is followed by a considerable burden of domestic chores each evening which ensures that he is really tired by bedtime. This reassures me that he has little or no energy to misbehave in any way. We share our double bed once more, but cuddling and innocent sleep are all that happens. Edward used to complain about his fate, but I dealt with this by applying a gag, a penalty made even more effective by popping a piece of soap into his mouth before tying the gag and then tying his hands behind him. Of course Edward is strictly forbidden from touching himself ever again. Accidents are rare but uncompromisingly punished. For lesser infractions he receives the wooden hairbrush which I can now apply to varying degrees of severity. Because I like to make the penalty fit the crime, I deal with major transgressions by having him wear the chastity device overnight. This really interferes with his ability to sleep and, as I am not prepared to have him complain or otherwise disturb me, this punishment means that he spends the whole night tied across the bed in the spare bedroom. Because such sleep as he does achieve is often broken by the discomfort of his organ's expansion being limited by the device, I impose this form of correction only at weekends. Over time my love for Edward has grown in a direction that I would never have expected. I have come to enjoy controlling him, and he knows that I discipline him out of love and concern so that he can now enjoy life at home in feminine attire without any guilt or shame. Although I have lost all appetite for conventional intimacy, he still needs the carefully rationed personal attention which I regard as my wifely duty. Edward's early hopes that his excitement might gradually decline as he became accustomed to regular cross-dressing have not been realised. From what I can observe, he continues to experience considerable arousal and therefore great longterm frustration which, I am pleased to report, reinforces his submissive tendencies. I alone determine the nature and frequency of his sexual relief, which is usually monthly, having read that most males need their plumbing flushed through at monthly intervals, and also because it amuses me to have his cycle coincide with mine. Yours sincerely Nicola Thank you for your letter Nicola. By using his fascination with feminine attire, you have certainly turned it to your advantage. Ladies, I suggest you try this with your husbands, brothers and sons if they show an inclination in this direction. Auntie Helga |