Featured Image Credit: SWNS
Topics: Life, Real Life, Sex and Relationships
Ali Condon
Linda Bailey and her husband-to-be Phil Walsh have shared that when they go on nights out together, they're regularly mistaken for two women because of Phil's cross-dressing.
The couple first met back in December 2021 over TikTok, where Phil, 37, had been showing off his cross-dressing persona and caught Linda's attention, and less than a year later they were engaged.
Linda, 43, and Phil do their hair and makeup together, and often get approached by guys who mistake them for two women when they go out together.
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Linda, who works in clinical diagnostics, said that she had only ever known Phil as someone who cross-dresses, after coming across his alter-ego on TikTok.
"People can assume he is homosexual or trans because he likes to cross-dress," she said.
"He gets asked out a lot by men because he looks amazing as a woman. We’ve had men come up to us to sit with us as they think we’re both women. He’s better at doing make-up than me too."
Explaining his interest in feminine dress, Phil, a field technician, said: "For the last 10 years I would come home from work and put a skirt on. I've always found feminine clothes more comfortable.
"I joined TikTok about a year a go and decided to go for a make-over and had a wig put on and my make-up done.
"It was amazing and a massive weight off my shoulders."
Phil loves Linda because he 'never had to hide who [he] was', since she 'liked both sides of [him] from the beginning'.
Looking back on how they first met, Linda recalled: "I saw his social media account which was under his former cross-dressing personality name.
"I also have a background of elaborate dressing and used to be a cyber goth so I’d wear six-inch platforms and corsets.
"We started chatting privately and realised it was more than a friendship."
The couple ended up going on their first date in March of this year and, as Linda puts it, 'it was a whirlwind from there.'
In June 2022, Phil asked Linda to marry him and the pair officially moved in together in October.
'We walked past a jewellers and Phil just asked me which ring I’d choose and then asked me to marry him,” Linda reminisced. "It was very sweet."
Now, the couple have a shared TikTok page where they post sweet videos of them getting dressed up together.
Phil admitted that there was a while where he couldn't work out where he fitted in, but now a 'whole new world has been opened up'.
"When I'm dressed up I feel happy and I've realised it's part of me and just something I do.
"I want others to know they are not alone and to just be themselves."