To be annoyed my DH had a naked private dance

[maybunny]

OK my DH wasnt naked, but the stripper in the stripclub in Los Angeles was :-(
He went to LA on business (PR - so mostly socialising rather than what I consider 'work'!) last month, and he has only just told me that a colleague paid for him to have a private dance after they all went to a strip club. I was most annoyed because he had kept it a secret from me for a few weeks, and that he had put 'saving dace' in front of colleagues before my feelings.
He said he thought I would be a bit annoyed about it which was why he hadnt told me about it at the time (esp as I was having huge sleep problems with DD - ie surviving on 2 hours a night!)
I am so upset about this and apart from apologising (which he has done now he knows how I feel) I dont know wht he can do to make me feel better. I am realy struggling to forgive him.
:-(

i have been to a lap dancing club much to my disgust, young and stupid thinking i was being open minded

it was horrible and i will never find it ok for a man to think it is ok to pay a women for her time to satisfy his needs, even if there is no touching going on its beign able to buy a woman that is wrong on so many levels

and really how some the wankers i used to work with talked about these women was horrendous, snail trails, how they smelt it was just vile

Sadly, the fact some men that think it is ok to pay a woman to provide sexual services tends to point to them having that mindset, FS

objectification is really just the thin end of the wedge, IMO....it gets a whole lot worse than that in some circles

diotima

Because my workplace is not one entirely based on sexual titillation\contact offered for cash, Dh randomly deciding that I can't teach people that he has never met on the basis that it places our relationship at an elevated risk of a breech of trust isn't really comparable.

BUT

If in the hypothetical my husband had noted my attraction before I had taken control of the situation off my own bat I'd hope he would have made his displeasure very well known. Pretty sure he would have.

I expect us to have each others backs if alarm bells are going off given that neither of us is perfect or infallible and sometimes a variety of desires and motivations can cloud a person's willingness and ability to look at a situation honestly.

I expect us to feel ready, willing and able to have an honest shouting match discussion that left neither in the dark about how one partner's behavior was making the other one feel.

I don't think it is juvenile to listen to your partner's views regarding a specific context, or being willing to take a partner's feelings\instincts\concerns\hurt into account.

I think it is an adult act to actively hear your spouse (of the non controlling variety) and place their desire for you to abstain from a certain situation above your own fizzing excitement at being in the situation, where their objections are reasonable.

It it also adult to be honest with yourself about their POV coming from a reasonable place rather than trying to re-frame it so it casts them in a negative light, cos you really want to find a good excuse to ignore them.

I would have been hugely disappointed in myself and had my self image utterly rocked to its core had I been unwilling to comprehend and base my subsequent actions on his (hypothetical) perfectly reasonable unhappiness about my pursuing the opportunity to bask in male attention for the sake of an ego boost, regardless of the risk to all three of us should a spark have set off a fucking great fire that burned our family down.

Funny how decent men seemingly have no will of their own and have to be told by controlling wives how to behave. Men infantalising other men is very odd.
I've never forbidden my DH to do anything, he's an adult and as such is perfectly capable of knowing what is and isn't acceptable behaviour within our relationship.

He doesn't need me to tell him how unacceptable lap dancing clubs are, he made that decision all by himself the first time he refused to entertain clients in one, it was probably 10 years ago and we had never even had a conversation about them as they weren't on our radar.

As for lap dancing being less of a threat to a relationship than having female friends / colleagues, at least my husband is a man who values and respects women enough to have real friendships with them - not liking that your husband has female work friends or talks to women on facebook is real insecurity imho . Some men are able to have relationships with women without sticking their dicks into them.

Malificence - I don't think a lot of people are saying their husband need to be told how to behave. But we are all guilty of following social cues, and are more likely to do something if "everyone else is."

Re: facebook messaging, female friends, etc. - I don't think it's possible to say one type of behaviour is ok and another isn't. It depends on the person and their inclinations. Some men cultivate female friends solely to exercise their sexual prowess while others are more purely mates. I don't think you can say what should work for anyone else.

I have never banned my H from doing anything either

he is his own man, makes his own decisions and has free will. He knows how I feel about certain things, as do I

if one of those decisions were to fall outside of what I find acceptable in a life partner and father of my children, then I would reconsider whether I wanted to stay in that situation, using my own free will

I would expect the same scenario the other way round

I was enjoying this thread and then it went all weird. God, people over-complicate issues.

no, maurice it's quite simple

some people's dealbreakers are different to others

I guess you would hate to be married to me, and vice versa

< shrug >

Thanks for the summary FarSide.
read fastweb's last post, it gave me brain-ache lol

it's what it boils down to in the end, maurice (for me, anyway)

larrygrylls

I do take issue, though, when you try to advise others to live the same way and judge by your own lights

Could you highlight as quotes what judgment and advice I have posted that you are taking issue with please.

If it was the advice and judgment that people should just learn to relax properly so their husbands could peer at stranger's vaginas in peace, and women that have an issue with their partners being customers of the sex trade are controlling etc. etc. ....that wasn't me.

fastweb Thank you for your detailed response. Your posts are very interesting.

It seems clear that the way you and your DH manage your relationship works well. I think the greatest part of that is a commitment (conscious or otherwise) to certain principles. The tricky and interesting part is preserving and applying them in practice and that has to take into account the kind of people you each are - your personalities, values, histories, sensitivities, etc., and that's a learning process. It's a double learning process because you're learning about yourself at the same time that you're learning about your partner.

That is difficult and should be impossible, but it's not.

I think the principles that make it possible are respect and honesty. So long as you never lose sight of those principles, the style and manner in which you conduct your relationship is detail. Each side become trustworthy by ensuring that their behaviour is guided by these principles.

I think most of the problems in relationships are caused by the fact that people do not value honesty highly enough, and are not very respectful of each other. It's probably also true (as in the case of TFSOF and Maurice) that some people are so incompatible that the practical part would be impossibly difficult .

It seems clear that the way you and your DH manage your relationship works well

You give us too much credit by calling it management. Not least cos I am prone to misunderstanding Italian when in a temper and going off on one, only grinding to a halt when I have run out of steam some three days later. By which time DH has added a whole new list of grievances to the original one that I thought I heard, but he didn't actually say.

But I think because of a lack of mutual respect and honesty having been modeled for us as children, we have been more analytical about the shared core values that our relationship is built upon than most people find necessary.

Larry I asked you if you thought that handing over money for a drink, is the same as handing over money for someone to titillate and arouse you.

You haven't answered.

HerBex,

That question is entirely outside what is being discussed. It is termed a false dichotomy. I could ask you a "yes" or "no" question in return. Is it acceptable for someone to patronise a bar where women are being exploited and paid less than the minimum wage? Yes or no?

Smallwhite,

Absolutely. I could not be in a relationship where I or my partner were expected to account for their movements and every penny spent. We all want different things from life. For a lot of us, infidelity starts with actual sexual interaction with another person, INCLUDING actually touching them. For others, clearly not.

"In my time (about 10-15 years ago) I have been on several nights out to lapdancing establishments."

15 years ago lapdancing was in its infancy. Since then there's been an explosion of porn, strip clubs and trafficking for the purpose of sexual slavery and the abuse of prostituted women has been far more normalised than it was even ten years ago - the numbers of men paying women for sexual acts and finding this acceptable and normal behaviour, has risen and I think that probably what goes on in and around lap dancing clubs, will almost certainly mirror this change.

My Dh doesn't "account" for his movements nor for every penny spent, stop twisting words larry

My detailing how I do know where he is, and roughly what we both spend because we have access to the same bank accounts was in response to a specific post

the one where someone tried to insinuate that because I didn't know where he was every minute of the day (who does?) I should be prepared for the fact that he probably had a whole life I know nothing about (meaning he was visiting strip clubs and LDC's behind my back because most men do it, and I am controlling to expect him not to, and if I didn't "relax" he would kick off and do it anyway)

I don't know where my DH is right now. According to some posters he is likely to be handing over his wages to some young lady for sexual favours. And if he does it "will be my fault"

not stuck in traffic on the way home from work < shrug >

Yes I find it a bit depressing and sad that so many people think that the only reason men don't go to lapdancing clubs, is because their wives keep them on a tight leash.

What a horrible, patronising, infantilising view of men that is. They are human beings with brains and hearts, not idiots with brains in their dicks. Honestly, some of you have the most appallingly low opinion of the capabilities of men, it's really dispiriting. Most men who don't go to lapdancing clubs, don't go because they don't want to, not because they need some mother/ wife / nag figure to tell them how to behave. Most are perfectly capable of working out how to be decent human beings for themselves, give them a bit of credit FGS.

well, it's the standard put-down trotted out, isn't it, HB ?

it rankles a bit more though, when it's a woman meting out that kind of crap to other women

I have never told my DH he cannot go to a LDC, he can go any time he likes, I wouldn't stop him

I have bee reading some of these posts (the early ones - but been a bit busy today for all the later ones) so sorry if this has been asked on here or discussed ad nauseum on MN before, but....

How do you all think this strip club/lapdance stuff compares to burlesque? I know some people see it as the same and some as totally opposite so i was just wondering.

I think burlesque is meant to be cheeky and a little titillating. Lapdances are like live porn and altogether different.

Re OP; I think your DH has really breached your trust and he'll need to prove he deserves it going forward. If it was my DH I'd be upset because this behaviour shows such a lack of respect to women and to me. After all he had a private sexual dance with a naked stranger. However, to defend your DH, I can see a situation like this arising when too many drinks have been had and when egged on by colleagues. Doesn't make it right though.

flagging - i have seen burlesque and not a lapdance and i thought that tbh, however, you still get full nudity and a fanjo in your face occasionally!

SO i just wondered if that was more acceptable to MNers as it was a higher class of fandango? or that it was done in an ironic way? or that they were fire eating at the same time?

It is still wank material after all.

Burlesque does not involve handing over cash in exchange for a young woman writhing around naked and not only touching/masturbating herself but also touching the man involved, rubbing her breats in his face / straddling his face with her naked vulva etc.

DH and I have seen a burlesque type show show in Vegas, all it involved was gorgeous men and women dancing and showing no more flesh than you would see at a swimming pool.

Malificence - most of the burlesque i have seen has been full nudity and mainly women tbh: I saw one do a kind of circus trapeze dance with legs akimbo and no knickers on.

But I didn't think private dances included touching the other person. And yes i understand the proximity is closer but what if it was compared to visiting a strip club without the private dance part?