To still be furious with DH for going to lapdancing club 7 weeks after our DD was born?

[Haircut100YearsAgo]

This is my first post on here, so please be kind to me!

My DH travels all over the world for work. Don't have a problem with this at all, but just 8 weeks after I had given birth to our DD I caught him out at a lapdancing club in Moscow. The silly sod had accidently pressed redial on his 'Crackberry' whilst he was in said club and I innocently answered the phone thinking he had called to say goodnight. First of all the only thing I could hear was heavy Eurotrash music, and I thought -- the bastard, he goes on about how knackered he is and he's out at a nightclub whilst I am up for most of the night with our DD! Then it became apparent where he was. Some of his Russian colleagues had obviously got themselves hooked up with women and my DH and a fellow Brit were left talking.

I could hear my DH desperately trying to get money changed so that he could get a private one-on-one. As I am typing this, it is bringing it all back & I am still soooo bloody mad at him. He eventually cut me off, but I am pretty sure nothing else happened. Part of me thinks, well that's the Russian way of doing things. Pretty disrepectful of my DH to me, etc., but no real harm done. The other part of me thinks I really can't trust him (one thing I have always done until now is to trust him implicitly). This happened about 3 months ago.

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YANBU - at all! I guess its one thing if your other half comes home and says they frequented an establishment like this. It is an entirely different thing to hear what you did.

You say no harm done - and if that is true then great. But if this happened 3 months ago and it is still lingering in your mind, then the harm is done. Because 3 months later, you have come on here - quite understandably still very upset and hurting. So the harm has been done - to your peace of mind.

The question has to be (having established that YA(IN NO WAY) BU)What do you need to do to move on from this and put it behind you?

Gawd, I agree with all of you -- thanks so much for your replies. I don't know what I am going to do other than talk to him again about it as it is chewing me up. I am pretty sure that he did what he did because he thought he would get away with it. Which of course makes me wonder what else he has got up to in the past. DH promises me that was a one-off, but how on earth can I believe that?

We have had many discussions in the past about prostitution, people trafficking and the links to drugs and organised crime and yet there he goes like a kid in a sweet shop when he gets the chance.

I am still (obviously) very angry and tbh am a little bit less in love with him now than I was before. I don't want this to be the end of it for us, I think we have a hell of a lot going for us (which makes us even madder at him for risking it all so stupidly), and I don't want it to consume me so I end up hating him for it. I guess I need to talk to him again when he gets back on Wednesday pm from his current trip.

harm has been done - to your relationship - and he needs to know that!!

he also needs to know that he has crossed a line and it will take some time and effort to regain your trust.

make it quite clear that you will not put up with this behaviour, ask how he would feel if you were to go to male strip shows (just as demeaning in my view)

being 'one of the lads' is no excuse

i would also point out that if he continues going to these places and all their temptations then you demand that he takes a test for sti's, maybe that thought will bring up a bit short!

ask him if he thinks it is acceptable for him to frequent lapdancing clubs in London, paying for "private dances". Then ask him why the HELL he thinks it is acceptable in Moscow.

My DH is constantly being asked to go to those sorts of places on business trips - he tells people that he isn't interested, have a nice time, goes back to his hotel and has an early night. And then comes back and tells me about it. THAT is normal behaviour.

brilliant name BTW!

Dont blame you for being a little less in love. I dont know how you feel (obviously) - but IMO this definitely isnt worth throwing everything else away for - especially as you say, there is so much other good stuff. We all make mistakes - unfortunately his was pretty colossal. But hopefully he will learn from it.

The hardest thing to do is rein in your imagination - you dont know if he has ever done this before - there is a chance he is telling the truth and he hasnt.

I do hope you move on from this. You have every right to feel this way. Before you have your chat - I would think about what it is you want to say and what you need from him. Lay it out clearly - otherwise you risk going round in circles.

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It is rife in Russia. It's a fucked up society. Your DH should be nodding and smiling his way through dinner with work colleagues then going home to bed.

You are right to be angry and I agree with Dittany. How has this become ok in society? In a working environment?

Tell him you expect him to have some standards for the sake of your daughter. My guess is you probably can trust him but he behaved like a twat and not like a man with a wife and child whom he loves and cherishes. Now he's a father, he needs to behave with respect to all women and that means not participating in this trade.

Absolutely outrageous - I feel so sorry for you . If this had happened to me before my son was born, I think I would probably have left my husband over it. With a child, though, things are obviously much more complicated. But IMO he needs to understand the scale of what he has done to you. I'm not suggesting you make empty threats about leaving him IYKWIM, but at the same time he needs to know that leaving him would in no way be an overreaction to what he's done. If that's how you feel, of course...

YANBU to be very angry with him. My dh went to Stringfellow's as part of a work Xmas do when I was heavily pregnant, and paid for a private dance.
He told me the next day, thinking I would be amused - I think it's fair to say he somewhat misjudged my reaction! I went absolutely apeshit and he ended up in tears, grovelling for days.
It stuck in my mind for ages - what a fecking stupid thing to do

I don't think it's a leaving offence really. I think it's an extremely stupid and disrespectful thing to do, and you need to make him pay for it - he's got to make up for his idiocy.

Very difficult to get out of going to those places if your client wants to go and it's possible the clients were expecting him to pay for the dances, hence needing to change currency.

It's not necessarily acceptable to you, especially when you feel low after having a baby, but it's not a hanging offence imo.

I've been out on nights out with clients (as a guest of the male host) where you either go along to the club, or you leave the party. If you're the host, you can lose clients if you try to get out of stuff like this.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying that it could be that your husband had to make a business decision on this, not necessarily a personal one.

If he wasn't up front about it, it's probably because he knew it would upset you, rather than anything more sinister.

I don't agree, twelveyear. You just say no thanks and go home (which is what my sensible male friends do and what my gay friends do and what all the women do by default...) If the choice is between losing a client and losing your wife's respect, the wife comes first.

I agree with twelveyeargap

Exactly, Margoandjerry. And if you really feel you can't refuse, then you behave with as much decorum as possible, and you tell your wife about it the minute you get home. How the hell is she supposed to trust you otherwise??

twelveyear - you make a pertinent point and one that i can understand.

but if you then take the stance of 'well you have to do this for business so there is no other choice' and yet as a wife/ partner - the idea of this is so unbelievably hurtful - what happens?

I would hope that if this scenario happened to my DH - he would come down on my side. If someone wants to do business and respects you in the business sense, it really should make no difference what is done after hours. The business part will still happen.

As it is - I think overhearing the private dance request is what really got to the OP (from what I have gleaned thus far) - and business entertainment or not, you never have to have a private dance even if you end up in a place like this.

And just to clarify, I don't think it's a leaving offence BECAUSE it was a lapdancing club - the point is that he's done something (whatever it is) that he knows will deeply upset his wife. If she was the type of person who didn't care about things like lapdancing clubs, then fine.

My bottom line is:

He has betrayed you sexually and emotionally.

In paying for sex (penetration or not, that's what it is,)he has revealed an attitude to women in general that should seriously concern you.

Sorry, blunt, I know. But that's the crux of it for me.

Try not to distress yourself any further, Haircut110YearsAgo! It does sound terrible but from what you describe, I'm sure it wasn't done through his own iniative nor with any desire to have sex or almost sex with another woman. I feel sorry for both of you but IMO best to put it behind you as best you can. Who knows, one day you may even laugh about it together.

My stepfather used to work in North Africa & he was obliged to eat a sheep's eyeball during a special Berber(?) celebration. It was considered a great honour to be offered the eye (although it sounds like a great joke to me!) & if he had refused, a huge insult to his host.

I've seen the dynamic in action though. Apart from anything else, usually everyone is tanked up and not really in the frame of mind for making wise decisions.

I think saying "no thanks" works fine if you're just out in company, but it gets really, really awkward if you're the host and they're expecting you to take them.

Yes, wife comes first, but I think where a husband is left with little choice by the client, perhaps this is where the wife can show a bit of understanding? It's how I see it, obviously other wives/ partners may feel it's never going to be something they can overlook. Personally, I don't want to see DH lose a $1m account, because I said he couldn't go to lapdancing clubs.

My DH has only ever once had to put his foot down, when a particularly sleazy client was looking for somewhere to get "ahem" take-out. DH ended up having to find out from the bouncer of the seedy club they were in, where this might happen, point the client in the right direction and say, "Sorry, I can't come along, because I could get fired if the company found out I paid for something illegal". It had to be illegal before he could say no... Sad but true.

OK, twelveyeargap, but it sounds like your DH is open about these things, and that you're ok with it. Being deceitful about it (as OP seems pretty sure her DH would have been if he hadn't been found out), is a totally different matter, surely?

Incidentally, DH never goes to these places, except with clients. (He's too disorganised to be able to hide it too - he's always leaving receipts in his pockets and stuff.)

I'd only be alarmed if I found out he was going with his mates, for "fun", iyswim.

MrsBB - I think my DH was open about it, because the subject had come up, long before it was ever an issue and he knew it wouldn't upset me. Easy to be up front in those circs.

Knowing the guys I used to work with (and do expenses for, so I knew everything), some of them hid it from their wives, simply because they knew the wives would be upset and yet felt they couldn't get out of it. Rock and a hard place and all that.

I knew these men. I'd seen them recoil when they got chatted up in the pub, seen them turn down offers from drunken girls out looking for a good time. I truly, truly believe they hid that stuff from their wives to protect them, nothing else.

All I'm saying here, is that the reasons behind what the OP's husband did are not necessarily bad ones - it could just be that it seems bad because he was found out. He had to choose between hurting her by telling her, or her probably not finding out and not being upset. You can see how sometimes these decisions get made.

Sorry, but I don't buy the 'I didn't want to hurt him/her' defence. It's often used to hide affairs/one night stands as well - 'it's over now, so what's the point of telling her when it will only upset her?'. IMO you've got a right to know what kind of person you're married to. Not telling your husband/wife something because it might hurt them is actually bloody patronising - it denies them the opportunity to make an informed decision about the relationship. If you do it, you're effectively saying: 'I don't think this relationship should end because I've been to a lapdancing club/had an affair/whatever, and I'm going to deny my DW/DH the chance to have any say about it.'