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.

Personally, I wouldn't be so bothered about the lap dancing club, provided a dance was actually all it was. I would be more upset by his hiding away and not calling back after so obviously having screwed up. That's worse in my opinion. Also the fact that he cried for the first time is a bit troubling - sorry to say it, but just seems like a guilty conscience.

Well, yes he wouldn't be doing a very good job if he was cowering in the corner, but I know what you mean. I don't have a huge problem with it, I think people are in it for so many different reasons.

The main thing is whether this incident is something you would want to break up over. Is he generally trustworthy. If you do think it is worth breaking up over then obviously it is a serious betrayal to you.

If you think it is something you could do without but can get over, then think about it more. Blokes are stupid when drink and mates are involved. If he is a generallya decent bloke he will not give a toss about how many half naked women he watched and generally not even remember much anyway. He certainly won't compare them with you.

Hope you get things sorted.

'junk' 'frotting' please don't get swayed by these people!

'these people'?
Tenacious is making a very straightforward point TT. That is, as she says, what a private dance entails.

Agree with onebat.

Tenacious is just saying exactly what happens. Sorry if it makes it sound tawdry - but that's exactly what it is.

Ok I know for each and every woman it is a different thing and I accept that on a personal level some might find it more/less acceptable then others.

There has been a massive range here from "it is a bit of fun" to "we had to go to relate".
Men and women are very different in that love/sex for a woman is mostly in the head and emotional where as for a man it is very much a visual thing.
It is a fact men like looking at women.
I think it says more about the women and their self worth as to how they feel about their men folk looking at women.
Just because your DH/DP goes to a strip club and sees a woman wiggle about and get her bits out does not mean he is a pervert or thinks any less of you, the fact it is seen that way by you is that you don't feel good about yourself.
I think a lot of women feel threatened by their other half looking at a woman who may be younger, slimmer, better looking, but it is fantasy, it is not real life and it is not as if you are being cheated on.

As for the women who fain sisterly solidarity with the "these women are being exploited" line, pish .
Yes there are some people out their who end up in the sex trade unwillingly BUT in a lap dancing club chances are most are there to pay the way through uni, and it is the blokes that hand over the money to look at a woman they have NO chance with that are being exploited.

I would not mind my other half going to a strip club because I know he loves ME. I know that despite childbirth I have a good body, I take care in how I look, and I did not and will not turn in to a moaning drudge.
That said he has also seen me give birth (never sexy) he has seen me with my head down the loo with a bug, and got home from work to find me covered in baby sick and no dinner made, I am the every day the real life person not the silly fantasy that he might like to look at on a stag night out.

But surely, whatever people think about lapdancing clubs, the inescapable points are:

OP's DH did something that he knew would upset her deeply - he betrayed her trust and totally failed to consider her feelings. He then (almost certainly would have) lied about it, and avoided talking about it even though he knew she knew.

I'm no fan of lapdancing clubs, but frankly I think that is an entirely separate argument.

fussaboutnothing I agree with every word you said.

PS haircut100yearsago I love your name

fuss - you shouldn't issue blanket insults just because you don't agree with other people's arguments. To say that women who object to sexual exploitation are motivated by low self-esteem, or are necessarily fatter/uglier than strippers, is bullshit.

Also, the spelling you were reaching for was 'feign'.

Every woman I know is fatter and / or uglier than Russian strippers.

Except one real life friend who is a Polish stripper.

Hands up to being fatter and uglier than a Russian stripper. But I'm also smarter, safer, happier and I don't make money waving my fanjo in strangers' faces.

Haven't posted for a little while. Thanks to everyone for their replies. Fussaboutnothing you are talking absolute bollocks if you think that just because you look after yourself & consider yourself to be good looking, that is the reason your husband would not cheat on you. A cheating husband will be a cheating husband regardless of how good his wife looks.

Fuss - I think what you said makes a lot of sense.

policywonk - Fussaboutnothing wasn't issuing a blanket insult. She actually said 'I think', which suggests offering an opinion, not generalising with an insult. Steaming in with profanity and an ever so slightly petty spelling correction gives the impression that you have no answer to what she had to say.

I think the lapdance club argument will be different in each relationship. Personally, it doesn't bother me. Bloke enjoying watching women dance with their knockers out doesn't affect how he feels about me. The issue would be if he felt he couldn't tell me. That would imply that he felt I didn't trust him.

Haircut's DH's reaction proves that this is something he knew you wouldn't be happy about - it's not the specific action that is the problem, but the fact that he did something he knew would upset you and tried to hide it. In this situation I would be angry.

jasper

Actually I agree with spacehopper to the extent that I don't think the fact that a man attends a lapdancing club necessarily does affect his opinion of his partner.

My concern is his attitude to women generally. That's why it should never be condoned in a work environment.

MrsBumblebee and SpaceHopper are right I think. Regardless of your views on lap dance clubs per se it seems the bigger issues are

(a) that he had/ was trying to have a private dance in a situation where a private dance stands a reasonable chance of leading to something more; and

(b) lied to his wife about what he was doing/ where he was going because, I imagine, he knew she wouldn't want him to go

Although, as I mentioned, DW is fine with me going to strip clubs (in context, e.g. stag weekends) I know that she would probably kill, or at least brutally maim me, if either of the above things happened. I find it pretty hard to believe that any woman would be particularly thrilled about these either.

fuss - it does NOT make someone a 'moaning drudge' to be unhappy about their dh doing this, neither does it make them lacking in self-worth. that is a particularly simplistic way of seeing things.

i am not a moaning drudge, i feel pretty fine about how i look, and believe it or not i don't feel threatened at all by russian strippers, or any strippers for that matter, for so many reasons.

however, i would find it hard to continue a relationship with somebody who objectifies women, supports the exploitation of women in poverty, pretty much cheats, and then proceeds to lie to me about it.

yes yes and yes.
Although I think that not being a moaning drudge was meant to protect her from infidelity. Which is also rather sad.

It sounds as though you feel you have to compete with lapdancers, fuss, and that if you didn't, your dp would have a good reason to stray.

This is a separate point from the fact that I really, really wouldn't want to have relationship/sex/kids with a man who didn't mind paying for it, with all that that implies about the relationship between Men and Women.

fuss,

your whole post is just one long list of cliches.

it's a FACT that men like looking at women? In what sense is that a fact? What men? What women? What about women looking at men? In what sense looking?

That's just a meaningless factoid trotted out whenever any woman takes a position that doesn't accept that the increasing pornification of our lives is "just a bit of fun".

And as for that bollocks about not feeling good about yourself being the only reason to not want your husband to go out paying women to give them naked erotic dances/frotting and waving their junk in the face: from most of the posts on this thread you can see that for many women it's not about respecting themselves, it's about being able to respect their husbands.

I have no respect for men who want to exploit women like that (regardless of whether the woman chooses it freely and happily). Men who think of sex and human relationship like this make me sad and I have no desire to be around them. If I were to find out in the way that Haircut did that my DH was such a man I'd be feeling very much the way she is.

I'm tired of women being told that it is a fact that all men are "visual creatures" and that porn/strippers/lap dances are absolutely normal and that it is not OK to have any issue with such things from a partner.

I accept that some women are OK with this kind of thing. Not my bag, but I have genuinely come across women who are.

More often though you get the kind of defensiveness that says "this is NORMAL. Honestly, my DP DOES LOVE ME and if you have a problem with your DP doing it it's because you are INSECURE. I'm FINE with it, REALLY I AM. because it's NOT REAL."

Well you know what? it is real. Either you're OK with your husband paying to have real women sexually arouse him or you're not. But pretending it's not real or that it's something inevitable and unavoidable that all males do is just pathetic.

men are people who make choices and have preferences just like women.

policywank please forgive my spelling of 'feign' it was more of a typo really.

I was not trying to insult anybody just adding MY point of view to the thread.

Haircut - I would feel exactly the same. My dh has been to lap dance clubs in the past - on a couple of stag do's and that was before I had kids and lost my trim figure ! I wasn't happy then and I imagine I'd be devastated now. The kicker about your story is that he was trying to pay for a one to one, whih suggests he wasn't just there out of obligation to the Ruskies ! And the crying thing does just sound like getting you to feel sorry for him. Isn't it awful when someone you thought you knew so well lets you down ? Can I ask how things are between you now ? Sorry if you've already answered this a few times. I read the first page of posts but haven't had time to read the last 5 ! Fuss about nothing - do you have the hide of a rhino ?????

skidoodle. totally agree.

"Men are visual creatures" is always trotted out as if it's some sort of physiological fact and women don't have eyes themselves.

"Men are allowed to behave that way" is more of a fact. If women ogled total strangers in the way that men are encouraged to it would not be treated as acceptable and normalised with a "women are visual creatures" excuse.