Strip Club

[MahoganyGrain]

Husband went to a strip club whilst away on a work trip.
Spent a ridiculous amount of money (over £1000).
Didn’t admit where he had been until confronted with proof.
His story:
he took some clients and paid for them to have private dances, while he sat in the bar area, having a drink whilst waiting for them.

I'm inclined to believe him, AIBU? Or just a complete fool?

Denial is not just a river in Egypt OP.

He’s been caught bang to rights! Expenses, yeah right 🙄

‘To the extent of’ is moot. It’s her marriage and someone she has loved presumably for many years and built her life with. Stop over-simplifying the ‘choices’ women have in this. She’s quite literally another victim of the system.

Don’t be so naive

I doubt there were any clients in all honesty. He’s just spent a lot on himself.

That's exactly what I was thinking the more posts I read.
He may have messed up big time and got hit with an inflated bill
These types of places are notorious for it.

I’m sorry but no, if she chooses to excuse this she is upholding patriarchy.

I will eat my words if she comes back to say her husband is controlling, abusive, and she has no means or agency to even think about leaving.

Honestly id think this was hilariously ridiculous excuse if this wasn’t my actual life!!

Ok so this is fairly identifying, but as I’ve namechanged and the only other person who knows the real truth is him, so I suppose it doesn’t matter.
He gave me his credit card to make a payment a few days before and I was having difficulty and somehow added the card to my Apple Pay. Afterwards few everyday transactions popped up as notifications but I didn’t really take much notice of it.
Then while he was away, late at night a notification for a transaction for £500 popped up. I thought this was unusual as I’d spoken to him a couple of hours earlier and he’d said he was going to have dinner (alone) and go back to his hotel.
My first thought was he had had the card stolen/ cloned, so I googled the company and they owned strip clubs in the city he was staying.
Still thinking he may have had his card stolen.. so I checked his location on Life360 ( we all freely share our location so the kids can see where we are and we can see them )
It’s not 100% accurate but it shows him to be near a location listed as a gentleman’s club.
Called him and it went straight to answer phone. I’m still thinking his card may be lost / stolen / cloned but it’s after midnight now so I went to sleep.
In the morning there are more transactions totalling over £1000.

I decided to wait and see what he said face to face rather than by phone so I can gauge whether he is lying to me, so waited until he came home. I asked if he went back out because he was clearly tired / hungover and he said yes, he intended to go back to the hotel, but some contractors were out nearby, so he went to meet them for work purposes. I asked where he went and he named a well known bar.

I was working at that point so didn’t pursue it. Later on said I could see he was out until 3am and that’s pretty late, I asked again where he went and he said he couldn’t remember the name, he just went with the other people as they are local to the area.

I obviously knew he was lying. So I then told him that I knew he was in a strip club and how much he spent and how I knew, and he then admitted he went to there and gave me the story above.

i truly am a fool but he’s very convincing and I still half believe him.
I have never had any reason to believe he’s done this before and I’ve always trusted him. I’ve never had any reason not to. And he’s has always taken a very poor view of cheaters so I would never thought he would cheat. He knows it would be the end of us if he did.

I think it’s actually worse if he took clients there. They’re supposed to be professionals! In this day and age this is entirely inappropriate and using vulnerable women to make business deals is disgusting!

I don’t know a company on this planet that would these days allow you to expense a strip club. Especially with clients due to corruption and bribery.

Very convincing? Only to you.

The rest of us recognise bullshit when we see it.

This is very sad and I would assume he has done it before- just that the odd circumstances meant you found out this time.

I used to work in an environment (more than 20 years ago) where male clients were occasionally taken to strip clubs to celebrate a ‘sexy deal’ 🤢. But it was rare & frowned on even then and I think the likelihood of this persisting is minuscule. Maybe in certain very high profit macho type sectors in the financial world? Unless your H works in that area I would assume sadly he has a habit you don’t know about.

Oof, but you only found out on this occasion because of the credit card, when you confronted him about it he lied. He then finally admitted it when you gave him absolutely no wiggle room to continue lying. I would bet my left arm that he did not sit in the bar eyes cast down till 3.30am. I'd be thinking that this is exactly the reason that he has done this before. Assume he has had private dances, because realistically you can never be sure he hasn't, then decide whether you can move on and rescue your marriage. Go to counselling and see if you can sort it. People do come through these kind of things and only you can decide if this is what you really want. No judgement here, your life your marriage.

Was it £1000 you could afford to lose or has he just spent your grocery money?
Regardless of if he intends to claim it as expenses.
I would very much miss £1000 surely that’s the type of expense you discuss first?

Sorry, but yes.

Patriarchy isn’t upheld by individual women trying to survive within it – it’s upheld by the system that makes those “choices” feel like the only viable ones. Calling a woman complicit for trying to rationalise her husband’s behaviour after being blindsided by betrayal is cruel and simplistic. She’s not defending patriarchy, she’s trying to make sense of her reality. Blame the structures and the men who exploit them – not the women trapped in the fallout.

It’s his own personal credit card so his spending doesn’t impact on family bills, etc. in theory it’s his money to do what he likes with (within reason, he knows i wouldn’t be happy for him to spend it on strippers!)

I will also add, our relationship has not been good for a while, mainly because we argue a lot about sex (he wants it a lot more than me). He gets really angry and shouts and says horrible things when he is stressed, but recognises this is an issue. He thinks I am in perimenopause and that is affecting how I treat him.

We have been to counselling which didn’t really help much, but I’ve never had any reason not to trust him.

It’s the other way around. He has massive paranoia/ jealousy about me going out without him. To the point that he checks my location frequently while I’m out and when I come home he always questions whether I’ve been speaking to any men and searches social media photos to look for “proof” I am lying to him when I say no.
He also regularly accuses me of flirting with any men i do speak to when he’s there, including his friends, my brother in law, the delivery guy, etc. If I deny any flirting and say I’m being friendly, he says I must do it without realising.

She's in shock and processing.

This would be projection / guilty conscience
he expects you to behave as he would

@DownThePubWithStevieNicks and please read OP’s latest. He is literally abusive and controlling, if that’s the only thing that will meet your bar.

He's a control freak who isn't very bright either and lacks any imagination. He lies about his location when he has his location share activated so not only his wife but his children can see he is in a strip club.
His wife is notified of his large expenditure so he says it's claimable, which it won't be so that's going be found out.
He eventually admits to being in the strip club but says he sat at the bar and spent 1000 plus on his contractors having dances. He only found out were in the city after midnight and after finding out left his hotel to take them to a strip club so he could sit at the bar and run up 1k in expenses.
You know that saying that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's highly likely it is a duck....

OP, I would tell him (and mean it) that the only way you stay is that 1. he calls whoever at work who deals with expenses, or his boss, on speakerphone, while you are there, and explains in exactly the way he has to you, what has happened. And 2. (because he will obscutifate and delay and eventually get a mate on the end of the phone) you want to see the paperwork with the invoice detailing the expense emailed while you are there to whoever deals with expenses, with his boss copied in to an address you can verify against other emails to his boss. 3. you want to see the transaction, from his work's bank account to his. See what he says to those things.

Christ he sounds like a knob. Is there anything positive about him, because you've previously said he's given you no reason not to trust him and now you can't.

So your husband works for a company that only has male clients, and where paying for them all to go and have private dances at a Strip Club is considered a normal and acceptable way to spend company money?

Wake up OP.

Everything he accuses you of is something he's doing or has done. Every single accusation from him is an admission

Even if it was with clients on expenses (highly bloody unlikely) what to say £800 of that money wasn't spent on him getting 'dances' in a back room, whilst almost everyone else sat in the bar looking at the ceiling.

Or maybe he did sit at the bar. £1000 was just spent on these clients and he has never been to a strip club before, and just lied about it this one time. Sound implausible? That's because it is.

It being paid all on expenses proves nothing. I wouldn't give him the option of saying 'see I told you so'.

Sorry OP this is less convincing than 'I wasn't smoking, I was holding it for a friend'

Your last update unfortunately tells you all you need to know. Sorry you're going through this