AIBU to feel upset by my husband’s holiday group chat messages?

[Ickinspain]

Currently on holiday in spain with husband of 20yrs and our 2 children. This morning I was using chrome on my husbands phone as mine had no battery. I also checked his family WhatsApp group for updates on my mil who has been unwell. I happened to also look(snoop) on his friend's group, and was shocked and disgusted by what he wrote. There was a msg he wrote a couple of days ago referencing the amount of naked flesh on display. And then yesterday again he msged friends saying how turned he was by the women around the pool. Now we are at a very nice resort and most of the women are all very beautiful, slim, model-like bodies in skimpy swimwear. Of course I expect him to notice and have no issues with this. But for him to msg his friends what he did gave me major ick. It was a shock because ive never seen this side of him, hes always been respectful of women and just wondering if hes just hidden it well. I brought it up with him saying I felt it was gross and disrespectful to me. He says I'm making too much of it and it's just male banter and jokes.
So would you agree this is just how men talk or am I right to feel disrespected.

It's not just the sleazy ones. Many 'clean-cut' guys do the same.

Do you often read his private messages?

Tbh I could see myself texting my female friends if I was at a beach surrounded by gorgeous half naked men. I can't see myself reading my partner's messages though.

Most men are sleazy behind the veneer of being perfect upstanding pillar of the community types.

Funny enough the men who are openly sleazy and greasy in front of woman tend to stay single as woman avoid them. Smart men put on the veneer their layer of publicly ok.

If it’s never anyone’s husband or son or uncle or cousin then who are the men? Because it’s more than just the weird uncle you remember avoiding at Christmas.

So they shared it in what they hope are their “safe spaces” where they won’t get caught.

In fact the more perfect the man appears the more likely he has his hidden bullshit.

Indeed - I am guilty - often with a pic included in the group chat 😂

Replace "hate" with "fancy" and you might be nearly there
What has he done that's hateful? OP says he's always lovely and respectful. His only crime is telling his friends, in what he thought was a private chat, that he had seen some sexy women. I don't think that's a hate crime.

Sharing thirst trap TikTok’s with my mate most days tbh 🫣

What the fuck is wrong with you?

A partner does not have free access to your body. It's yours, and your choice to share it or not.

Being in a relationship with somebody doesn't make you one person. You're entitled to your own thoughts and privacy.

I find it odd how women refuse to believe that it couldn't be their husband, son, uncle, etc.

My DH is lovely, but I am under no illusion that he couldn't wake up one day and have an affair.

You don't think it shows utter contempt both for the OP and their marriage, and the women he's discussing like they're meat laid out on a table for him to choose from as he sees fit?

When he says to other men 'I'd fuck that one...' he's implicitly saying '...rather than my wife, any day.'

Men like him (the majority, still) bond with other men by talking about women like this - it's how they reinforce the hierarchy of men and women. They are shoring up their dominance of women by diminishing them without their knowledge. It doesn't matter whether they're saying 'I'd do her' or 'I wouldn't do her' - they're reducing other humans to nothing more than the likelihood that they'd fuck them.

And before you say 'women do this too' - they don't, not to anything like the degree that men do, they don't reduce an entire sex to whether they'd fuck them, and they don't do so in the context of all the other, endless ways in which men exert power over and exploit women.

How was it secret? The OP had no right to access those messages.

Yes, but this language of freedom is often weaponised to make women who are with bad men feel like they are the bad one.

As if women needed any help - after a lifetime of female socialisaiton, we do that for ourselves.

No, I agree, for goodness sakes people are being uptight. If it went on and on or he was taking sneaky pics or something, that’s different. As presented, not at all worth being bothered by.

You take a picture of someone when they’re in swimwear on a beach without their permission and you send it to your mates to letch over?

Ironically there’s a poster on this thread proudly admitting they’d take sneaky pics and there’s no-one calling them sleazy…

You genuinely hate men don't you?
This is low level stuff. I had a friend commit suicide earlier this year. He was a man, I presume by your reasoning he deserved it.
I'm very much female.
Worry about the bigger things in life than your own disgust in men.

Why would I approach a team of budgie smuggler-clad men and ask to take their picture?

🙄

Silly you could have asked them to do some sexy poses. Flex the muscles. A slow vid thrusting. You missed a trick 😉😉

Oh, they were flexing and dancing - that's why the camera came out 😂😂

nope. all ages.

I don't hate men. I see through men who hate women.

You must see that both your 'my friend committed suicide, you think he deserved it' and 'there are bigger things to worry about' are the desperate arguments of someone who doesn't have a solid response to my point.

I'm sorry for your loss, though, and that you've been reduced to using it this way.

I'm using the example to say, don't get caught up in things that ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Please don't patronise me. As a police 999 call handler of many years I have heard horrific things.

To be honest it would give me the ick
Not the fact that he found other women attractive , but the fact that he messaged others , acting like Billy Big Bollocks

He says I'm making too much of it and it's just male banter and jokes.

That's the definition of toxic masculinity, right there.

Then you should know better. It allmatters - only a fool would think that the fact that some things are objectively worse than others means those other things don’t matter.

and you also probably know, but are choosing not to see, that both the ‘bad’ and the ‘worse’ things are more often than not born of and sustained by male violence.

I'm a fool then. You are quite rude to be honest. I wish you no ill will. I hope you are happy, have a good weekend x