DH went to strip club last night. 3 dances. Am I stupid & naive to feel so sad about it?

[bail]

DH came in at 5am last night. I was relaxed about it as he only goes out infrequently (every couple of months) and I trust him (or should I say, I USED to trust him).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, after initially lying to me, I discovered he went to a very swish and expensive strip club in near Mayfair. He had three dances.

I am upset, I keep imagining gorgeous girls dancing for him, wearing next to nothing and then my DH handing over money to them for the pleasure.

What do others think about this?

"Because, like female lapdancers, he was making a lot of money out of delusional women who he pretended to fancy, and they paid him for the privilege."

Well, then take the money and run all the way to the bank with it! Some guys no doubt would quite like to have some female attention, even if it is primarily of a sexual nature (especially if it is of a sexual nature - eg: the ones in lap dancing clubs).

I have never been to a lap dancing club - they look pretty tacky and from the sounds of it what goes on is quite sordid.

But traditionally there have been many forms of entertainment that included nudity or semi-nudity and the appeal is not to do with having someone's genitals rubbed in your face. For instance the burlesque thing can be erotic and amusing too, equally I imagine traditional stiptease was more of an erotic experience. What about belly-dancing - there is no doubt that the men are there to admire a voluptous woman but it is not considered to be crude or vulgar.

Anyway, I digressed. The point I am trying to make is that paying to admire someone's body is not, in itself, particularly tacky. Guess it depends on how its done and what goes on.

Also, whether posters like it or not, sex can be a commodity and I doubt that is going to change any time soon. Actually, as someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I am astonished that attitudes towards sex have changed so little in the past few decades. I would have thought that by now we would be living in pretty enlightened times with regard to sex and sexuality. But apparently not.

Interesting isn't it. A male stripped should take the money and run all the way to the bank but a female stripper is being sexually exploited and all men therefore must be unattractive losers unable to function in the real world?

Can anyone spot the hypocrisy?

niceguy2- Very hypocritical!

I don't agree with male or female strippers, however all the male ones I have met work hard to be able to do it.

After all basically any female can be a stripper, not many men can do it.

And yes, there are things like burlesque, but these are striptease and shows are normally done with comedic and entertainment value. They don't usually show too much flesh, that's the whole point in them, they show you can be sexy and teasing without having to thrust yourself on top of someone. It's not going up to a man and thrusting your naked or almost naked genitals in their face.

Trust me....not every female can be a stripper.

Threaders, it's good to hear you've gotten something to think about from this thread. As you say yourself, there's two sides to every story. Discussions can get rather heated, that's the nature of strong opinions. But it's a good thing to hear others opinions and consider them, even if you eventually disagree. But to blindly defend a position that's not really your own considered opinion, just what's been handed to you, just generates more heat than light.

Generic 'you' btw.

Bollocks Nice guy, unless she cannot walk then she would be able to get a job as a stripper.

do you mean only good looking women can be strippers niceguy?

I'm merely responding to Schrodingers comment that men have to work hard to be able to be strippers but for some reason any woman can be a stripper.

And in reality, yes a woman has to have a certain level of attractiveness to be a stripper because:

a) Men are visual creatures and I doubt many would pay a tenner for a Jo Brand lookalike to wriggle in front of them.

b) The establishment because of the above wouldn't give her a job in the first place.

c) Even though a stripper takes her clothes off, she has to have the rhythm and technique to make it look attractive. Just in the same way that not every woman can dance.

d) She needs to have the mental toughness to cut it in an environment like a lapdancing bar. I doubt it's a job someone lacking in self confidence can do.

This is not a sexist comment because I bet its the same for male strippers. I bet they must be physically attractive, muscly and have a modicum of rhythm. I doubt I'd be able to cut it as a stripper.....i have two left feet!

some men are not cut out to be twats

And in reality, yes a woman has to have a certain level of attractiveness to be a stripper because:

a) Men are visual creatures and I doubt many would pay a tenner for a Jo Brand lookalike to wriggle in front of them. In a club my friend worked at their was a girl who was a size 20 something... There was another one with awful cellulite and another who had a shaved head and wore a wig. That's what the special lighting they have is for, to make girls look better.

b) The establishment because of the above wouldn't give her a job in the first place. When I got a job as a stripper, someone else came in for an interview later that night, she was a post of transexual and not very convincing... She got the job. I asked why this was and they said the more variety they have of girls and how they look the better chances at making more money.

c) Even though a stripper takes her clothes off, she has to have the rhythm and technique to make it look attractive. Just in the same way that not every woman can dance. *Most of the time when a dancer goes for an audition it goes horrendously, a lot of the time the girls have no rhythm and no idea how to dance, the club just make them keep doing it until they learn... And they will because if they don't they will owe the club money.

d) She needs to have the mental toughness to cut it in an environment like a lapdancing bar. I doubt it's a job someone lacking in self confidence can do. I had no self confidence at all before I took the job.

So as I said, bollocks.

Did he go with work? My dh used to have to go a lot as it was fashionable in his industry to take clients, less so now, but goes from time to time. Its just one of those things that happens in business. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'd actually quite like to go, I'd imagine some of the girls are great dancers.

"But, if I discovered he'd actually paid for a dance I'd rip off his head and piss in his skull, and that would just be the begining...he would have entered the Seventh Circle of Marital Hell, from which he would finally emerge a broken man..."

LeQueen Love it! :o

I don't agree

You are either ok with your partner frequenting lap dancing establishments or you are not

No qualifications, no get-out clauses, no half-way measures

because really, that starts to sound like you are rationalising your own reaction in accordance with either

1. something he has already done and you have just had to swallow it

2. something you expect him to do in the future and you feel powerless in having an impact on it

The issue is black and white for me. Just chatting at the bar (and paying the extortionate bar prices) is supporting the establishment. And of course, he wouldn't be looking would he...he would be making eye contact with only his mates, wouldn't he ? Or the wall, perhaps ? Not the naked ladies young enough to be his daughter ?

And of course he would stop his mates getting private dances. And he wouldn't socialise with their wives afterwards and lie right in their faces. Those women that are his friends too. No not at all. And a lie by omission is still a lie.

It's worth repeating what the title of the thread is.

'Am I stupid and naive to feel sad about this'
Just goes to show how normalised the sex industry is, and how the wife's feelings are totally invalidated. How the weight of public opinion is so so far opposed to a totally reasonable and natural reaction.

"Nice"guy2 - what's wrong with Jo Brand?

The faster we follow Iceland and ban these disgusting places, the better as far as I'm concerned.
As for the idiotic comment about the dancers having self confidence, I'd put money on them having little self confidence and even less self esteem, most of them probably crave male attention because they had crap relationships with their fathers, they want desperately to be noticed and be paid attention to - hardly healthy behaviour , I bet a lot of them don't do the "job" sober either.

I agree with Malificence that they should be banned.

And I didn't have Father issues, I was just an idiot, but yes you are right. I haven't met one stripper yet who doesn't spend the whole night off her face drunk.

Wonder where Bail is and if she is still reading this thread......

I don't know if banning is the answer. There will always be damaged/desperate women and men willing to take advantage of that, so maybe regulation would protect the most vulnerable. I'd like to see the attitude shift so that it's no longer acceptable for decent men to go. And when people found out that their husbands had, they didn't feel they had to apologise for their own perfectly valid and normal feelings.

SinicalSal You are probably right, I didn't think about that. Banning wouldn't stop it.
I doubt it would be very easy to change people's attitute towards them though.

I disagree.

There are loads of examples of legislation promoting a change in society's attitude. Barbara Castle was pilloried for introducing the breath test in 1967, but although it took a long time, attitudes to drink/driving have completely changed. People used to receive sympathy for getting caught. Not now.

Smoking's another one. Once it started getting banned in workplaces, people's attitude towards smoking shifted too.

A reverse shift has happened with the sex industry. Whereas once extreme porn use, prostitute habits, strip, lapdancing and poledancing clubs were regarded as the pecadilloes of the proverbial "dirty old man" - and therefore shunned by society, they have now been normalised. As another poster said, even to the extent that a partner wonders whether she's the one with the attitude problem.....

Banning something makes a statement that society no longer views a practice as acceptable. I am not saying it will stop the practice(s), or change attitudes overnight. Culture change takes far longer than that.

But it would make it a damned sight harder for these places to operate and it would stop people like the OP feeling that they have to put up and shut up, if they are to remain with a roof over their heads, which is effectively what her partner told her to do - and what she has acquiesced to, sadly.

It would make them harder to operate but it wouldn't stop them. The girls would just be working under worse conditions than they are now and treated even worse.

"it would stop people like the OP feeling that they have to put up and shut up, if they are to remain with a roof over their heads, which is effectively what her partner told her to do - and what she has acquiesced to, sadly."

Surely the well being of the girls matters more than this?