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Original poster

Strip club

191 replies

Roundtheruggedrocks · 08/06/2013 23:37

I've lurked on the relationship section for a while, am aware of the wide variety of opinions and find it really insightful. I wondered if MN could cast their eye over this and tell me what to do about it?

DH (we're newly married, no DCs) two months ago lied to me about going to a strip club with friends and having a lap dance. I found out through our mutual bank account records (DH is stupid and disorganised over that stuff) and got very upset. I spent a week not talking to him, heard all his explanations (he maintains it wasn't a lie, that he was drunk and would have told me the truth when he sobered up,) but I checked the online account so soon the next day that he didn't have a chance to tell me the truth. i threatened to leave and DH said no way - started crying, said he'd do anything, that he doesn't even enjoy lap dances and remembers nothing from that evening.

In the past (before he met me) DH went to strip clubs with friends maybe twice a year - on stag dos, so I know that he knows the ropes and it wasn't a one-off in his life. He told me when we first met that he had been to these places too. i admittedly hadn't been clear to DH that getting a lap dance was a deal breaker for me, which is his main argument. He says if he had known he wouldn't have done it and he thought because we had talked about his past experiences there that I would be fine with it.

But why lie? This is what bugs me. He doesn't get it - he maintains he didn't lie - that he was just drunk and tired and didn't want me to go ballistic. I need to get over this and get on with our marriage, me continually bringing it up poisons every good time we have together.

Aside from the lap dance thing, DH and I have a great relationship - he treats me like a queen, hence why this insecurity has suddenly come out of the blue. I've started to think that maybe DH likes the stripper thing - the platinum blonde, big tits, body make-up thing (I am a pale, flat chested brunette) and I have become insecure about my looks and weight too. What do you think I should do?

OP posts:
AnyFucker · 10/06/2013 23:17

*explore

garlicgrump · 10/06/2013 23:17

Like most other thinkers on this issue, I find it hard to explain to the tombs and yogis of this world why it's a problem. This isn't because there is no problem, it's that the argument is wide-ranging and complex. I'll have another go at compacting it.

Men who frequent strip clubs find it hard to grasp the concept of 'objectification'. You imagine what you think it would be like to show off your body for mass sexual admiration, and you imagine it would be okay. I have, now and again, taken part in reverse objectification exercises and, once, worked in a predominantly female place where a young man was sexually harassed. On all those occasions the men were hurt, indignant and upset.

The matters of objectification and harassment affect all women. It's unpleasant. For strippers it is a thousand times worse. I've sat next to groups of men treating their dancers like cuts of meat. If you can imagine standing naked in front of a pack of clothed drunks, on whom you depend for your wages, as they slag off the shape of your arse and the arrangement of your face, do so. Imagine having to apologise to them for the testicles god gave you, which they might deem too dangly, having to smile and to laugh ingratiatingly when they grab at your skin. Dancers go through it all the time.

Even if you are not such a boor, your very presence there - the mere fact you've paid for people to present their naked selves as consumables - endorses this trade. By paying money to a strip bar, you have objectified the women working in it ... and, by extension, all women. Because it's not possible to objectify women in location A, at X o'clock, and then not objectify them at location B, two hours later.

When a woman has 'esteem issues' related to a partner who uses strippers, she isn't suffering simple body envy. She is suffering the knowledge that her man, whom she loves, objectifies and judges women on the details of their bodies. She can't help but sense he judges her the same way. Thus, she misguidedly tries to be 'good enough' physically for him. The problem, of course, is that he doesn't see it as either/or: he does not consciously set his wife in competition with his dancers. But he has done so, all the same, because he's re-cast women as consumable objects, and she is a woman.

Vegehamwidge · 10/06/2013 23:21
Sad Yes Round because of the nature of this board it really should be ok to be vulnerable here. However any sort of person can comment (but you can report personal attacks.) Yogii's comments were strange and inappropriate.
tomblidad · 10/06/2013 23:23

Stargirl I dont think he would care. I dont think I know a single guy that would. That's why these misunderstandings happen: guys think I wouldn't care if she had a striptease so why should she? Unless you make these things clear, we're not going to instantly know.

Original poster
Roundtheruggedrocks · 10/06/2013 23:28

Garlicgrump that is a great explanation

OP posts:
garlicgrump · 10/06/2013 23:30

Tomb, I've spent most of my life amongst men who think "guys do this, that and the other, it's normal," so I do get what you're saying.

What seems to have passed you by is that it's only a certain type of "guy" who does those things and finds it normal. That type of man is a misogynist and far from all men are misogynists.

The majority of women would prefer a partner from amongst men who actually appreciate women as people, not bodies.

garlicgrump · 10/06/2013 23:31

Thanks, Round! I hope your thread is helping your clear your thoughts - you've certainly attracted a wide range of opinion Wink

Darkesteyes · 10/06/2013 23:38

Dothebest said...

But no, apparently the minute you walk in door all girls approach men, single them out and work their magic. I mean of course they do, they are on commission. Bit I was honestly so stupid I was imaging a scene like in friends when Rachel and Monica take chandler

I find this heartbreaking. What were the strippers names? Page Piper and Phoebe?!

And the Friends episode you mentioned is a good example of how normalized this has become.
I caught an episode of Hollyoaks tonight for the first time in eeons while i was waiting for the Channel 4 news and a female character who is late 30s/40 was telling a young woman "Well boys will be boys and what happens at the party stays at the party.

tomblidad · 10/06/2013 23:49

But her dp isnt someone who regularly frequents strip clubs and I doubt he will again. When I told my wife proudly how I had gone directly to the nightclub on one stag do she thought that I should have stayed with the stag. Women do not have a homogeneous attitude to see these venues so dp's misunderstanding is understandable. He has been vilified unfairly by some of the contributors.

garlicgrump · 10/06/2013 23:55

Tomb, have you taken DW to lapdancing places? I'm not saying that would instantly change her attitude, but it's unfair to showcase her response if she's never actually seen what the stags were doing ...

Well done from me, anyway Grin

DoTheBestThingsInLifeHaveFleas · 11/06/2013 00:02

Thanks darkesteyes. This is why is was so upset. I didn't know fully what I was agreeing to when I was happy for him to go. Like Tomblidad said, my DH said he saw no more in private dance than in table in main bar, And so a) didn't think it was any difference, and b) was more peeved he had wasted £20!!! But yes it is a sad day when it was all been so 'normalised'. I also got v upset because DH also told me what others did an how some of them had a pact to lie to their Partners Hmm
Also I have a good relationship with DH and a happy life. But this has totally destroyed my trust and it is very hard to get through... Also fair enough if other women don't think it is a big deal. But OP does that's is what DH should care about.

DoTheBestThingsInLifeHaveFleas · 11/06/2013 00:10

Also in response to tomblidads last post. My DH said he 'would not care if I went to see the chippendales' for example. (I wouldn't want to and its not 1995, but anyway). I said ah ' but if I watched chippendales and after show one approached me and we chatted for 15 mins and then he said if you give me 20quid I will take you to private place and stick my hard on in your face' (sorry to be crude) and give you special attention all to yourself, how would you feel. DH then admitted, between half strangled sobs, that he would effing hate it, and if I had done it, he would find it hard to get it out his head. In reality I know he would consider I had crossed an 'unfaithful' line and I wonder if he would have given me the second chance I have given him....

Darkesteyes · 11/06/2013 00:12

Dothebest Sorry but that makes him a big ol" hypocrite.

tomblidad · 11/06/2013 00:15

Of course not I have only been twice myself. There was absolutely nothing in the only one on one I had. The woman who introduced dw and I (dw's best friend) has though and all 3 of us have discussed it. Dw is a woman of the world and certainly not niave. I have a straight feminist friend who did a tour of soho clubs for research purposes...again she had a very different view to yours.

garlicgrump · 11/06/2013 00:15

YES, Do, THAT'S the direct comparison, not the "show"! I'm chuffed that you managed to make the point so clearly, at a time when you must have been very upset. Glad DH got it, too. (Mine was disgusted and claimed not to see the relevance Hmm) I do hope you have successfully cleared this right up between you.

garlicgrump · 11/06/2013 00:17

I have a straight feminist friend who did a tour of soho clubs for research purposes

What, and came away convinced it's all jolly postcard fun? Do us a favour.

DoTheBestThingsInLifeHaveFleas · 11/06/2013 00:19

Oh it soooo does. He realises this and I just hope that made him realise how much it hurt me and how wrong he was. He genuinely didn't understand why I was so hurt, until I gave him that scenario, then he completely came round. I am trying to tell myself he is more of a thoughtless drunken twat than anything else. Not that that is good, it's all relative. OP sorry for high jacking your post. Hope some of this has been helpful. discussion is cathartic. Hope you are okay xx

DoTheBestThingsInLifeHaveFleas · 11/06/2013 00:22

Thanks Grump, I did feel a little pleased with myself as I was quite hysterical at time! Night all x

garlicgrump · 11/06/2013 00:44

I have only been twice myself - Oh dear, I've been loads more than you Blush I hasten to add, I did wise up and discovered my clients were just as happy to be taken out for a long dinner. So I did that instead.

Yogii · 11/06/2013 05:39

As Tomb pointed out, he's not someone that frequents these places. And what I tried to put across earlier is that there are many people like that these days; occasional visitors at times like stag dos. When there's one on every high street (almost), nestled between Waterstones and McDonalds where I live, it's not hard to understand how people might regard them as acceptable. I'd rather they didn't exist.

For sure, not everybody who uses them walks in having fully thought through the objectification, etc. issues.

I felt like he was being unfairly vilified and couldn't quite believe some of the extreme reactions here.

But, my earlier post was insensitive and I shouldn't have said what I did. I'd have it deleted but too late now, so please accept my apologies.

FasterStronger · 11/06/2013 07:43

so women in monogamist relationships need to tell their partners not to play another women to take their clothes off & perform etc., and it they don't, well their poor little darling men just didn't know if would upset them so what would you expect?

...........that is just rubbish.....

what about sexting someone else? its no touching, just a bit of fun, do we all have to tell our partners not to sext? is the default position that's ok?

AgathaF · 11/06/2013 07:59

I think you should get it deleted anyway, Yogii.

AnyFucker · 11/06/2013 08:34

Yogii, you can ask hq to remove the post

bobbywash · 11/06/2013 08:58

garlic well said that's the best post I've read on this. It is a different perspective between the sexes.

The OP has now clearly and unequivically stated her position, it up to her DH to react to that, if he does in a way she can live with, then they will move on.

rootypig · 11/06/2013 15:53

Great post Garlic

OP, I'm glad to see you're back, hope you're doing ok.