Strip club

[Roundtheruggedrocks]

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?

Sorry, posted too soon. Meant to say, I am heartened by your response to Yogii!

Thanks rooty. Damage done, but it's been deleted.

Gracious Yogii, I was hardly having a go, just saying I'm heartened to see the OP still has her mettle.

I have been mulling this over for a while. I really don't think that what he did justifies ending a marriage. I think it's understandable that, if it hadn't been spelled out to him that it was a dealbreaker, he wouldn't have expected it to be - a lapdance is a very different thing from having a romantic liason or paying for sex IMHO. If he were to go off and do it after this, then that would be completely different.

What I'm a little bit more worried about is why you have reacted so strongly to it and have leapt to blaming yourself rather than him. It doesn't seem right that you are the one tying yourself in knots, losing weight, and fixating on this. Perhaps you need less of your self worth to be linked to your relationship - focus on yourself a little more and concentrate on loving yourself as you are.

Sorry Keely but that post is very woman blamey.
HE should not want to do it himself.

And knowing that a young woman almost naked has gyrated in her DHs face. I think most women would be insecure.
But no the OP should love herself as she is and concentrate on herself instead of asking why her partner in ok with the idea of buying women.
Cant believe in still reading Stepford surrendered crap in 2013.

Not blaming the woman - but just wondering why she has let it affect her so much. Not asking her to accept that he has done it (but just querying whether it is worth ending a marriage over this one thing - which he has said, and OP has agreed, he didn't know was a dealbreaker) - but that she should not be blaming herself and certainly not letting it make her feel insecure or that she should lose weight.

Very different from saying she has to be a Stepford surrendered wife - which I absolutely am not.

I don't want to keep labouring this, keely, but do you not think a decent man would question things after his very first visit to a strip club? (Or maybe after two or three, if he's abominably young & easily led?)

You go to a bar which is staffed by nearly naked women. These women come up and flirt with you. There is no doubt they're doing this because you're paying them to - it's not that the mere sight of you makes women strip off and clamour for your attention! You need Lynx for that. Pay them some more, and they'll take off still more of their clothes. More money, and they'll perform simulated sex over you. They're like slot machines.

What kind of man needs to be told that this is demeaning, misogynistic and objectifies the women?

Actually no. My husband is a very decent, loving man, who is a great father and is not at all misogynistic. However, he has been to such places on stag weekends. When we have discussed, he has said that he feels that it is a woman's right to choose how she makes money - including if she wants to strip for a living (and, to my knowledge, none of the women in such places are compelled to do so). However, he has also said that if it was a dealbreaker for me, he wouldn't go.

Aren't we being a tad patronising to the women who work in such places by assuming that they have no choice about being there and are "like slot machines"?

And keely arent you being a tad patronising by saying this.

I think it's understandable that, if it hadn't been spelled out to him that it was a dealbreaker, he wouldn't have expected it to be

It's their job to be "like slot machines", Keely. I'm not making a moral judgement on them. I'm judging their job description and the customers who create a demand for this work.

You cant visit strip clubs and not have misogynist tendencies. You are funding a misogynistic industry in doing so.

I asked my DH about this and he read the thread too. On the whole he agrees with the majority opinion here but he did say that although he thinks it is demeaning and objectifying women, the majority of strippers have chosen that job over others. So I guess, like Keelsy DH, he thinks they are free to choose how they make their living.

The reason he personally would never go though, is because by buying into it it helps to normalise it in society and more and more young women will grow up accepting they are just objects and that stripping is a good ay to earn a living. He likens it to women of ages old who accepted they were their fathers property to trade and then their husbands. We should be moving away from both sexes thinking its acceptable for people to objectify other women.

With anything that involves sex, NOTHING should need to be spelled out and everything should be considered a dealbreaker until consent is given, not the other way around. Its patronising to men to suggest they need to be told beforehand what not to do in a marriage.

Agreeing with your and DH, Umlauf, except for the bit about dancers choosing their occupation - which is a frequent sticking point when talking about the sex industries.

The normalisation creates those jobs. If all the men throwing money at strip clubs were throwing it at restaurants instead, say, the women who are currently strippers would be wait staff. The customers are the cause of those jobs. Their choice determines the staff's choice of work.

It is just so sad that so many young women these days think it is an ok way to earn some money. Where will it go in the future?

sorry, wrong thread

will ask MN to delete as I wrongly bumped this one

Your DH may have madding whore complex from what I see in other thread but you already know that.

For interest, about 15 years ago, all the mostly married and respectable men in my team at work used to go to a strip club at Friday lunch times. They didn't hide it from me but sort off excluded me - for some reason - probably as I was recently married or perhaps thought that I was not corruptible. Anyway the door was open for me to go. I was curious and tempted but never went. We had dinner a few times as couples and everyone was honkey dorey. The point that I making is that it is so common place these days with all the post feminist larkey, Internet porn, Rihanna bending over videos, give it to us girls videos