Oh help, am I being controlling? What would you do?

[Lolipoplady]

I'll try and keep it short:

DP was invited to a school friend's stag weekend (he is usher at the wedding) next month, and also a 'lads weekend away' with some uni friends in April. Both of these are to European cities.

From what DP has told me about his past, whenever he has been away/out with his uni friends, they have invariably ended up drunk and in strip clubs. I dislike strip clubs - I feel that they're seedy and unethical and to be honest I really don't want a partner of mine watching naked women as entertainment. We have talked about this, and DP has said that he doesn't much like them himself but feels he has to go along with everyone else so as not to spoil the night.

So, when I was told about these two weekends, I told him that I felt uncomfortable with him going on two weekends away so close together where strip clubs are pretty much inevitable, and suggested that he pick one to go on as a compromise. He seemed fine with this and has arranged to go on the stag weekend.

He's just told his other friends that he won't be able to go away with them, and they've come back to him saying that I'm controlling and clearly don't trust him and that this is a bad foundation for a relationship (we have been together 2 1/2 years). DP is now saying that he will never be able to see these friends again because he only ever sees them on drunken weekends (they live in different cities). I never said that I wanted him to stop seeing them, just that I was uncomfortable with two weekends involving strip clubs so close together.

am I being controlling here? What do you think? I thought I was being quite reasonable but now I'm beginning to question myself. I don't want my DP to stop seeing his friends but I hate what goes along with it i.e. drunken strip club visits.

Yes you seem a little controlling , sorry

Not wanting your partner to go on stag weekends and visit strip clubs doesn't mean you are insecure, have body issues, or are controlling, absolute bullshit, it means you have standards and have a level of what you find acceptable in a relationship or not, simple as.

Some women don't mind, that's up to them, we are all different. You clearly mind, he knows this, surely you are more important than some sleazy back street strip club.

I bet if women were truly honest they'd much prefer their other half's not be doing this but say nowt cos, well every other man is doing it and they don't want to come across as well, controlling.

You either don't mind it, or you do. Either of those does not make you controlling.

But saying - well I don't mind it the first weekend, but I do the second, and I'll walk away if you go on the second weekend, makes you sound controlling.

Your DP is a bit of a wet lettuce, isn't he?

I think it's controlling to tell him what he can and can't do. I think it's fine, however, to tell him what you will do if he does X.

I'm another who can't see how this is a compromise. It's more of a contradiction, "you can pay for sex services in February but not in April".

Your partner has told his mates you won't let him go and now he's trying to guilt trip you

That too

I don't understand the comments that say that just because you've come to a compromise, then he went back on it after a conversation with friends, then you can't be controlling. Most of the posts about controlling DHs are women who agree to "compromises" with them and then go to friends or MN for a gut check.

And isn't this basically exactly equivalent to when a DP/DH makes a fuss every time a woman goes out with her friends to a bar because "he can't trust her"? And isn't that really controlling? This is super controlling.

I've been in same sex relationships with women who tried to control my socialising, I'm single! If it's was cos of money he couldn't go then fair enough, or if strippers were a deal breaker to your relationship, but if money's not an issue and one is fine he she go on both.

I think "being controlling" is a bit of a red herring here. If you are uncomfortable about your DP's willingness to go to strip clubs (which I totally relate to btw), then you are uncomfortable. There are three possibilities

• He genuinely doesn't like them and just needs to man up with his friends. If he values his relationship now is the time to do that.

• He actually isn't that bothered, he's happy to go and uses the friends "pressure" as a handy excuse.

• He loves them and he's just spinning you a line and always has been. You get awkward about it, he tried to placate you but doesn't really intend to follow through.

I don't know him and I don't know which it is but what you have here is a bloke who plans to go to at least one woman-objectifying, seedy miserable strip club anyway.

I don't think I could get serious with a DP who had anything to do with strip clubs. I think OP feels similarly put off by them but has let it slide, hoped he would grow out of it, blamed it on the friends etc etc but now she finds she can't just shut up and put up. I don't think it's controlling so much as a deep difference of opinion/worldview which has let to an unsatisfying fudge of a compromise. I can see how you got there OP, but it doesn't make rational sense.

Yes it's controlling to tell someone what social life they can have. But I think it's ok if an aspect of their social life is deeply offputting and you feel you have to say so. If you tell him you'll walk away and you mean it and you will, that's not controlling, it's just the facts. But it only makes sense if it's any strip club activity at all, rather than two visits not one, which doesn't make sense.

And if my male partner told me he couldn't be with a woman who ogled and objectified men at male strip clubs, I'd think that was fair comment too.

Actually forget my comment, ToSeaInaSieve is dead right. Just to add that I think this is why women end up 3 years into a marriage stunned that their partner watches porn secretly. The DP clearly is fine with going to strip clubs even if you can believe it's for the "right reasons" (which I don't). The OP needs to either accept that, try to change his mind (rather than his behavior because that clearly will be temporary) or leave him.

This word controlling is now a catch all term being used by people trying to coerce others in relationships into accepting behaviour they feel uncomfortable with, if your own personal boundaries are being compromised and you don't like it, it is fine to speak up and say what you find permissible within the confines of your relationship..

I think it is controlling as you will let him do one but not the other. He is an adult and doesn't need permission to go away with his friends. The sex aspect is another side, some hate strip clubs and some aren't bothered by them. Same with lots of things on relationships. You have to decide if you want a partner that shares your views or one that has different opinions.

I think the issue here is whether you want to be with a weak and passive man.

I think people are living in a fantasy world if they think that when in a relationship they can do what they want when they want.. Decisions made in relationships for our own personal reasons and as a couple have an effect on the other person whether we realise it or not..

An adult would take a partners feelings, thoughts and wishes into consideration before committing to a decision, independent behaviour within a relationship only works if the behaviour doesn't involve inappropriate actions or a selfish demands and in this case using peer pressure to manipulate his own way to do something which she feels is unreasonable... Tbh he sounds like a he's acting like a single bloke... A bit of a nobber...
Controlling on mumsnet is a oft mis used term especially in situations such as this..

It's not controlling, it's allowing him to make a choice about what is important to him; you or getting off on watching abused and vulnerable women being degraded. Just a thought OP your DP seems a bit spineless, do you think it's possible that he genuinely doesn't want to hang out with these guys anymore but doesn't have the courage to break away from them. He said he wouldn't have a stag do cos he doesn't trust his friends. Sounds like he's a bit intimidated by them.

So his friendships with these people are solely sustained by expensive boozy weekends abroad with visits to strip clubs? The friends sound like sexist tossers and intolerant of anyone, even in their group, that dislikes strip clubs! he sounds like a wet sheep.

As pps has said I would be pissed off that he told these people that he isn't going because you don't want him to, that in itself was out of order.

Ridiculous to "panic" and not want a stag do because ??? His friends would somehow make him do stuff you wouldn't like? Like he has no control over himself. Weedy.

God I hate men who wind their mates up about being under the thumb of their wives \ dps

Urgh so woman hating

Op tbh yanbu for not wanting him to go but if he is the type to cheat etc he will do it anyway, you can't try and keep him away from things like this. When dh has to go to stuff like this I just make out I don't care.

Oh yeah and it would piss me off no end if dh said to his mates I can't go because the Mrs (ugh) will give me a hard time or whatever

Spineless

Controlling my foot. Bunch of sexist arseholes more like. Early on in my current relationship (going on 15 years now) I had this out with my DH. I'm not stopping him seeing his mates, not stopping him going on Stags. But if he chooses to go to a strip club, I'm out. He was amazed by this as I'm really easy going in all other areas of our relationship. Initially he stopped going when he realised how genuinely upset I was at attendance at one during a stag (before we'd even had a conversation about it). His response to his mates was ' I love her, I don't want to make her sad. I'm not fussed about lap dancers.' To the more persistent ones it was 'fuck off. Mate'
Now, having grown up and become more informed, his attitude has changed towards strip clubs and those who attend them.

Oh and no, you're not being controlling, or a prude. You have self respect and bounderys.

I had a similar issue with DH when we hadn't been together for very long. He had been talking about me in a way which implied I had been telling he could/couldn't do certain things, which portrayed me as 'her indoors' type of nag.

I was outraged, because nothing had been further from the truth. I had never stopped him doing anything!

I told him in no uncertain terms that it was really offensive to portray me like this, and he did acknowledge that I wasn't like that, and stopped doing it.

I genuinely think it had never crossed his mind that I might take offense - I suspect it's something so ingrained in men that that's how they behave/speak about their partners to other men. Even though said men - like my DH - may actually be perfectly decent men.

I had hoped that it was a generational thing (we're both in our mid-50s) but on the basis of the OP and other posts, sadly is sounds like this kind of thing is still alive, well and kicking.

Biwi, sadly reckon it is still a big thing! Was bad at university in the 90s IME. Lots of pressure to be "cool" and not a "nag" about things like porn, topless pics in lads' flats, strip clubs.

I think the issue is saying you don't mind one lot of strippers but do mind the second. Surely it's a no go or it's not. That's what makes it sound controlling more than a you don't like the thought of him going to strip clubs. Put your foot down if you really hate him seeing strippers and say it's me or the strippers.

More generally speaking, it seems that a certain subset of men see going to strip clubs, getting their idea of what sex is about from porn, etc etc as totally normal and their right. Those men will use things like peer pressure, laughing at men who "give in" to their partner not wanting them to go, ridiculing women who disapprove as "nagging" "controlling" "her indoors" etc. and using terms like "under the thumb" "on a short leash". They do that to justify objectifying and oppressing women - obviously, it's easier to see that as OK if you see women in the main as lesser than men and think only what men want matters, that any man who takes a woman's feelings into account is weak and henpecked, etc.

It's a man's own choice whether to belong to that subset of men or not. And it's our choice as women whether or not to have relationships with men from that subset. There will be grey areas, like men who change their understanding/POV over time as a PP described. But I still think it makes sense to put your cards on the table at the start.

It is individual women's free choice and of course there are some who are fine with it, enjoy it themselves even. But for those of us who see pornification of women as a problem, I think refusing to date these kinds of men at all is the best way to get our point across. If you don't approve and don't like it, but accept it as part of normal male behaviour, or compromise so as not to be thought of as a nag, you're already in an unequal relationship where you aren't, at some level, being seen as as valid a human being as he sees himself as. You'll always be struggling with trying to fit yourself into his unreconstructed view of women.

if more girls/women could just go, "ughh strip clubs no thanks, sorry love date's off" at the first hurdle, more men would wake up and realise how unattractive this makes them. But women often suppress their own feelings, I guess because they don't want to miss out on a relationship, or they don't want to be seen as ballbreaking, a feminist or a humourless old nag. But being seen that way by those men - we should be OK with that.

Here here ToSeaInaSieve