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Original poster

Rant: I’m Naive for not expecting strip clubs

77 replies

Hooplahooping · 17/09/2023 16:59

I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to find my adult respect for him again. My husband and I have had our rocky patches, but I think with therapy we have been muddling our way through.

he’s due to join some old friends for a weekend in New York in a couple of weeks. People I know, whose wives I know well. I asked about the itinerary and he talked through the games they were going to watch, the golf and then said. And I know the guys will want to end up in some seedy bars.

I expressed explicitly that I am not ok with strip clubs. This isn’t news to him. I’ve been explicitly not ok with them in the past when they’ve been discussed re: stag dos etc

he then got really angry - said that when I agreed to him going for the weekend I had tacitly agreed to it. That I am being wilfully naive + that I have put HIM in an impossible situation. That that just what guys do.

This isn’t a stag do. It’s a bunch of 40yr old men. If I wasn’t furious with him I’d be embarrassed for them. Urgh.

and doubly urgh that he’s flipped this on me.

I know it’s not ok. I’ve got the most awful ick about how transparent and pathetic the redirected rage was. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do about it all - I just need to vent.

OP posts:
GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:01

he then got really angry - said that when I agreed to him going for the weekend I had tacitly agreed to it. That I am being wilfully naive + that I have put HIM in an impossible situation. That that just what guys do.

No, it's not normal for decent guys to go into strip clubs on non stag do trips when they're in relationships/have partners.

It may be done by a certain type of man; women can choose whether to stay with that type of man.

I wonder how the other wives/partners feel about this.

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:01

He’s wrong to put it back on you, of course strip clubs wouldn’t have been your first thought. But I’d just let him go, with him knowing that you don’t like it. If you say he can’t go, that makes you controlling. Hopefully it’s a relationship with trust, if it isn’t, you’ve got problems any way.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:02

If you say he can’t go, that makes you controlling

No it doesn't.

Sex industry clubs are not an unreasonable boundary in a monogamous relationship.

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:04

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:02

If you say he can’t go, that makes you controlling

No it doesn't.

Sex industry clubs are not an unreasonable boundary in a monogamous relationship.

Any time you forbid someone to do something it’s controlling. It’s not about what they are doing.

AtrociousCircumstance · 17/09/2023 17:05

Using the sex industry and using your marital money to do so? Pathetic loser, objectifying women, too weak to stand up to peer pressure even as a man of 40+. And then doing a switcheroo with his dumbshit fury and frustration and getting angry at you, OP.

He sounds so weak, so self interested. Ugh. Sorry OP.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:05

It's not unreasonable to expect your long-term committed monogamous partner not to go to establishments that are about women going nude and performing dancing and sex acts (in some of them) intended to be sexually titillating ... And if they go for personal/private dances, rubbing their breasts in his face and genitals on his genitals through trousers.

These men wouldn't think it was ok if their wives did that for another man or if they had it done to them by a man .. . I guarantee it. I'd put money on it.

It's unreasonable of them to expect to do it, not of their wives to expect them not to do it.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:07

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:04

Any time you forbid someone to do something it’s controlling. It’s not about what they are doing.

Show quote history

Anything?

It's controlling to forbid someone to do anything?

Think that through.

RichardArmitagesWife · 17/09/2023 17:07

He’s completely unreasonable, this is not a thing every group of men do, because not all men participate in the sex trade.

MidnightOnceMore · 17/09/2023 17:08

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:04

Any time you forbid someone to do something it’s controlling. It’s not about what they are doing.

Show quote history

Sorry but no.

Either partner in a relationship can say 'this is a boundary for me'. The other partner then chooses how to respond.

So if this is a deal-breaker, that's ok.

It's not controlling to have reasonable and fairly-expressed boundaries.

Panaa · 17/09/2023 17:08

he then got really angry - said that when I agreed to him going for the weekend I had tacitly agreed to it. That I am being wilfully naive + that I have put HIM in an impossible situation. That that just what guys do.

How manipulative.
It's not an impossible situation. Plenty of men in the same boat opt out because they're not sheep.

Nanny0gg · 17/09/2023 17:08

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:04

Any time you forbid someone to do something it’s controlling. It’s not about what they are doing.

Show quote history

They're two adults

She can't 'forbid' anything when he's miles away

But she can tell him it's a dealbreaker

Original poster
Hooplahooping · 17/09/2023 17:10

DustyLee123 · 17/09/2023 17:04

Any time you forbid someone to do something it’s controlling. It’s not about what they are doing.

Show quote history

I hear what you’re saying here. I can’t forbid any other human from doing anything.

but that doesn’t mean that I can’t have reasonable boundaries about what fees comfortable for me, and for there to be consequences if those are disregarded.

freedom of choice isn’t freedom of consequence and all that…

my biggest issue is genuinely what do do with this horror I have of how pathetic the whole thing is. I thought he was smarter than an indignant attempt to flip the blame. And now I have a mental image of a gang of 40yo men being sweaty and gross in a strip club thinking they’re anything other than seedy twats. Blurgh.

edited to remove the most worst of the errors.

OP posts:
GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:10

How dare he get angry at you and accuse you of being naive.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:11

Panaa · 17/09/2023 17:08

he then got really angry - said that when I agreed to him going for the weekend I had tacitly agreed to it. That I am being wilfully naive + that I have put HIM in an impossible situation. That that just what guys do.

How manipulative.
It's not an impossible situation. Plenty of men in the same boat opt out because they're not sheep.

It's very clear from ops husbands anger and accusations of naivety at her that he does not intend to opt out.

AtrociousCircumstance · 17/09/2023 17:13

Yes and it’s very clear that’s he’s behaving like a sheep, as @Panaa is suggesting.

StoatofDisarray · 17/09/2023 17:14

Only some kinds of men go to strip clubs. The creepy kind.

Panaa · 17/09/2023 17:14

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:11

It's very clear from ops husbands anger and accusations of naivety at her that he does not intend to opt out.

Show quote history

Oh I know, I'm just saying it's not even close to being an impossible situation....and he's the one who used the term, implying he has no choice. I'd be making sheep sounds at him 😃

But I would also tell him to give over with the impossible situation and manipulation crap.

LuckyPeonies · 17/09/2023 17:16

Op, he sounds like a stroppy teen arguing with mummy, not like a mature, considerate, loving, reasonable adult man and husband. This would put me right off him. 😝

nursei · 17/09/2023 17:16

You've been having therapy and 'muddling though'. Doesn't sound great and now as a man in his 40's he wants to go off to strip club and leer and possibly touch the women in there. Seriously not ok. I don't think muddling through is an option anymore. He sounds like a big daft kid.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:19

As an experiment, I'd tell him that you may be ok with it, but that you'll be telling the other wives, and you'll be organising a party with male strippers for when they're away. You'll all be hitting the margaritas hard and having a good ol' time with the strippers.

That "isn't the same", I bet, will be his first words.

But you can't get the same because the few male lap dancing clubs in the UK closed, afaik. And reviews/shows are not the same as a strip club; sitting chatting with strippers on sofas, potential to have private "dances" etc.

Start browsing the male strippers online.. say you wives will probably all go in a city break for it because the supply quality is better in big cities.

They'll probably just lie btw, and say they're not doing it, but still do it. This is clearly what they do on male trips. And it reflects their attitude towards women, relationships, and life in general. They want "stealth" cheating, that's how I see men who always go for sex industry stuff when away from their partners. They want to cheat and feel entitled to cheat but they keep it what they consider not "real" cheating.

Though sometimes they don't keep it at that either.

bonzaitree · 17/09/2023 17:19

everyone Has personal feelings about it.

personally I think adult men going to a strip club is pathetic. (No hate to the women who work there.)

I don’t think I’ve had the chat with my OH because I don’t think he’d go.

ohdamnitjanet · 17/09/2023 17:19

AtrociousCircumstance · 17/09/2023 17:05

Using the sex industry and using your marital money to do so? Pathetic loser, objectifying women, too weak to stand up to peer pressure even as a man of 40+. And then doing a switcheroo with his dumbshit fury and frustration and getting angry at you, OP.

He sounds so weak, so self interested. Ugh. Sorry OP.

Absolutely.

StorminanDcup · 17/09/2023 17:23

I’m right there with you OP, a bunch of old sad fucks sitting on a sofa covered in other sad fucks precum, believing that the naked woman in front of them is doing it for pleasure.

what a sad little life.

my DH knows this is a line for me too, there doesn’t need to be any arguments. I wouldn’t forgive it.

The gaslighting and attempt to diminish and invalidate your perfectly reasonable boundaries is equally as bad.

What a twat.

GilbertMarkham · 17/09/2023 17:24

Also men who can't bond without objectifying and sleazing over women and paying women to grind on their crotches ..... Are pretty abhorrent.

Many many other ways of bonding (I know lots of men who go on sports and team building trips in the middle of nowhere etc) but that's what they choose, getting drunk, possibly taking coke (?) and frequenting titty bars. It says a lot about them.

I guess they don't have the balls for the team building/challenge trips; they choose the easy, sleazy way.

Bansheed · 17/09/2023 17:26

You choosing to pay look at other women to titallate yourself and your mates means you are no longer an attractive partner to me and it means I leave you.

I have agency to police my own boundaries. Your own choice. Though it may not even be, as you have chosen to express that you find it acceptable.

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