Please help Husband and strip club

[ReadyforthechorusLTB]

My husband went on a works night out last night, he came home in a terrible state vomiting on the carpet that I cleaned to save the poor kids standing in it.
Anyway, I've picked up his pants and noticed an obviously stain at the front inside.
I confronted him and he said he went to a strip club. I asked to see his bank account immediately and he has spent £775 ! There is multiple charges some at £115 and even one for £230. Apparently this is the first time he has paid for a dance. I have downloaded a year's worth of statements and I can't see any other incidents.
To make things worse he slipped up and said he went alone after everyone else had gone home. Why?!!

Pre kids I would have walked away. But I have two young children, and leaving would completely change their lives for the worse. He earns more than I do, we have no outside support and I have no family to go to, and I couldn't manage the mortgage payments on my own.
I feel physically sick. I'm not sure how I am meant to trust him again!
Does anyone know what happens at strip clubs. What has he paid for. Is this just dances!

@ReadyforthechorusLTB I hope you are OK. Thisbmust be so stressful for you. I've read all your posts and quite a few others. You need to set aside the broader conversation on strippers = good/bad/prostitute etc. It doesn't really help you right now.

It sounds like he did get suckered in, that it was most likely "just" dances and he fell prey to the spend a bit a lot of times. Being drunk he wasn't in full control of his senses and probably didn't really tally what he was spending. He may also have dribbled slightly hence the stain, it isn't necessarily a full on ejaculation.
None of this excuses his behaviour which was appalling and as a grown man with a wife and daughters he should have known better.

Is it worth leaving him over ? Only you know that. It seems from your posts he's a decent bloke up to this point and somehow he's had a night of madness. I'd suggest some couples counselling if you can afford it ... this is going to take some work to get through and there may be some underlying issues that took him tp this point that he needs to resolve.

Good luck

It is not a game, it is objectification. It is sleazy. It is the patriarchy asserting power over females.

Where did I say I was very young? I didn't. You're assuming and projecting.

Where did I say I didn't earn much? Again, you're assuming and projecting and being a patronising pain in the arse. My education took 7 years to complete and I danced the entire fucking time. Comments from men did not once get under my skin because I resented them, hated them. Did I give a fuck if they thought I was too thin or too fat or my boobs were too big or too small? Absolutely not.

I'll be honest. I earned around 700GBP on a weeknight after I paid all club costs. Friday and Saturdays I earned usually 1500-2000GBP, sometimes more and sometimes less. Sometimes it varied upon location as I worked across the UK. Always "high end" gentlemen's clubs. The men loved me because I was hot and educated and had a Russian accent. I probably met you. If I was only getting 100GBP then I would have never in a million years sold myself like that to leering men, I would have done cleaning or waitressing or something where my dignity did not leak out of every pore of my body and I wasn't contributing to the dregs of society.

It should have been an ego boost really. I had fan pages on social media. Men following me across the country to see me. I was very well loved and very well paid. Because I am a sales person? NO. Because men are entitled and desperate. Was it an ego boost having fans and money? NO. It was cheap and nasty. Dirty.

My education cost me in excess of 100k GBP which I had to cash flow from dancing, alongside all of my own living costs. So don't be a patronising melt on a high horse thinking you are superior because you know nothing about me or any of us on here.

As for life experience and maturity - I can determine accurately that I had more of that when I was about age 9 than you have now...

And sorry @ReadyforthechorusLTB for digressing from your problem.
I hope you feel better soon and I really respect you for your family values and being so understanding of your DH's behaviour. Whatever you choose to do (think it is obvious what that is), I wish you well. Sometimes good people make bad choices.

Thank you for replying to me, it means a lot, and can I just say, I'm 67 and have been through similar issues with my husband many years ago now, it wasn't strippers, it was gambling, we were on the verge of losing our house, I was on the verge of leaving.

It was a nightmare, my husband said very similar things to yours, for a couple of years I couldn't look at him the sane way, but we had children and I knew he was truly sorry. It took us years to get financially sorted, but here we are, children grown up, retired, looking forward to our holidays and happy.

You know your own husband, you feel hurt and betrayed and angry and so would I be. But IF you feel he is genuine then it's up to you to see if you can get past it. Noone on this earth is perfect, and we all deserve the right to he happy so if you have any doubt at all then you know what to do.

Mumsnet is a great place for support, but it's too easy for some folk to say do this or that, when in real life it's a lot more difficult.

I really really wish you well, I would ignore the posters trying to knock lumps off each other here and focus on those genuinely trying to give the best advice they can.

I don't think it matters how many more of us former dancers come on and explain that, yes, these these can and do happen in strip clubs - from dingy dives to the most expensive, exclusive clubs.

The font of all sex industry knowledge will be back to tell us we don't know what we're talking about, because she is the only person in the world to have experience. With paragraph upon paragraph to tell us exactly why 😂

You might be right

But scoring points off each other about it isn't really helping OP.

She came here for advice on her husband, not a debate about strippers and club protocol.

Well bloody said @Confusedandemotional

Totally.

As you can see though. People with zero knowledge are always there first to bombard these threads with their "knowledge" and scare the OP to her wits end. And that's just not right.

There's at least one admitted activist posting.

And the general consensus is they lap up anything from anyone who'll bad mouth the industry and the women within it. But if you don't, you're just deluded and be quiet. That's not ok.

If OP has a balanced view, she can make a balanced decision. I think she has. I don't see it as LTB. I do see it as a trust issue going forward that will take some very careful navigating.

Like she says, she doesn't want to be "that woman" but I honestly think for a while, she needs to be, because her trust has been so badly shattered. There needs to be no situation where she is caused any reason to doubt him, for a prolonged period. Otherwise this is the first place her mind is going to go, and it will just spiral.

@ReadyforthechorusLTB

We are trying to muddle through. He has been very apologetic, he is extremely ashamed of himself and he said before I even found out he was absolutely disgusted with what he had done. He said he will see a therapist to understand his self destructive behaviour.

This wouldn't be good enough for me personally. While I do think that people sometimes don't fully understand all of the factors that can lead to certain behaviour or their own mental state etc and that they do sometimes need therapy to unpick it or time to reflect on it properly, I don't believe that people just randomly do stuff and don't know the reason why at the time.
It might not be the full reason and there could be lots at play but people do know what they were thinking at the time, and I would expect at least to be told that.

Did he feel for example that he just really wanted to see strippers? Did he feel entitled to do so because of x, y or z reasons? Did he feel unappreciated? Or just horny?

I'd expect him to tell me at least something...and not just make out he doesn't have the first clue why he went and that he'd need to go to therapy to form any understanding at all.

I know this won't go down well on here but we have just been parenting and not giving each other any attention, I honestly think he just needed some attention and an ego boast.

If it's this he should admit it, he shouldn't need therapy to begin to admit that.

He said he wished he had died that night so I didn't know what a disgusting person he is. He does seem sorry.

It's soooo common for people to say stuff like that as a way of expressing how sorry they are and saying how shit they are as people but often it's quite manipulative and they say those things to avoid giving actual answers. Maybe they do feel disgusting or like a horrible person but it still can have the effect of manipulation. It's kind of an easy way out in some ways.....just keep saying how you're a terrible disgusting person.

THIS! And if it were me i wouldnt be able to have sex with him again. I just couldnt

Everything always seems, or feels better after a couple of days.

Sorry you've had to go through this. One thing that is always common on these types of threads is the man saying they'll neve4 go out again or get therapy (seems a bit extreme to me if it was a one off?) or they are disgusted with themselves. They wouldn't be if they hadn't been caught though. 🙄 problem with that is if they stick to not going out etc. they usually start resenting the situation of their own making. Or if they do go out, they feel on edge in case they don't message you back, so they resent that and it becomes your fault he can't enjoy a night out anymore.

Him standing by you through MH issues like that is the bare minimum tho, remember that. He didn't do you a favour there. ❤️

And the parenting thing, I get that. Kids take priority, rightly. Funny though how we usually just sigh and say its the father who needed attention and an ego boost, not us while we're armpit deep in nappies or sorting school stuff out, the weekly shop, life admin, we just crack on, knackered.

You may never really trust him again. Never going out isn't realistic as you say so you may always be wondering whats going on if he's not home when he says etc. and the second you query where he'd been, he'll probably kick off that you're stifling him.

Look after yourself, be vigilant and hopefully you can move on and put this behind you if he does prove himself and he's not following the common pattern of man-caught-out behaviour.

Good luck! ❤️

I would see the name of the club, go there for a visit with a girlfriend, (or male friend even better) and see what’s on offer and how much it costs. That’s all you can really do. I’m assuming all the charges were just at these two places? See if they have rooms, extras etc.