I’ve always found strippers for a bachelor party to be plain wrong. You’re about to commit to marriage and you feel you must see strippers and get a lap dance. You need to reevaluate the reasons your getting married. This goes for the bride too.
Interestingly, one may substitute other terms like “intractable,” “domineering,” “critical,” and “humorless” into this formula and arrive at an equally true statement.
I’ve made a lot of concessions to my wife over the years as our relationship has evolved, and almost uniformly feel that I am a better person for it. And it’s entirely possible that the Great Premarital Stripper Prohibition is not an ominous foreshadowing of the OP’s unhappy life as a eunuch, but something about it rings warning bells for me nonetheless. I hope I am wrong, as I often am.
- SNenc, I think you did the right thing for the right reasons. Good on you.
I won’t judge the reasonableness of her request, but you two seem to have struck a good balance overall on the issue.
- I get to tell my story about strippers at my bachelor party - or, rather, why there weren’t any.
My ‘best man’ was (and still is, for that matter) a straight woman. My other groomsman was/is gay.
My joke leading up to the wedding was that we could have a bachelor party, invite my wife and her attendants (straight women, all). They could have a male stripper to entertain them, and I could sit in the corner and read a book.
Then someone suggested that, to get me back into the game, I could be the male stripper.
I think that’s where my wife drew the line. 
My husband’s not really thrilled about them either. He went to a bachelor party (before we were married, but we were in a committed relationship) for a friend at an “exotic dance” club (IIRC not entirely nude, no lap dances), and tipped the ladies nicely but wasn’t that interested in the goings-on. He did have a pleasant time talking with the ones who came around between sets to chat, even found one who was majoring in the same field he got his degree in, and they talked shop for a while.
Oh yes, we did go together to a bondage/fetish gear fashion show at a nightclub when we were younger and hipper. One of his coworkers had come along and brought his wife, and upon seeing exactly what the show was, she dragged him out of there.
I agree with the comment that they’re for the groom’s single friends. My sister’s then-fiance (she left him years later) was one of the groomsmen for my husband, and apparently thinking he was going to take over party planning, started talking about strippers galore, lap dances, etc. When my husband said no thanks, the guy won’t drop it, and eventually starts saying he’s going to get friends and they’ll kidnap my husband and drag him off to the strippers - and he’s serious. Stupid move. My husband states flat out that any kidnap attempts will be met with violence. Dude finally backs down. For the record, I think that those “wild bachelorette” parties are tacky and annoying, even disrespectful. Dildo accessories, “suck-a-buck” t-shirts (Life Saver candies sewn to the bride-to-be’s T-shirt, you get to bite one off if you pay a dollar), oiled up male strippers shaking their banana-hammock-clad junk, all that crap is obnoxious. Since the entire wedding party was from out of state, we just had everyone get together at a fun restaurant and ate and drank our butts off.
I agree that its setting boundries. All thats left to determine is if ‘boundry setting’ goes both ways in the relationship.
(ie Is it the ‘she can set boundries, while any request you make just makes you a control freak’ double-standard?)
Put it this way: Tell her no strippers at the party. Go one further: Tell her you won’t do strip clubs at all anymore…ever. (Its no great loss. Trust me.)
But.
Tell her you don’t want her to set foot in any Chippendales-type situations either, and that if she does, its a deal-breaker on the spot. Just like its a deal-breaker for you to have strippers around you.
If she kisses you and gives you a night of the most amazing passion you’ve ever had in your life, you’ll know that you’ve found The One and are set for life.
And if she hems, haws & calls you a ‘control freak’, break it off now. Because if her idea of marriage was just to fit you with a collar while she does whatever she pleases, that’s no partnership, Patsy. Better (and cheaper) for you know where things stand now than for you find out after the ceremony.
And anyone who thinks either group of traits defines their SO should get out of that relationship, post haste.
Maybe it’s because I’m female and don’t actually possess any testicles (darling though I think they are), but I just don’t get why choosing not to indulge in sexual gratification outside a relationship leads to loss of sex and/or testicles inside a relationship.
Or, put another way, if my fiance, at my request, with consideration for my feelings, said “no strippers”, he’d be getting whatever it was he did enjoy, from me, frequently and enthusiastically.
Being considerate of your partner’s wishes =! being pussy whipped.
In the context of a bachelor party and the absence of any other details, I see no problem.
So? Listen, my line about prudes was a bit of hyperbole, so let’s just drop it. Besides, I was not quite saying ‘women who against strippers at bachelor parties are prudes,’ but merely that choosing an issue such as strippers is much more conducive to having a legion of people agree with the fiance merely on the notion that ‘strippers are bad.’ Of course, that implies that I think people who dislike strippers are prudish, which certainly is a different definition than a fair chunk of the population.
I was making a point, perhaps badly, about the nature and reasonability of her demands. Demanding no strippers is A-OK apparently, but demanding no beer or snack foods would be insane. Yet, it’s a demand and saying “I love you honey so I’ll agree to whatever you say,” would deal with both situations equally.
While I understand where you’re coming from, I really do, I cant say I agree. I dont know what to say. You seem to be all worked up my usage of the word prude, so I apologize.
I’m torn between apologizing again for offending you and recommending you grow a thicker skin. Can I do both?
I feel the bachelor party isn’t so much of ‘sowing wild oats’ as a playful teasing ritual where-in bachelors do things that are normally taboo in a relationship, such as strippersand getting ass-blasted drunk and putting horses on elevators etc etc. For me, again I say for me, the fiance interfering like this is not my cup of tea.I dunno… I’m big on tradition, even ones that some think stupid and uncaring.
Listen, I have no beef with you, and all of this seems to be mostly irrelevant to the matter at hands. In this thread, we’re not talking about “Strippers in a relationship - yay or nay” or even “Strippers at bachelor parties - moral or not?” but the specific interactions between Snenc and his fiance. If you wish to talk with me about our differences, let’s take this to PMs.
After giving it much thought, Anne Neville’s opinion sums it up nicely:
Why does she not want strippers at his bachelor party? How strongly does she not want it? How strongly does he want strippers? Why does he want strippers? These are all questions which we are not privy to the answers so far (correct me if I’m wrong). I said earlier that agreeing to his wife’s request of no strippers was the way to go, but I would readily change my mind with more information.
I’m a husband of 35 years, and I have to agree whole-heartedly. If she doesn’t trust you now, she won’t trust you for the rest of your marriage. It’s hard enough to sustain love and commitment under the best of circumstances; distrust and mysogynistic perceptions make it nearly impossible.
Granted, but you didn’t answer my question: I’m curious to know at what point you think someone become bound by the marital vows. You seem determined to force the groom (and, presumably, the bride) to observe the restrictions of the wedding vows before the actual wedding, which forces me to wonder when they are supposed to start and, secondarily, what the point of the wedding ceremony is if they are already bound by their vows.
Seriously, Auto, we’re fine. I objected to your use of ‘prude’, and you agree that was hyperbole.
The point I was trying to get across (and seem to be using more words than Bulwer-Lytton, and not to much better effect), is that there are more reasons for a woman to request (not demand) that her fiance not hire strippers for his bachelor party than wanting to emasculate him/prove her dominance/put a collar on him/whatever.
Sometimes, instead of those reasons, there is a deeply seated emotional need to be shown that her feelings on that topic matter more than one evening’s vicarious debauchery.
Everyone’s mileage will vary. Some women have absolutely no problem with their SOs going to a strip club or hiring a stripper. Some men have absolutely no interest in paying for a stripper in any circumstances. Yay, them. But there will be some other situation that comes up where emotional needs conflict, and the matter of respect and compassion becomes paramount.
I’ve only skimmed this thread, but it seems to me that we’ve discussed what your fiancee wants, and what your buddy wants. But (and maybe I missed something), what do you want?
I ask because I’ve set up at least one bachelor party and also, had my own (more on that in a minute). When I set up a buddy’s, I asked him what he wanted. His wants ranged from what seemed ridiculous (“I’d like all the guys to come in a jacket and tie”) to the eminently sensible (“I’d like a pot of coffee and some soft drinks set out so nobody feels they have to drink beer all night”). He didn’t want strippers, he did want a few poker games to occur. He didn’t want stag films, he didn’t mind if the guys smoked cigars, and he did want pasta salad among the food. Didn’t matter what I wanted, but I had to make his wishes happen. And I did. And he has some very nice memories he’s not afraid to share with his wife. They’ve been married nearly 20 years, by the way.
In my case, my best man asked what I wanted. I didn’t want a party with a bunch of guys at all. And so, my best man and I had a very nice meal at a fine restaurant, with cocktails and wine, and superb Cuban cigars and single-malt Scotch afterwards. A great evening, and my fiancee had no problem at all with it.
I guess my point is that a lot of the time, the groom does not get to say much about the wedding itself. At least let the poor guy have a say in what the bachelor party is going to be like. And when that happens, the groom’s wishes can be surprising. The party organizer should do his best to make the groom’s wishes happen, regardless of the organizer’s or any friends’ wants.
I would suggest that you make your wishes abundantly clear to the guy who is throwing you the bachelor party. If you do not want something, you shouldn’t have it. With all due respect to your fiancee, she doesn’t have a lot of pull in this matter–but you are, of course, always able to consider her desires in your wishes, and to incorporate her wishes if you like. Remember also that there are alternatives to the “let’s all get loaded and call the strippers” bachelor parties.
Regardless of what you do, have fun and congratulations on your wedding!
Ah, I read that loud and clear. Glad we’re cool.
SNenc, you made the right call and it speaks well of you.
One thing mentioned in the OP that hasn’t really been touched on is that SNenc’s fiancee apparently works with an anti- (sex?)trafficking group. I imagine that exposes her to the vile side of the sex industry and that it greatly influences her feelings about strippers. Intellectually, she might know that many strippers enjoy their work and do it voluntarily, but she may find it viscerally hard to disassociate voluntary sex work from forced sex work associated with human trafficking.
In other words, it’s not about SNenc being tempted, it’s about feeling that hiring strippers is exploiting them and supporting the sex industry. (Not saying that’s necessarily my personal view, but if I worked with issues of human trafficking, I would probably be extra-senstive to it). I don’t think it’s demanding too much for one partner to ask another not to support something they find morally repugnant. If you can’t respect your partner’s feelings on what they see as an issue of moral significance, then you probably shouldn’t marry them.
Fair enough.
Wedding vows aren’t the only place where expectations of fidelity come up. If I were in an intimate relationship with someone, then I make it clear what my expectations are. Anything I ask of another person, I do myself. I don’t believe in double standards.
There is no force involved. If he says my expectations are too high, too restrictive, of the wrong bend, or whatever, I go my merry way, and so does he. I don’t lie to my partners about what I need in a relationship, and I expect them not to lie to me.
Seeking sexual gratification from another person outside of the relationship is, to me, cheating. It is a betrayal of trust. If he wants to watch a woman strip down and dance dirty for him, I’m happy to do it. This does not apply to porn, as there is no personal interaction with a picture or a video.
Marriage and a wedding, to me, mean that husband and wife create a lifelong promise - not just to be faithful, but to create a new family together and put one another before everything else. I expect fidelity to be there long before wedding vows are spoken, just as I expect respect, friendship, love, and hot, dirty, hanging from the chandeliers monkey lust.
wasson made the comparison early in this thread to my thread about my husband not wanting me to sleep in bed platonically with my gay best friend. Like the strippers, the friend is no threat to the fidelity of my marriage. However, if it makes your SO profoundly uncomfortable, to the point where s/he feels disrespected, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it? In my case, obviously it wasn’t, and it was to him. The OP seems to have made the same decision.
I don’t think the correct course of action is definitely one solution or the other, though. It depends on the motivation behind the request. If your SO is the type of person who makes such demands often, then it could be a control issue; she says no to test if you will abide by her wishes. Then, it’s not about the strippers, it’s about the power in the relationship, and should be discussed before you get married. If she’s usually easy-going but really has a problem with this specific issue, then I’d probably concede unless it was equally or more important to me, even if I couldn’t manage to agree with her in principle.
It might not be about trust. She probably doesn’t think he’ll have sex with a stripper. She might just feel really uncomfortable about him ogling a live, naked woman. It’s also pretty unlikely that said stripper wouldn’t wind up bouncing up and down on his lap. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for her not to want another woman to touch her fiancee in such an intimate way. It’s a boundary issue, not a trust issue.
What if it’s not a matter of trust?
I don’t know where that last “What if it’s not a matter of trust?” came from at the end of my post. It looks weird. Sorry about that, missed it on preview somehow.
Who says she gets to set the boundary?
She does. They’re her boundaries.
I’m allowed to wear my balls all I want in the house.
It’s her wedding. It’s THEIR marriage. Work out the boundaries thing now, or you’ll end up paying big bucks to a marriage counselor. I’m not being flippant – dictating what happens at the bachelor party is the gambit of a ball-buster. Checkmate comes years later when she’s interviewing his secretaries. Boundaries = trust.
BTW, I wear my balls everywhere I go. But I paid several thousand dollars to a marriage therapist to earn that right.