Yes, this is an ongoing effort.
Just tell them you’re gay and get it over with.
I think you’re to be admired for respecting your wife’s feelings and for not pressing to go somewhere you’re not really interested in going anyway. I don’t see what that calls for more communication with your wife; sounds like you’re on the same page. I also don’t think that gives you “an aversion to titty,” it just means you like your titty in a forum that’s more personal or less public or less tawdry or better lit or whatever.
I think the best advice is to tell 'em you’re not feeling well and not make a big deal of it. If this thread is any indication, an honest explanation that you don’t think it’s your thing and you just don’t want to go will only result in arguments as to why you should go and insinuations that either you or you wife is a tight-ass if you don’t. If you can feign “whoops, I’ve had too much to drink,” it shouldn’t be that hard to just catch a cab back to the hotel when the party moves to the strip club. Just make sure you take cab fare and a cab company’s number.
My “beef,” if it can even be called that, is that he’s not “respecting his wife’s feelings” but “respecting what he thinks his wife’s feelings are.”
Hence, the communication. In my view, it’s always better to know what the woman is thinking.
If those ARE her feelings, in other words, if she’s NOT cool with it, then so be it. No subcontracting out the titty viewing.
If she IS cool with it, then there are worse ways to spend an evening than in the company of friends and beer and titty.
But, one way or the other, the key is to do what’s right for the relationship.
The only difference I can see here is that you are assuming he doesn’t know what his wife’s feelings are, while I am assuming he does. He said, " I’m sure my wife wouldn’t like a bunch of naked women flaunting their naughty bits in front of me." That doesn’t sound like a failure in communication to me. He hasn’t posted anything in this thread that leads to the conclusion that he doesn’t know what she’s thinking. He knows how she feels; she wouldn’t like it.
I think the OP’er is taking the much better course by honestly admitting HE doesn’t want to go, and not making it something he just can’t do because of his wife. Because if it’s on her, even if that decision is seen as him respecting her feelings – it’s still her fault he can’t go. He knows she wouldn’t like it. But more importantly, he doesn’t want to go anyway. It’s not about his wife’s feelings, it’s about his own, and I don’t see anything to double-check.
You and I are going to have to chalk this one up to gender differences. One way or the other, you and I are both projecting onto **Whiteknight ** our own experiences.
But we’re fundamentally in agreement- no sense angering the woman over something that’s not that important to you in the first place.
Some of the answers being given in this thread sound like the same kind of annoying responses I’ve gotten from other guys when I’ve told them I’m not interested in going to a strip club. It immediately turns into a referendum on my wife. There’s seems to be an assumption that it can ONLY be the wife who is preventing a guy from wanting to go to one of those places. It can’t possibly be the case that he really finds the idea distasteful.
I’ve never been to strip joint, not because my wife wouldn’t want me to (I’m not even sure she’d care, I’ve never asked her), but because it just does not appeal to me on any level. I don’t drink, I don’t like crowds or bar scenes and the idea of being stuck in some seedy strip joint with a bunch of smarky drunk guys woo hooing at naked women with breast implants who who hate them just sounds like the opposite of fun to me.
Intimations that it’s the wife who’s keeping a guy from going are presumptious at the least, but even if that IS the case, so what? Why can’t some guys just respect that? Why pressure someone to go somewhere they don’t want to go or to stress a relationship if they don’t want to?
If I were the OP, I’d just tell the truth. “I’m sorry, but I don’t do strip joints. I’ll hang until then but then I’m outta there. It’s not up for debate.”
If your friends can’t respect YOUR feelings on the matter, then they’re not your friends anyway.
While I agree that strip clubs are a waste of time and money, the OP is not the bachelor, it’s not his party and they don’t have to respect his decision. No one’s making him go.
However,
You make it sound like an ultimatum, and that maybe the host should feel guilty about the strip club part of the night. Kind of like pitching a fit.
The rest of the group (I assume the bachelor knows about the strip club) decided to make that part of the itinerary that night, why throw a big nut in the works just cause you got some small hangup over strip clubs? That night is supposed to be about comradery and male bonding, why decline part of the night just cause it’s not 100% acceptable to you?
It’s not an illegal activity, it’s not harming anyone, what’s the hangup? You go, you behave yourself, and just kick back and let the guys do what they do. You don’t have to get involved in the dirty aspects of the club, just being there for your friend(s) is all you need to be worried about.
I was involved in a similar situation, except I was the best man and expected to throw the party. I don’t drink and am a bit of a prude, so I knew I was not the man for the job. I offered to host the rehearsal dinner instead. The groom graciously accepted and had a college room mate throw the BP. Things always seem to work out better in life when you give serious thought (as you have done) beforehand and make communication a priority.
This sounds kinda preachy.
And, according to me, it’s not a referendum on the wife- apologies if I’m not making that clear, although I don’t think I could have made it any more clear. If you don’t want to go, regardless of your reasons why, you certainly don’t have to.
My points have been these:
-
If you want to go but THINK your wife doesn’t want you to go, get clear on that. There have been times that I’ve avoided something that I thought might offend an SO only for her to find out and say, “What made you think that?” Of course, there have been other times when her response was, “That was thoughtful of you,” hence my point that communication is key.
-
If you plain ol’ don’t wanna go, you don’t have to. Bow out gracefully. “Not my thing, dude.” That’s the end of it. All that other “not up for debate” and “your real friends would understand” sounds a bit defensive.
The point at issue here is that **Whiteknight **is intrigued by the idea, but not enough to overcome his wife’s aversion. But that aversion is perceived.
If the aversion is actual, then he’d be dumb to go. If his intrigue isn’t enough to bother broaching the question, then he shouldn’t bother going either.
But let’s not turn a nitpick about the depths of communication into a castigation of the “unfeeling, peer-pressuring, testosterone-laden bro” stereotype, because no one in this thread, as far as I can see, is advocating that position.
How would he be ruining anything for anybody else by declining to participate in that aspect of the party? There’s no “ultimatum,” just some honesty about what he is and is personally down for. The rest of the group does not have the right to decide for him what he is obligated to do in order to avoid being a wet blanket on the party. That kind of guilt trip would not (and has not) worked on me.
By the way, it’s not the strippers that would bother me about a strip club, it’s the customers.
I have no problem with any of this. You may be right that my perception of a “bro” pressure stereotype might be coming more from personal experience than what I thought I saw between the lines in some of the posts in this thread.
The only reason I used the “not up for debate” phrasing was because the OP said he thought it would be “awkward” if he tried to bow out gracefully. To me that suggested he fears he might get some grief about it. I suggested it only as a way to preempt a prolonged argument about it, not as a moral judgement. In my experience, the first “no thanks” has not always been enough, and more than once I’ve been subjected to the “pussy whipped” card.
I honest to God don’t see where you’re getting this. It seems like you’re reading into the OP’er’s reaction what your reaction would be.
YOU say he’s “intrigued by the idea.”
HE says:
“While I would be happy to participate in the dining, gambling, and reminiscing, I really don’t feel comfortable going to a strip club” and “I just find the strip club environment and concept to be distasteful . . .the whole thing seems very smarmy to me.” He describes it using terms like “distasteful,” “tawdry,” and “smarmy,” admits he is not comfortable either with the environment or the concept, and can’t imagine he’d have a good time.
Try as I might, I cannot read his posts in a way that conveys his state of mind as “intrigued.” So I’m curious, and I mean no disrespect, but is it just that you cannot imagine that a straight man would genuinely not want to go to a strip club?
But I agree there’s no need to be on your high horse about refusing. That’s why I advocate the benign dishonesty of well-timed illness. 
Ditto. He doesn’t want to go and doesn’t want to take shit from the buddies. No intrigue here.
As you are heading out due to your unfortunate gstronomical issues, slip the best man a twenty and say “Get the groom a lap dance on me.” That way it won’t seem like you are leaving because you don’t want to help celebrate the guys last days of bachelorness.
This is the point I was trying to make. It’s not as if a bunch of guys just decided to go out to a strip club on a random Saturday night. It’s a special night for the bachelor. Go for him, don’t avoid going for you. Avoid it every other night of your life if you want to. The thing about being a friend and being there for somebody is that you do it even when it doesn’t work out great for you, not just when it’s convenient.
Man up.
Of course, you have to determine what, if any, impact it will have on your relationship; I’m not going to comment on that. Assuming it’s not an issue, the right thing to do is go, give your buddy $40 bucks for a couple dances, and have a drink.
and
Knowing nothing about either of you, I’m going to nevertheless bet that you are both women. because my guy brain saw these as hints that he might not be completely averse to going, just worried about hurting his wife’s feelings:
To my guy brain, this is enough to say, “Don’t knock it 'til you try it (subject, of course, to the “don’t do it if it ticks your woman off” rule).”
Like I said, gender differences.
I’m a guy and I didn’t get any sense that he was intrigued by the idea either. Just the opposite. I feel exactly the same way he does. Of course I like seeing naked chicks, but I don’t want them to have to be paid for it and I don’t want to see them in a bar with a thousand other guys.
Exactly. Your own post (#18), Happy Scrappy Hero Pup, especially the “strippers hate you” portion, is actually an excellent description of exactly why I think strip clubs are miserable places. And it’s not just that they hate you, but the fact that you can look around and see sad doofs who are completely oblivious to that fact, gaping moony-eyed at the silicone-jugglers coaxing a steady stream of bills out of their wallets and thinking “dude! She’s really into me!” It’s pathetic and depressing, like being the only steer who realizes he’s in an abattoir.
I would literally feel better about patronizing a brothel. It may all be an act for them too, but at least the customer gets more of a payoff from the transaction.
(And lest my apparent bitterness imply otherwise— although I am hardly a male model, I’m reasonably confident that my “personal skank factor” is rather low.)
Just posting to say this is a great image corresponding to “the opposite of fun.” Add 5 anti-skank points to **Vinyl Turnip ** for having a way with words.