God knows I’m not a marriage expert. However, I will say that one of the nice things about having parents and significant others is their ability to tell you “No.”
Guy doesn’t want to go to the strip club, but his buddies are all pressuring him, an easy out for him? “My wife won’t let me.”
Kid is hanging with her friends, they all want to do something she doesn’t particularly want to do. “My mom would kill me.”
Yeah, friends can be a pain in the ass some times, and it is much easier to say that the old ball and chain is being bitchy, than admitting that last time you were in that situation, you were a complete douchebag and severely hurt your wife.
That sounds like a hell of a club. The most I’ve seen in clubs is just boob on face rubbing. Some places let the guys touch the girls but there was always some huge bouncer standing right behind the guy.
One issue I see in this situation is the decline of masculinity. Our society has become progressively feminized, with many women potraying ‘real’ masculinity as simply a copy of femininity, i.e. “A real man would do something a woman would do” When there is a situation where a couple of guys are pressuring one of their friends into doing something, heirarchy and masculinity are definitely playing into the situation. There are so many fewer ways to genuinely be masculine these days that every moment of emasculation hurts that much more. It doesn’t justify what this man did in the situation (not by a long shot!), but it might offer some insight.
“No matter what” is an awfully broad category. It’s perfectly possible to think that divorce is an option sometimes, but not for this. None of us get to tell anyone but our spouse what is divorce worthy.
Um, yeah, what Brookstick said. With one slight alteration, though. I agreed ahead of time to a lap dance. The scenario I had in my head was much more innocent that what actually happened though. I should have been much more explicit in what I was agreeing to. Thing is, I didn’t think I had to say no kissing, no tits in your mouth (no matter how brief), and certainly no grinding for long enough that she made you come.
…… DMark, I’ve already addressed some of your points in my earlier posts, so I’ll be somewhat selective in what I reply to.
Here goes…
I’m not sure how you got this impression of me as some harping bitch that gets upset whenever my husband goes out with his friends and has a good time. I’m far from it. My husband and I are very happy spending time together and very happy spending time apart. We both encourage it. I like knowing that hubby has a life outside of me. It’s natural, healthy, and makes our time together that much more special.
No. The fact that you even had to ask me that I find to be insulting.
I’d rather he surf porn on the internet, but he has no need to do so in secret. He is very open with me about it and even shows me sites, magazines, or movies from time to time.
No, this is why we took a lot of time out to discuss what happened and set new boundaries. For right now, my boundaries are pretty harsh. Perhaps with time, I’ll be able to relax them some.
If my relationship were that bad off that I would consider this to be a dream guy, I would have to seriously reconsider my relationship.
Congratulations on your 27 years together. May you have another 27. Sharing my husband with another person is not something I’m up for, but it works for you, then it works for you.
I’ll second that about not only him but me as well.
Again, going to the club isn’t the issue. It’s how far things went while there that’s the issue. Am I supposed to award him a medal or some shit for not cheating on me? I do consider myself very lucky, but not because he’s managed to stay relatively faithful. Not all men are pigs. Only those that use that line as an excuse are the true pigs.
He understood the money aspect of it, sure. But he felt somehow special because surely she wouldn’t have fucked just anyone.
I don’t worry about his fidelity in the traditional sense. I have no concerns about him running off with another woman or even just fooling around with another woman outside of the context of a strip club. It’s this outright condoning of the behavior while in this magical place that scares me.
IIRC he was getting a private dance, so the guys weren’t there to pressure him once the deed was underway.
I don’t know the full details, so I don’t mean this to come off as finger-pointing. But in the interest of raising questions for them to consider, I’m almost tempted to start a thread called “In the best of all worlds…”
…a man would always reassure his pregnant wife that she was “still” beautiful. A beautiful woman only becomes more so when she’s with child, I think, because of the joy she feels.
…a woman would have sex with her husband regularly so he wouldn’t be a loaded gun. I know, it works both ways, but it seems far more common for the woman to withhold.
…neither would ever forget that it takes years to create trust and only moments to destroy it.
Well, no, she probably wouldn’t have fucked just anyone. But her standards are not that of the girl next door, either. In her profession, the criteria for fuckability is more along the lines of “Does this guy have open sores?” and “Do I think I could kick him in the crotch and run for it if he gets dangerous?” than “Does he look like a good person, a shining intellect or an amazing chef?”
My thoughts exactly. Although as I mentioned earlier, he didn’t actively suck her tits. It was passive in the sense that his eyes were apparently closed and she grazed his lips with her nipple. This part was clarified for me just this morning.
At this point, it’s not something that we’ve considered as a couple. I will be pursuing it on my own, however. I clearly have some issues from my past that need to be worked through. If the counselor feels that we would benefit from couples therapy, then we’ll discuss the option.
I will definitely look into this. It might help me out even if it doesn’t do anything for hubby.
In my mind, I had been clear enough. I assumed incorrectly. You know what they say about assumption…
I understand that going to a club with my husband won’t give me a true picture of what it’s like for him to go with his friends. But at least it will give me some idea.
I can echo your opinion of prostitution as well. So long as it’s consensual for all involved, who cares?
Until after much discussion, hubby had a pretty difficult time understanding this as well. One of his friends won’t go to strip clubs. The friend says it’s because it’s just not his scene. Hubby was shocked, shocked I tell you, when I suggested that maybe he really doesn’t go because his fiancé doesn’t like him going. Instead of throwing her to the wolves, he has the respect to not even bring her into it.
Genuine masculinity has nothing to do with dry humping strippers. That’s not being a man. Being a man means being there for your family, not breaking their hearts to go engage in immature, selfish, personal gratification — especially sexual gratification.
There is nothing “emasculating” about declining to go to a strip club. I find that to be a very immmature and baseless suggestion.
I don’t even ascribe to the whole promises of sexual exclusivity thing, but even I find it appalling that he would go off to that place knowing as he obviously did that it was going to upset his partner that much.
You should not need an understanding or a rule that explicitly says “do not hurt”. Sheesh.
That’s kind of a misogynist assumption, in my opinion. Believe it or not, not all men are in love with strip clubs. I’ve never been to a strip club, and I’ve declined more than one invitation from friends. I don’t go because I find the whole premise extremely debasing and distasteful – not for the strippers but for the guys. I find nothing at all inviting or attractive about the idea of sitting around feeding dollar bills to women who aren’t my wife and who despise every man in the place. I’d rather spend 7 nights a week with my wife and kids who love me and don’t charge me money.
I’ve also never had a friend have a problem with me saying no to the strip clubs. If they did, they wouldn’t be my friends any more. Guys who who use buddy pressure as an excuse for anything are usually full of shit, but even if they really are concerned about their buddies’ approval, they have some growing up to do. Once I became a father, I made it clear to my friends that my party days were over and that was the end of it.
Agree with the first part because we’re talking about married men. For single men, maybe that sort of thing could be a rite of passage, for those who wish to partake, no harm no foul.
OTOH single men hanging out in titty bars every night of the week, nah.
Not sure about the second part; men are supposed to be autonomous, not take “orders” from their wives. The problem is that he overstepped the line; she was clearly ok that he was going to look at some titties etc. but he carried it beyond the ritual/symbolic.
A kind of parallel: ordinarily, a man shouldn’t have to ask his bride if he can have a drink with the guys after work. But if he’s doing it every night of the week, leaving her to deal with the kids, of if one drink always turns into ten, or if he were an alcoholic, then nah.
IMO it’s a matter of how far he went in the moment; for some men it may be a case of how often he does it.
ETA: I think it’s also unsettling that he thought this woman was genuinely interested in him. The naivete, sure; but it sounds like he wanted her to feel something for him, which seems antithetical to what guys look for in a titty bar. Maybe it’s like the old scenario where guy visits a hooker…for talk.
Well my baby just woke up from a much-needed long nap. So I’m going to leave the boards for a while and do what I do best - be a Mom. I’ll try to check in later though if I have the time.
Before I go, I need to say a huge from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU to everyone who participated in this thread. I was at my wits end last night and I don’t know what I would have done without you guys.
Just a side note for you. You’re being played and you want to be played . This passive/aggressive - smart/stupid play acting re “Was that a bad thing I did? Was it wrong to to do that? Gosh… now I know, and I respect your boundaries.” is irritating nonsense that borders on a weak “and that’s how my penis wound up in her vagina honey” tale. Your husband knew perfectly damn well what your expectations were and he decided that he had another agenda.
Kudos to you for allowing this tattered fig leaf of an “explanation” to stand and serve as a bandage so you can try to save your marriage, but stop kidding yourself that he’s some errant man child who just didn’t know any better. He loves you, but will take the bait of another woman if give the the chance. The only thing I have seen constrain a man with this inclination is a direct warning that he will lose everything if he does it again, and some guys still choose to roll the dice. The other problem is that apparently his drinking buddies are instigators.
You are fighting a long term behavior war with a person with poor impulse control. I hope it works out for you, but if you think this is the last salvo you are most probably mistaken.
Although I agree that the normalcy of the strip-club-bachelor-party is a really bizarre feature of our culture, I would also say that it seems to me that the OP needs some serious counseling.
Yes. I’d say drama queens on the whole seem to have unhappy marriages, at least until they dissolve and the drama queen is then the single mom. As hot as makeup sex is, no man is going to want to stay with a woman that cries and flips out on him on a regular basis. You were basically in the right as far as this particular argument, but it’s not a healthy way to communicate. You’ll need to get a grip on those issues you have, OP, if you want your baby to grow up with her father. Good luck.
It is a lot about nothing. I do not go to strip clubs. I know a lot of guys who do. They are normal people leading normal lives. They have not become dirty ,lecherous people because of it. He pissed away money. He did not develop a new and threatening relationship. It is a lot of sound and fury about something that is already over and gone. You can pretend it is some horrible transgression if you choose to. You can scream if he comes home late from work, You can question every activity he is involved in. That would be about you. You apparently have trust issues. You can not police your partners life. It is nothing unless you choose to make it a big deal.
Have you read this thread? By most everyone’s definition he cheated once on her at a strip club and he decides to go again, and she is to blame for making a big deal about it? Seriously?
And it didn’t matter if everyone thinks he cheated before because to HER he did. And he didn’t care enough to respect that so absolutely she should be upset.
Some think it’s his problem; he’s being immature, irresponsible, etc. Others think it’s her problem; she has trust issues and is blowing it out of proportion. We don’t know the total history. Maybe they’re both a little wrong. Or maybe the issue is a stand-in for the real problem.
Any way you slice it, it’s a stress on the marriage. I’d like to think a heart-to-heart would fix it but I’m doubtful. I’d consider counseling.
Oh bummer. I’m sadder about the ending than I was about the beginning of this story. I was hoping that I was just projecting from my own poor personal experience but since someone else pointed it out, I think this as well:
I hope you don’t have to go through as much pain and self-doubt as I did in order to work through this.
If you didnt want him to do something you simply should have said no, giving him the choice then complaining when he didn’t pick what you wanted is extremely unfair. If you can’t trust your man to be alone in a room full of naked women then you shouldn’t have married him. The fact that he cheated on you days before your wedding would have been an inmediate and permanent deal breaker in my book. Being with someone you can’t trust is just absolute torture.
P.S. about strip clubs and what goes on there, one thing i do know is that the worse the economic situation is the more “bang” you get for your buck. A friend of mine who works at a club and refuses to do “extras” was about ready to quit last week because as she said “how can i compete with 5 dollar blow jobs?”.