Part One: How Do You Feel When Your Partner Goes to the Strippers?

About 15 years ago my best friend’s husband asked my husband along with a couple of others to his annual guy’s night out in the city. This consisted of the pub for dinner, a football game then finish up at a strip club. I was not happy. I started to hyperventilate a little bit, followed by the rapid increase of my heart rate. And I couldn’t even really put my finger on why. I trusted my husband to within an inch of his life and knew he wasn’t going to cheat on me. And I had no issue with him looking at naked women in the form of porn. So what was my problem?

I didn’t know. All I knew was that the thought of him sitting in some sleazy club with naked women shaking their bodies in front of him filled me with dread and was causing me massive anxiety. I said to him, “Look I’m really, really not happy about the strippers but if you promise me you will tell me every, single thing that happens on the night and I mean EVERYTHING, no-holds-barred then I guess I can handle it.” He gave me a massive grin and swore he would give me all the gory details.

The night he went I couldn’t even concentrate on the movie I was watching. All I could do was wonder with a sick feeling in my stomach, what was happening. He got home around 2am and wanted to go straight to sleep but I said “Noooo, you have to tell me what happened.”

He said well actually the whole thing sucked, that they’d gotten there quite late, it was crowded, you had to pay for tables near the action which they didn’t want to do, so they had to peer over other people’s heads to see girls on the stage in the distance and he could hardly see anything so they just had a few drinks and left. I let out the breath I’d been holding and went to sleep.

A couple of days later I said to my girlfriend, “Soooo I just need to know – doesn’t it bother you that the guys went to the strippers?”

She said not as much as the fact that they all paid for lap dances! I said “Whaaaattt?”

I was beyond furious. I was hysterical and I completely, absolutely, 100% lost my shit at him. So much for his promise – he blatantly lied to me and I was absolutely fuming. His response? What the fuck did that idiot tell his wife for?!!

He was just as mad as I was and he blurted out: “Fine, you want to know the whole truth? After the strippers 2 of the guys went to a brothel. So there’s the truth. That’s why I couldn’t tell you EVERYTHING.” That little announcement stopped me in my tracks. I sat there stunned. He never did tell me which of the guys went but I was 99% certain one of them was my girlfriend’s husband. The thought of the night ending WORSE than strippers with a visit to a brothel had never even entered my mind…

Then about five years ago he was invited on an overseas trip by the company he buys his trucks from. Guys only. Two weeks, all expenses paid, business class flights, executive hotel suites in Nashville, Washington and New York. I was green with envy at missing out and not only had to hold down my own job but manage his half of the business while he was away. He promised he would call everyday and talk me through any problems.

With the time differences every time I spoke to him he was either just getting home from a bar drunk, or on his way to dinner and had no time to talk. One night he accidentally let slip that they’d gone out somewhere special to celebrate one of the guy’s birthdays. I guessed instantly – strip club. Giggling, he said yep. After I hung up the phone I actually had a full blown panic attack. What the hell was wrong with me?

And I’ve been to plenty of events where there are male strippers present and somehow it’s all just so innocent. Those guys are cheesy not sleazy. Where men are in the audience getting hard-ons fantasising about touching these women and then grabbing a taxi to the nearest brothel afterwards to satisfy their urges, women are pretty much laughing at the guys (with a few drunken exceptions of course where some of them throw themselves at these oily, sweaty dudes).

Which brings me to last night. The most innocent nights of them all; a buck’s party for a family member. I knew there was going to be a stripper turn up. I knew what time she was going to turn up and I actually sat there looking at my phone thinking; is she there yet, what’s she doing now, has she left yet? Was she hot? And I couldn’t go to bed until my husband sent me a laughing text telling me she was there for 10 minutes, did her lap dance and left. (Pretty sure he’s aware by NOW of my intense anxiety about strippers) so knew I’d be wanting to know.

I know a lot of women couldn’t care less about their husbands seeing strippers but I’m not one of them.