SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

He said there were booths in the public room with side walls. Does that sound right? I don't think anyone realized it was oral since it lasted for at most 2 minutes, he thinks 1 minute. I don't think a G-string came off but I need to ask. It sounded to me like they do a lot of dancing in clients' faces.

This place is on the other coast for me but maybe I need to see it to figure this out? Or phone them? I mean how does one deal with this?

You need to talk to painpaingoaway. Her husband met a stripper in a club. She was able to dig up all kinds of things about the club,if I recall correctly. I will see if I can find her and ask her to check this thread.

In the meantime..yes..they request a lap dance..the girl is not chosen for them,they choose the girl.

And I was thinking the same thing as lieshurt. That him giving her oral out on the floor...booth or not...sounds really,really odd. That kind of thing can get them arrested,and you never know when a cop is there undercover. And yes,he would have paid for the oral ahead of doing it.

I think him admitting when he walked in he noticed the dancers grabbing at crotches..I think that is a very telling piece of this story he's told you. WHY would he ask for a lap dance and think it wouldn't go beyond a lap dance if he already admitted they were touching the men? He knew what he was getting. He had been there long enough to down a few drinks.

I have a little sister..18 years younger than me. She runs with..or used to run with...a wild crowd. it included strippers. I had the "pleasure" of spending the day with a few. One was a nice girl She was working her way through law school. 2 of them were flat out whores. They worked in seedy clubs,and they took money for sexual favors..and they liked to brag. I got quite the education on strippers that day.

Honey,I know I sound pushy. Im sorry. I really am. Just like there is a WS fog,there is a BS fog. And there are just so many things in this story he has told you that don't ring true.

I mean for my advice to be helpful,and supportive. I truly hope you are taking that way. The very last thing I want to do is cause you more pain.

Oh no, I know you are all trying to protect from more pain later.

I think my husband did want something to happen and obviously it did . . . touching, kissing, etc. I don't think he intended, at least walking in there, for it to go to the level of sex. My understanding is that he just paid $50 for the lap dance and did not pay or arrange in advance for the oral sex. I think she may have done it as an entre to having him pay for intercourse which he refused.

Someone mentioned a polygraph. Is that an accurate measure and administered by reputable people? It would be bad for the polygraph to miss a lie and it would be even worse in my book for it to record something as a lie that was actually the truth.

Did he have cash on him or did he make a withdrawal before going into the club? If he made a withdrawal, do you know how much it was?

Was this a city he was familiar with, or someplace he'd never been before?

Personally I'd want to check his phone - I'm assuming he has a smartphone. I'd want to see what he google searched, and his call logs. You can learn a lot this way. I spoke personally to the escort who, er, serviced my H.

ETA: I know your initial question was how do you get over the revulsion and disgust - for me, I had to be confident I had the whole truth - or as much as his insanely drunk ass could possibly remember - before I could start to get over the disgust.

[This message edited by JanaGreen at 2:45 PM, April 25th (Thursday)]

cds22,

I would consider having a look through his phone and his internet history. If there is nothing untoward there, you have peace of mind, but if there is then at least you know.

You mentioned he has started watching porn in the last 6 months. Seemed a bit odd to me why he would suddenly start doing that. That coupled with the need for "new skin, new hair" etc made me wonder what is really going on with him.

I think it was cash. I can check the withdrawal. But it would be very hard to tell because he would have been withdrawing for travel expenses at that point too.

He was in LA. He has been there before but he doesn't know the city and I think the part of the city he was staying in for the business trip was new to him.

I can check the internet and phone but it does not feel good to me at all. I can do this once or twice but I can't live like this.

I don't know if you read my post the other day about my husband having sex with a prostitute. He said the only thing he did unprotected was her giving him oral.

I now have herpes. You need to get checked.

Welcome, and sorry you have to be here.

This is very painful, but you really need to listen what others are telling you. It sounds as though he has manipulated the story to minimize waht he did.

He has broken your trust, even if you don't want to see it as such. Blindly trusting him without him realizing why he did it is just setting yourself up for more hurt. I tried to take a high road initially too, however more and more came to surface that just didn't feel right, sound right, or make sense. Thus the Keylogger, and phone checking started. This is when I got oh so much more proof, and ultimately the truth.

If you push for a poly, and yes they can be very reliable. You may get more real truth without having to go through with it.

But honestly step back and think about what he has told you and the events that occured. If someone told your best friend this story and she said I believe him because I love him, what would your response be?

We are not judging, we are just trying to share from our experiences and help you through this.

Oh and it's time he stopped feeling sorry for himself and focus on what he has done to you, and the sooner you force this the sooner things can heal.

((((and strength)))))

Ok, I phoned him. He said he went with her into something that was between a booth/room. It had three floor to ceiling walls but then no fourth wall so it was open to the room. He said there were only two strippers there, the place was very seedy, and she approached him (who approached who does not matter to me but people asked about him choosing her). He said she was touching him in his private areas before they went to the booth room. He said she took off her own underwear in that room, he did not take it off. He said he did not go into the room expecting the oral sex to occur, he was expecting a lap dance and perhaps more, he cannot really tell me what he was thinking or expecting at the time because he was not thinking.

I understand what all of you are saying, I do. I will take the steps you recommend. But, ultimately I am in a very bad position here. If I don't ever believe anything he says our marriage will end, we won't stay together like that. And I will wind up heartbroken. If I do believe him the sentiment seems to be I am setting myself up for more pain. And I will wind up heartbroken.

Does anyone have an Option C?

Option c is that he tells u the whole painful truth and you decide whether to reconcile or not because we here can all tell you the longer it takes for the real truth the harder it will be to forgive and heal

3 months ago, I never would have believed my SO could do the things he has done (which I found out about in his internet history). I'm sure a few months ago you never would have believed what you have found out about your husband also. At this point they can't be trusted. They are in damage control mode.

From what I have heard about strip joints where I live in Aus- you pay for a lap dance and they take place in a semi secluded area like the booth/room you described. There is a very strict no touch policy and there is security to reinforce this. (Even though the girls touch the guys - the guys are not allowed to touch the girls). Anything extra could be negotiated but wouldn't happen in that room. That is just me hearing from guys over the years as to what happens. Could be totally different where you are at, particularly if it is a sleazy (aren't they all?) place.

I understand what all of you are saying, I do. I will take the steps you recommend. But, ultimately I am in a very bad position here. If I don't ever believe anything he says our marriage will end, we won't stay together like that. And I will wind up heartbroken. If I do believe him the sentiment seems to be I am setting myself up for more pain. And I will wind up heartbroken.

There is a saying around here "Trust but verify". Which means, you can trust your husband but also verify what he is saying is the truth.

We were all blind to what happened to us. None of us believed infidelity would ever happen to us. We all had a different marriage, right? Our husbands/wives would NEVER do that to us! And BOOM, it happened. Our world crumbled, we doubted everything that had ever happened in our relationship, and worst of all, we doubted ourselves.

Everyone here is giving you good advice. Verify what your husband is telling you. A consistent pattern of honesty builds trust. His honesty = your trust. But how do you know if he is honest? You verify it. If that means looking through his internet history, then thats what it means for you. Or it could be checking his phone and the interior of his car (trust me, lots of stuff gets left in the car, like receipts from strip clubs - I found one of those on a night my husband was at a work meeting).

If you don't want to check, then don't. We've all been on the edge of wondering if we are crazy, is s/he telling us the truth. Old timers try to give new comers the best advice to prevent them being hurt again like many of us were. Maybe we even give advice we wish we'd taken when we had the chance...

Rather than getting bogged down and swirling around in the uncertainty of the details you've provided.......I want to focus on his mindset.

He has been using porn for the past 6 months without your knowledge. I think that you should find out what type of porn he was watching. And if he used a computer for his viewing, then you MOST definitely should look at the internet phone history and check his data usage numbers.

Also, he wanted *new hair, skin, sweat*. Ok, hair and skin follows along with wanting *bright and shiny*, but IMO......*sweat* doesn't fit. Stroking someone's hair doesn't make them sweat. Kissing someone doesn't make them sweat. The context of his usage indicates.......*contact* sweat. I definitely think that there was more than just *looking* on his mind when he went to that club.

And last. His being curled up in a ball is just too over the top. Yes, he did *wrong*, but you are coming across as very understanding and amenable. His reaction, coupled with the severe depression is leading me to think that he is feeling a great deal of shame. An amount that seems to me, is disproportionate to what he has told you he did.

Sorry for any typos or unclear sentences.....I'm on my phone.

Well I feel badly exposing all of you to this ugliness, but here it is.

I checked his email, his text messages, and attempted to check his internet history. Email and texts were fine. Internet browsing history had been deleted. He told me he regularly deletes his internet history because he views porn on it and our sitters are always using his computer as I am (this is true, we are always on his laptop). I told him he had to show me the sites he has been going to and what he has been viewing. I told him that people delete their browsing history when they have things to hide. He needed to tell me everything tonight, if anything came out later it would be over between us, I would have full custody of the kids and his visitation would be supervised, and I would tell everyone in his life everything. I have considerable financial and legal resources and this was not an idle threat.

He showed me the porn sites - - I sort of looked through squinted eyes but it seemed like standard porn. He told me there was never anything involving children, violence, rape, animals, homosexual men and that all of the above were reprehensible to him. He said his biggest turn on for pornography has been watching lesbians and threesomes. I don't know how deviant that is? He said he felt like that watching lesbians/threesomes played into the oral sex at the strip bar. I asked him if the strip bar was a way of stepping deeper into that fantasy world and he said yes but that he didn't intend it to end in sex (that is the oral sex).

I think he may have a pornography addiction. Across our marriage he has watched twice a month for 15-20 minutes. However, in the past six months that ramped up. I was out of town for work for a month and he watched every night; for the rest of the time he has been watching three times per week usually for 15 minutes. However, he said "it is like a drug to me" and "it is like a total escape into another world." Also, after he told me about the infidelity we discussed the fact he had been watching porn and I told him I didn't feel comfortable being anyone's censor but I thought this was not a good idea for him. He told me he agreed it was not a good idea and from that I left with the impression the viewing would stop. He told me that he was viewed three times since the infidelity, that he didn't view our conversation as an absolute ban, but he did feel the need to hide it from me and also from our babysitters so he deleted his browsing history. He said he has religiously deleted his browsing history for years because the kids and sitters are on his laptop alot.

I told him if there was anything else I absolutely needed to know now, if it came out later we could not repair things. He said he had never contacted anyone, never spent money on a web site, but he did google search erotic massage parlors in our area twice. He never went to one and he doesn't remember the address (apparently there are dozens in our large city) but that was the one other thing he could think of.

He said he would take a polygraph. He was concerned about its reliability as am I and found the whole thing distasteful. But he said he was absolutely willing to take it.

Short of waterboarding him I don't know what else I can do. I am trying to decide whether we should separate. Although his pornography addiction is probably in the mild to moderate end from my internet reading (apparently some people spend a hundred hours of week viewing porn and bankrupt themselves), I am not sure I am ready to deal with someone with a pornography addiction. He said he told his psychiatrist he thought he might be a sex addict but his psychiatrist didn't agree given there was only the one sexual incident. However, the psychiatrist did not ask about porn addiction which I think is the issue. :(

[This message edited by cds22 at 9:14 PM, April 25th (Thursday)]

It sounds like, if he is telling the truth, he is in the beginning throes of sex addiction. It might be further advanced than he is telling you and it might not. He is using it to escape. His behavior is escalating. He is getting a high from it. FYI, pornography addiction is sex addiction. Check out www.sexhelp.com and see if it fits.

I am very reluctant to post this because I feel like you are in pain and I'm not trying to pile on. Plus I'm about to make myself look not-so-great.

I started working as a stripper a few days after I turned eighteen and basically did it for about three years, which is a long time. I have worked at more clubs than I care to remember. If you can find out the name of the club, let me know, I'll find out how it's set up.

A few things. generally, any guy can get a dance out on the floor area. If he wants to go to a private room, he pays for an hour or some clubs will allow 30 minutes. Private areas are never totally private, they're like a little area with a couch and a beaded curtain or something, it's just a little more privacy and more comfortable seating. We always called it a VIP room or a champagne room but it's not an actual "room" per se. Personally I can't believe that a man would agree to spend any money for a dance or a VIP with a dancer who is unattractive to him. Or that a stripper would basically initiate so much sexual contact with a customer. We were always told to get our money for the private rooms up front so if the customer wanted something we didn't want to do we'd already have our money and it wouldn't be a problem. That was something I was taught on my first day. 90% of stripping is getting paid while dodging the customers' advances.

Also, if you could see his internet history I bet he looked for clubs in that area. I don't believe he randomly drove past that club. Men who were in from out of town would often tell me that they "researched" the best club in the area. There are review sites that are pure filth where men post ... I don't even want to go into it. But I wouldn't be surprised if he planned his trip in advance. It seems kind of fortuitous that he happened to drive past a strip club while he was out of town. And then an ugly stripper climbed up on him, shoved her crotch in his face, and asked to have sex with him while he declined.

You need to put a keylogger on that computer.

Best wishes.

I second the keylogger. And do NOT tell him it's there.

Im very concerned that you're taking all that he says as the truth. You told him to show you the porn sites he visited...chances are,he showed you the most "tame" one. Also,the deleting the history is a problem. If the sitters use his computer,then he needs to lock it up. Let the kids use a family computer. He deletes NOTHING.

There is always a grain of truth in the lies they tell. He googled massage parlors. Why? That shows intent,at the very least.

Polygraph. Yes,it's distasteful. But what he did was rather distasteful. As for their reliability....there is a member here who has worked with law enforcement,and has been a part of many poly's. They have said the reason poly's aren't admitted into court is because a sociopath CAN pass the test...that they can lie so well,they can fool it. But a common person? The test is accurate. It's nice that he said he would do it...but then...he doesn't believe you will go through with it. DO IT. Chances are,you'll get a parking lot confession before you go in...even if you do..go through with it...chances are he'll tell you a part of the truth thinking you won't go through with the test. DO IT.

He doesn't remember the name of the club but he says it was in Glendale CA and was different from other places, not standard, seemed very off. He has sworn up and down to me that she took off her underwear in the private room, that he had never seen that or even heard of that before (in our city, where he told me he has been to strip bars 3-4 times in the past 10 years he said it was very strict, no touching, tightly controlled).

I asked him this morning and he said he just drove by and then he came back into the kitchen five minutes later and said that wasn't true he had googled it after his business dinner. I am very upset he told me that lie to my face and more than anything that has made me doubt him.

I can try to verify but I won't live that way as a way of life. Your suggestions are wise and the result of hard experience but after I m done tracking someone on his computer, submitting us to polygraphs, etc, what kind of marriage do I really have? I am not sure I want to be in a relationship like that anymore where my part-time job (on top of my full-time job and my little kids) is constantly privately investigating my spouse.

I am going to call around today to see if I can meet with a certified sex addiction therapist as the spouse to get some information on cure rates, treatment strategies, and what steps I should take at home (keylogger, polygraph, etc). I need to figure out what the realistic odds are of fixing this.

[This message edited by cds22 at 7:34 AM, April 26th (Friday)]

Not sure if you can be the one to fix this, despite your best intentions, he has got to want to do the hard work.

Wishing you all the best cds22.