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You won’t find answers in his phone. Look at his credit cards and bank account for the money transactions of the day in question. The amount of money spent will give you the answer. Prostitutes costs money.
Yes, Al probably paid. Or Ben brought cash.
But that also means that Ben knew that strip clubs were not really just a grey area.
It would look better for Ben if the bank statements did include an amount to cover a couple of drinks in the strip club.
But then OP should check older bank statements to see if this was the first time.
When I caught my ex husband doing almost the exact same thing, I looked up the withdrawals, the ATM they came from, which was next to the strip club(the ATM number should be listed with the transaction), Google maps had his "timeline" which showed his locations, hotel charge, and his Uber rides lol. Some guys make it easy
Maybe. But if Ben brought cash it’ll show the withdrawal from a ATM or something. Or he could’ve used something like VENMO to transfer money back to Al or even directly to the girl. Or I don’t know, credit cards? Working girls even take those? I don’t think so. The nature of the business seems to me like cash front only.
I don’t really know all the types of money transfers used in OP’s country, but it’s the safest bet. Probably nothing shows on the phone because he may have deleted it already or if it was an impulsive decision that happened for the first time. You usually don’t have long chats with prostitutes anyway.
So asking to see immediately all his money transactions is as good bet as any. A negative answer from him is already a answer. And suspicious amounts of money payments are too.
Edited to add: and ask to see them IMMEDIATELY. Not tomorrow, not he’ll print to show them later. Right now in all the online bank/credit app. Then she prints it and take her time doing her analysis.
Some places have a generic name so it’s not obvious that Ben paid for adult services.
OP look for “Life Marketing” or “AB Promotions” or even just “Sasha’s Bakery”. Something that looks normal but you don’t recognize the charge. Like you would assume it’s your husband’s regular lunch place if you came across it in the bank statements.
This! I’m sorry this happened but the torture will not stop. You will never stop wondering!
You will question his character, faith, the trust and the bond.
Backup now -- it wasn't who they were, but what choices they had if they left a marriage.
My grandmother divorced her 1st husband (abuse multiplied by the death of their newborn) and the only reason she was "eligible" a decade later for my grandfather was because his wife had just died, leaving him with an infant.
She can know she just has to get smarter than the comments in here. Off the top of my head.
Buy some audio recorders
Encourage your husband to have that guy over for a boys hangout and tell him you'll go have a girls night at a friend's house.
Set recorders everywhere they hang out in the house.
On the night leave an anonymous message on the friend's car that says you know what happened on the night and are going to tell everyone, so he finds on his way over.
Come home the next day and listen to the recordings. Deny everything about leaving the message on the car if the recordings comeback innocent. If they incriminate, then do whatever you want.
Yea I was literally thinking the same thing. The trickle truthing smells clearly of BS…..
That story makes no sense to anyone. It is most likely he slept with one of those women and thought there’s no way for OP to discover the truth. He probably figured he’s in it for the long haul anyway (as in they’ve been married for so long) so what is a “one time” thing going to do???
I would bet he did the nasty 💀
it definitely happens, i have a few friends that have. my dad was broke as hell all his life but he was hilarious & he would quite a bit. with all the partying etc a lot of strippers live pretty impulsively
Same again! If his friend did bring a stripper back, why did he go with him? Why not get an Uber home? If I, as a married nan, was out with a single friend, who decided to bring strippers back to his house, I would get an Uber and nope right out of there, drunk or not. The guy is a total moron or a lying cheater. And since he seems to work in technology, that appears to rule out the moron aspect.
Even in the best possible scenario, where Ben and Al did go home alone, and Al invited the strippers over without warning Ben, why did Ben not text or call OP at any point, especially after getting the call from her? You would think that would be common courtesy if you were out drinking and were planning to sleep somewhere else, to text your spouse and let them know where you were. You would think that if you got an apparently dropped call from your spouse at 3 AM, you would go somewhere quieter and call them back. No, Ben’s story makes no sense, he was out partying with strippers and got caught.
OP Let’s be real and have some common sense. Not only that but of course he was cheating. They each had their own woman. Cheating is the intimate touching, the sexual conversations, and being alone in an intimate setting with the other woman. You’re really going to believe none of that happened. If you do, I got some magic beans to sell you. Marriage counseling isn’t going to fix something someone doesn’t regret.
Good point about the women. Why would someone who is married get their own stripper to take home? That’s definitely different compared to just looking at them at the bar.
Or there’s drugs involved. Had a friend who’s older brother sold cocaine and strippers would come over often. Brother had a nice pool and would let my friend use it and invite friends. I had no idea the guy sold drugs until I made a joke about the strippers all loving him to my friend.
Another friend and old coworker from my bartending days used to bartend at a strip club and told me that an unfortunate number of the strippers were addicts. They would prostitute themselves for cash and/or drugs.
Exactly. There’s a HUGE very visible non-confusing line between being at strip club with friend/people to party and two guys chillin at home with some strippers.
And it’s not even a line that has to be drawn. It’s just already there. No one needs to say to their partner “I have no problem if you go a strip club but I draw the line at taking strippers home” - of course that where the line is drawn - it’s drawn there for *everyone*.
If he truly loved you he would never do or say anything that would hurt you. Trust is the basis of a relationship, without that there is no relationship. How could you trust him again and always wondering what he’s doing or when it would happen again. He can spin the story however he wants but the truth is he could have left at anytime and Uber home.
The sad fact is for the rest of your life you will not know if he cheated on you or not.
What you do know is that he chose to go partying at a strip club with a friend til 4am in the morning and was not in communication with you. He chose to go home to Al's with strippers from the club rather than go home to you, at the very least, knowing there was going to be sexual activity. No one takes home strippers at 4am thinking they're going to play board games. Even if he thought that multiple women were all for Al, what was his plan, sleep in the next room? Why didn't he just get his own uber home then? He could have not got wasted, not gone to a strip club, he could have said woah mate no I'm married, I'm taking an uber home to my wife, not going to a single dude's house with strippers....
Whether he actually cheated or not you will literally never know because he's clearly not going to tell you if he did, and either you can put it behind you and trust he's telling the truth, or it's over. Given the whole situation, it seems pretty hard to trust him. He already made all these bad decisions. Sticking his dick in someone else's mouth is just one more bad decision.
Being willing to cut out Al at least is a positive step; it's unlikely this will happen again if he has no other friends he goes out partying with, but you still have to live with what's already happened.
> No one takes home strippers at 4am thinking they're going to play board games. Even if he thought that multiple women were all for Al, what was his plan, sleep in the next room? Why didn't he just get his own uber home then?
**mic drop**
This is the main thing - why would your husband put himself in this position in the first place. If he respected you, he wouldn’t have done any of this to begin with.
This. OPs husband made a series of decisions that night. At any time he could have said he was heading out and let Al do what Al wanted to do. But he didn't.
Even if he didn't cheat, OP will never know for sure. But it seems suspicious as heck for her to call, not have him answer and when he does he only does because she hears some really suspicious activity going on.
Als single and free to do as he wishes. But OPs husband needed to respect that the situation at that time was not something he should remain present for. It's pretty clear what Als intentions were that night and OPs husband had every ability to call a cab or an Uber to come get him.
Does he really expect OP to think he was completely helpless?
I'm generally a trusting person, and I try to believe the best of people (mostly). My usual reaction is that if the partner has been trustworthy in the past and says they didn't cheat, then they didn't cheat.
*But* this story has big logic gaps, as described above, so at the *very* least, I think the husband is hiding *something*.
All of this. OP has more than enough information ALREADY for me to know this isn't a relationship I'd want to be in, whether he cheated or not (he almost certainly did though.)
Meh - I could actually see going along to try to make sure the idiot friend was safe, honestly. If a mate of mine was drunk and taking strippers home, I'd say he was insane to have strangers over, especially multiple strangers. And one of my mates told me about taking strippers back to his hotel room with a mate - must have been a suite - and when they got back together he found out his mate never touched her, just talked about her studies, and current events. The mate told me later he really only went to make sure the idiot didn't end up naked and dead in an alley...
But
It's more likely the husband was drunk and went along with his mate, just because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Drunk and thoughtful just isn't a thing...
Whether or not his was the non-self-sucking dick is beyond my ability to guess...
It’s just odd a man of his age is hanging out with another middle aged guy in the middle of the week getting hammered and going to strip clubs. That’s single guy, mid life crisis stuff.
Right? This is something your already kind of an asshole boyfriend might do at 20, not a 40 something who's been married nearly a decade.
I'd be really upset about the phone call. His excuse being he thought they had a bad connection doesn't fly. Why wouldn't he call her back, or message her to at least let her know what was going on?
I'm a woman, but if I were in his shoes and my "friend" was in the background hanging out with strippers, I'd be calling my spouse back on repeat. "Honey, Al is over here acting like a dipshit and I'm, for some weird unknown reason, incapable of getting an Uber, please come pick me up" or something.
Might get downvoted for this one, but as a former sw, strippers are not really spending one on one time with guys who aren’t paying for more. And yes, plenty of unassuming, nerdy men pay for sex. I’m very sorry op, you’re unlikely to get the full truth out of this situation.
The first thing you need to do is ask yourself how you feel about these events even if he didn't cheat on you. He stayed out all night partying with a single friend and some strippers. He told you they went back to Al's place alone, but has very much admitted that the strippers were at Al's place with them. And they didn't just follow show up at a random customer's house without invitation. You also know from the timeline of when your husband and Al went back to Al's place that they got there very, very shortly before your phone call with him.
So best case scenario, rather than coming home at 4 am, your husband went back to Al's place with Al and his lady guests and immediately went and passed out on the roof, then woke up to Al joining him on the roof and soliciting sex from the strippers. You don't say what time he actually came home, but if it wasn't shortly after that, you know he chose to stay after learning that was the plan for the evening. Even if he didn't actually have sex with anyone, is this behavior you're okay with?
If on the rare occasion I went out with coworkers or a male coworker given that most jobs are over around 5pm there’s still no chance I would “be getting home before 12am, I would be home by 9pm at the latest. He kept pushing his limits and nothing was said. I’m sorry OP but what your husband was doing and now did (strip club at 2am) is not what a 44 year old married man should be doing!
Put your foot down now or this situation will get worse.
I would find it hard to believe that Ben immediately went to sleep on the rooftop patio the second they arrived back to Al's place, especially with the missed call at around 3:40 am. Also, when you DO pick up the call at 4am, if you're actually innocent, the thing you do is tell Al "hey man, I'm trying to sleep up here, and this is my wife on the phone, so go have fun."
You don't just leave the line open and then hang up without saying anything, and leave your wife to fill in the blanks in the worst possible way. Maybe it was an accidental pick up in the middle of some action.
I would get sober and awake REALLY fast if my spouse was calling and there were strippers present, and there would be immediate explanations, apologies, and I would be in an uber home ASAP.
He definitely messed up. I don't know if he cheated. I would NOT be happy to be tracking my partner's phone or telling them they can't hang out with their friend.
I don't know how you rebuild trust in a situation like this, because one of my expectations is that my partner and I don't put ourselves into situations where we raise these kinds of doubts. If strippers are okay or not isn't a grey area. Definitely going back to someone's place with strippers (or having them come separately) is not cool.
My guess is that the women WERE in the car with the men, and he didn't answer the phone in the car because it would have been clear that he was heading to Al's place with strippers in tow.
This absolutely sucks because I feel like what can you do? The only way you’ll ever be able to trust him fully is if you’re somehow able to get a video recording of that night, which is most likely impossible.
You know what you heard, and he knows what you heard, it just differs depending on what’s the truth.
Although, something I want to ask. You said that your husband and Al took a Uber home, how did the strippers eventually get there? Was it an arrangement beforehand for them to meet them at Als? Or did Al give them his number? Or did your husbands? It doesn’t really add up.
Also, who ordered the Uber? Your husband or Al? If it was your husband, check his Uber history, you’ll be able to at least see the exact time he left the strip club/got to Als, might ease up the timeline a little.
Your husbands version really doesn’t make much sense, but depending how drunk he is I guess it’s possible? I really dont know
Why the hell would he feel comfortable staying at AL's knowing he brought strippers home? As somebody who was previously married and never cheated on their spouse in 27 years, I would not have stuck around for that! My reputation is worth too damn much!
His friend didn't bring two women home just for himself. There are two women because your husband was fucking one. His behavior was out of the ordinary, he didn't come home, you hear multiple women on the phone, and the only two guys around are your husband and Al.
He will never tell you the truth. He will lie and gaslight his way out of it. And someone who can cheat on you, does NOT love you. You can't do that to someone you love. I'd 100% divorce him
Also, just because he's nerdy doesn't mean he can't be more aggressive in bed and dirty talk like that. It's likely that he thinks you're not into it and so doesn't express it towards you. I've met plenty of men who were like that.
You were so sure it was his voice on the phone, but as time goes by, you're talking yourself out of it because you don't want to believe it. Trust your initial thoughts.
Yeah nerds can be aggressive and dirty sexually for sure. All of this is out of character for him, why would the one line she heard on the phone being “out of character” mean it isn’t him? The whole thing is out of character?
I’d sit down one on one with Al and get some answers.
Al is just going to lie. I wouldn't trust anything the husband or Al has to say. Especially since they've already had time to get a story put together.
I'd just divorce and move on. He's in his 40s, married, going out to strip clubs, getting wasted, and fucking prostitutes. He has nobody to blame but himself. He absolutely will cheat again, even if he is forced to not hang out with Al anymore. He's shown what type of person he truly is and that he will cheat if given the opportunity. And there will be more opportunities.
Yeah that’s facts about Al lying. They have definitely had time to figure it out. If I’d gotten that phone call I would’ve been FLYING to husbands location. Ima figure this out NOW. Personally, this is a deal breaker for me too. Taking advantage of the “grey area” since they never fully discussed strip clubs, and then having prostitutes over at Al’s after? Hell no.
That’s my thing… if it’s a gray area… you ask! All he had to do was call his wife at 1 am and ask “uh, Al wants to take me to a strip club, are you cool with that?” Literally all it takes to avoid these kinda of issues. I feel like because it hadn’t been discussed rather than erring on the side of caution he felt like being naughty and getting away with something on a technicality.
And a lot of men have a weird complex where they cant talk dirty or treat their wife that way because she’s “special” so they only do it with other women.
Ugh you are the company you keep right? So cheating or not he crossed a very serious line that has entered the territory of distrust.
Trust is fragile, once cracked or broken, even if attempts to rebuild it are made, it’s never the same again. Your husband needs to recognize his questionable actions have rightfully made you worry about the stability and future of your relationship.
Ask him, knowing all that he knows about that nights events, what would he do in your position if you had done all that he said he did and all that he has not said he did, would he be completely forgiving and comfortable with you?
I think I would at a minimum ask for personal space, even if that means living together but living like you are separate. Let him feel what not having you as his wife feels like. Don’t cook, clean or anything for him, do not talk to each other, do not sleep next to each other. He needs to understand the gravity of his actions. I think also if you stay, I’d require mandatory STD testing monthly for a year or more. If trust is totally broken for you, staying in the marriage is not the right answer for anyone.
You know half the time it's not even the sexual transgression as much as the lying and breach of trust that makes cheating so heartbreaking. Even if he didn't touch those women he's not telling you the truth and you know this. I'm so sorry your husband made a stupid choice and has now jeopardized your marriage. If you want to try to salvage your marriage, couples therapy is your best bet.
The red flag for me is: why did Ben go to Al’s house instead of coming home? Why was he hiding out on the rooftop patio “trying to sleep” when he has a perfectly good bed at home?
If he was just planning to sleep off the bender instead of waking OP up, and Al called the strippers over later, why was he on the patio? Wouldn’t an innocent man crashing at his friend’s house take the couch?
Does Al live far from you? Are you in an area where it's difficult to find Ubers/cabs? It doesn't really make sense to me why your husband would have gone back to Al's with a few strippers just to sleep. Why didn't he go home instead? Or ask you to pick him up when you called at 4am? Nerdy guys who like Star Wars can also enjoy getting their dicks sucked...
I don't know what I would do in your situation, but I do think I would have a really, really hard time trusting my husband after something like this. Even if he didn't cheat, he made a series of really bad choices that have put you in a very difficult situation. At that point, does it matter if he cheated? If you can't trust his judgment, then how can your relationship last? Those are probably the questions I would be asking myself if I were you.
Going to a strip club anyway is a huge red flag, especially if he didn't tell you or see if you were OK with it.
But you know what you heard, it was either you rang and he accidentally answered it while up to no good or his newly divorced friend was being a sleaze and he surrounded himself with losers.
But I don't know your husband, but you said he doesn't like to be ordered around but agreed to your term straight away. Was it out of guilt?
Tell him he needs to he 100% honest with you if you are to move on and build trust because if he lies and then you find out he could have told you and you could be healing, there will be no coming back.
The fact he hung up instead of saying sorry, "I'm drunk, that was AL", and set you at ease instead hung up and had time to come up with a lie. Wouldn't sit right with me
He can swear he didn't cheat on you all he wants, but he keeps changing his story so it's hard to believe anything he said. Trickle truthing is what he's doing, and it's not a tactic used by innocent people. Let's apply Occam's razor. If the simplest explanation is probably right, then he cheated on you.
Going to a strip club until 4am without telling your wife shit is enough for me to be consider it cheating. He got caught red handed. The "this dick isn't going to suck itself" shows you this man was very comfortable around these women. Probably not his first time talking to her and you have no idea if they even went to a strip club. These could just be women from a bar. He put himself in a position where there's alcohol and naked women. That's a temptation to cheat even if you never intended to. He has no consideration for your feelings. How would he like it if you went to one of those wiggle dick places until 4:30am then call you worried only to hear a sex solicitation from your friend.
I agree about not going to a strip club. I would ask him for more details of the club like name, location, how the space was, the building and then I’d go check it out to see if it matches with what he said. And then, since there, why not go inside and have a little chat with the strippers. They have nothing to lose. Quite the opposite, if he was really there and did something wrong and his wife divorces him, the strippers will be likely gaining another loyal client.
I’d start there and do my own DD on the case. If the husband can’t tell the truth, then I’d go after it. Talk with Al, check bank transactions, his gps (if he uses google maps it might be possible to check his location history), deleted messages, I’d even try to track his Uber driver and try to talk to him too. A 9yo marriage is worth the work (she said it was a happy marriage and it’s clear that she loves him) because even though he made an incredible amount of mistakes that night, he could be saying the truth.
All I’m saying is I would never be able to stay knowing that he is lying, but I could never leave knowing that there is a chance that he is *not* lying. Again, if I really loved him and had a happy marriage to that point.
Find. The. Truth.
ETA: I think OP’s husband is lying. I think he cheated. But as I said, I couldn’t leave without being 100% sure. I’m the kind of person that just have to know all the answers, I don’t like working with assumptions. So I’d go to get those answers myself. Until I have the answers, no intimacy at all and I’d get both of us checked for dsts.
ETA 2: I like the idea that I read here and I second it: OP should ask her husband to call AL on speaker and compare the versions of what happened that day and check for inconsistencies.
Great advice. A rooftop patio at a strip club open on a tuesday until that time. Check all of his story. I just don't understand thinking it's okay to go to a strip club and not at least run it by your wife first.
If it were my husband, I’d check credit card statements, bank statements and atm for cash withdrawals.
And another thing is if you haven’t washed his underwear, look for dried residue from cum and vaginal fluids, crusties.
No one ever thinks about that.
And they each had their own women.
That was No Accident.
He cheated. Why else did he go to his friend’s house at 4 am on a Tuesday morning. Of course he’s letting OP out a tracking device on his phone NOW. He knows how bad this looks and that he cheated.
did he come to you with this wild story after he realized he butt-dialed you? that’s called damage control. do you want to live with this, hopefully one-off, event in your head? whomever was calling for his dick to be sucked was very close to your husband’s phone. nothing else makes sense. I hope you get the answers you need to move forward and live your best life! 🍀🍀
Does your husband have smart watch? My watch tells me when I was sleeping, or "working out" if that were the case here. With any luck, you might have your answer sitting on his wrist.
You're upset and ready to divorce over this. I feel like it's already over.
The whole time your husband was out, he had the choice to go home or leave the situation at any time. He could have left when Al decided he wanted to hang some more with the strippers alone. He could have left when they went back to Als place. He could have left when they had their drinks and it was clear Al was wanting more than just some entertainment at the club.
There were choices that led up to this. I agree that this situation sucks because you'll never truly know. But it sounds like you are having a hard time moving past this.
Al is single and can do whatever he likes. It sounds like you trusted your spouse to do what is right. It sounds like he either engaged in cheating or allowed himself to be placed in a situation where your trust in him was hurt. The trust you have may never come back. Especially if you can never get complete answers as to what truly happened that night.
I think it's important to start with your feelings and go from there. You have a right to be upset. Your feelings are valid. And it's totally okay to want to divorce your husband for placing himself in this situation.
So he recently started hanging out with AL and probably was hitting the bars to pickup women to have sex. This time they weren’t lucky at the dive bar so they decide to go to a strip club instead to pickup women. Your husband loses track of time while he is having sex. Maybe he got too drunk after the sex to come home or maybe he just was having too much fun having sex that he didn’t care.
Your husband cheated. He probably has been cheating. Now you have to get an STD test and figure out if you can convince yourself he didn’t cheat while questioning if he will do it again. WAKE UP! There is no way your husband is an innocent lamb in all of this.
You won’t be able to build trust until you know for a fact and it’s impossible to know anything for a fact. So was he at the strip club at 4 or at Al’s? I doubt he would have access to the strip club roof, and why would there be girls up there.
Here’s the thing, at the end of the day do you TRULY believe it’s possible that he answered on purpose, didn’t say anything for several minutes, hung up thinking it was a bad connection without saying anything, and didn’t call you back despite just knowing it was after 4am on a Tuesday night and he had several missed calls from his wife.
Here’s what almost definitely happened… he tried to silence his phone, but accidentally answered it. He either saw that it was answered later and hung up, or pushed some button without ever knowing it had been answered. I don’t know if he cheated, but I feel pretty comfortable saying I know he deliberately ignored your repeated phone calls at 4am on a Tuesday when he was drunk with some stripped and his shitty friend when he should have been home.
He likely cheated, but why is your husband hanging out with a guy who’s taking him to dive bars, strip clubs, then bringing women home and having sex with them?
If he’s not cheating that whole night would hav been extremely awkward.
Sorry, OP, but deep down, you know. We don't want it to be true either, for your sake. This is awful and you don't deserve it. Go see a lawyer, get an STI panel done and forge on with it. The trust is now broken. You'll forever side eye anything he says. You can't possibly live like that for another 30+ years. It's crushing for sure but he made many bad choices that night that have led to this point. Keep your dignity and tell him to find somewhere else to reside.
It is all bs. I would tell him you will stay, with no more late nights with, or he will be divorced with him. Open devices, and plan date nights with you. Long gone are the times your husband just brings home money and you tolerate everything. At 44 I had a three year old. You are hardly old.
Hmmmm. I would be walking myself into a strip
club asking the girls there some questions. I would be calling Uber and talking to some drivers. I would be talking to Al. Even though they probably coached each other he may slip up. I would be visiting neighbors to look at Ring cameras. I’m not even joking. I would be putting Sherlock Holmes to shame.
Usually your husband is home by 12. Usually he’s never out like this on a Tuesday. He’s not been going to strip clubs throughout your marriage.
In one night he totally breaks character and does all of the above, then follows that up by going to his friend’s house where strippers are PRESENT?! Not one stripper. Pay attention to that S. That’s plural. More than one. More than one stripper for more than one customer.
Yet he’s saying he didn’t do anything? I understand your hesitation to believe it. I certainly don’t.
He had to have known when he left that strip club that he and Al were going to a private residence with multiple strippers. There’s no way in this world that there was any confusion about what their plans were upon arrival. For he and his friend. Or the strippers.
Following that up with the fact that you actually heard women’s voices and the response of a man on your husband’s phone. It just so happens that you called and caught the conversation at the exact moment Al was in there trying to lure him into cheating? It just so happens that he intentionally answered the phone but just decided not to say hello? It just so happens that he intentionally answers his phone to talk to you, his WIFE, with strippers IN the room.
Nope. I’m not buying it. You called mid blow job. He was trying to fumble with the phone. Maybe hoping to reject the call. Maybe flipping it over so he didn’t have to see your name while his penis was in another person’s mouth. In his drunkenness he hit the wrong buttons. He accidentally accepted the call. Letting you know exactly what was going on.
“This dick isn’t going to suck itself.” That’s not a line a buddy says to a friend to rope him into what’s going on. That’s a line a man says to a woman as he’s urging her to give him a blowjob.
Taken just one at a time some of the above facts could create a reasonable doubt. Taken all together, I just don’t see very much evidence that he didn’t cheat. You, literally, only have his word. Which isn’t trustworthy considering the entire night he conducted himself like a single man.
He may be pulling a Bill Clinton and clinging to the falsehood that he didn’t cheat because he didn’t have penetrative sex. It was “just” a blowjob. Some men go this route mentally to try to excuse themselves in their own mind. To assuage their conscience they just keep telling themselves it wasn’t “real” sex.
You can always try the BS approach. Tell him you did talk to an Uber driver, or a stripper, or got Ring camera footage. Then watch his face.
Though I do agree with above comments that these weren’t just strippers. Either they are strippers and prostitutes. Or they are prostitutes they picked up after they left the strip club.
I think your husband started hanging out with Al, his single "friend" who is living the single life, which amounts to covering up his loneliness with partying. It's possible your husband has been hanging out with Al and feeling some strong impulses to relive his younger days. Or maybe he never really partied and became enamored with Al's lifestyle.
It's possible he did more than get drunk and could have been inebriated in more than one way. I'm willing to bet he went out with Al just to have some drinks and they got wasted, someone suggested strip club, they went, and then he made a bunch of bad decisions that he now regrets.
I'm sorry. But his story doesn't really make sense. I'm willing to believe that Al was the catalyst for this shit but your husband should have come home when the subject of a strip club came up. He chose to see how far he could take it.
I love my wife and have never and would never cheat on her. But if I were drunk and coked out in a room full of prostitutes, it's very possible I would. That's why I don't get drunk and coked out in a room full of prostitutes. If he didn't physically cheat on you, that'd be impressive. But it would still be irresponsible as fuck.
Some people think that the shit people do drunk is a window into their true desires. I disagree. I think the shit people do drunk is them giving into their base impulses. I've done things while drunk that I wanted to die over the next day. That's why I don't drink anymore.
No judgment here if you stay with him. But his days of going out drinking have to end. I think he needs to quit drinking.
If you don't want to deal with all that shit, divorce him.
You know what you heard. Don't doubt yourself.
It's very possible he didn't cheat and it was his friends voice....but it's a huge red flag that he is surrouding himself with strippers until the early hours and just supposedly hangs around while his friend(?) apparently engages in sex acts with them. This part alone would be enough for me.
The trust can't be recovered until you're completely sure he's telling you the truth and that's going to be pretty much impossible. Do you feel like you can continue without ever really knowing what happened? I couldn't.
Sorry this happened to you OP.
If he had no intention to do any cheeky thing, he would've been sleeping with you instead of going to his friend's house. And it couldn't be a pure and innocent night that he was just watching tv there while his two friends were playing monopoly with the strippers. If you and your husband still want this marriage, then try to go to the marriage counseling. But you've to make sure he's willing to rebuild the trust with you and you're willing to move on. If not, then don't waste the time. The longer you struggle with the question, the more you hurt yourself.
Did he cheat? Who knows? Is his story BS? Completely. A married man at that hour needs to be ubering his ass home to his wife - not his recently divorced buddy’s house.
If he drops that crappy friend and stays in line like he always had then I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and, I’d believe he didn’t cheat. If he ever comes even close to that line again all bets would be off and I’d toss him
Idk, my partner is white (I am black) and he and I both think strip clubs are a big deal. It’s not cultural, it’s a normal boundary.
Let’s assume he *didn’t* have any kind of sex that night. What does this picture still paint?
I don’t know how it’s responsible, fair, or reflective of him being in a marriage to carry this night out *without* cheating and call this anything short of a five alarm fire.
This was a mess, I’d find my partner repugnant afterwards, and I think your standards have to get higher.
How does he even explain this evening? Getting too drunk doesn’t automatically mean you blow off your whole life.
OP please get an STD test in the next couple of weeks if you proceed intimacy with your husband if you end up taking him back with stricter boundaries, and watch out for signs on things they don’t test for in STD panels like herpes, if your husband did cheat and hopefully he would use a condom that doesn’t protect from skin to skin viruses like herpes so that’s another thing to be mindful of. If he’s been having late nights with Al in the past stuff like that may have happened before too… I would also call Al and ask him his recollection of the night to see if there’s inconsistencies between the two stories.Chances are he won’t tell you the full truth but maybe you can piece things together a little more.
I think you have to ask yourself which you are more comfortable with:
1- Assuming he cheated, but never really knowing one way or the other, while continuing the marriage.
OR
2- Divorcing, never really knowing if he cheated or not.
Only you can answer that question. Can you continue the relationship when your trust is shaky at best? Can you justify divorcing, and all that entails (splitting house, finances, debt, etc) with the possibility that he’s just an idiot who put himself in a bad situation one time?
If it were me, I would seek a marriage counselor to help establish boundaries and parameters for him to re-earn my trust with the stipulation that one more red flag, and I’m out- only because neither of you have any way to prove or disprove the cheating. Especially because nothing like this has happened before, and if he was cheating- he’s really bad at it and will show signs ifl it continues!
I would also require both he and myself to do a full STI panel, just to be safe.
I'd be doing more than banning Al and a tracking device. There's enough circumstance to put him on the couch/kick him out and demand the onus of proof that he is not cheating is on him. Put him on notice that he has put your marriage in a precarious position.
Even if he didn't cheat, there are so many wrong things about his behaviour where he allowed himself to be in this position.
It sounds grotty, but did you check for signs that he had sexual activity when he came home? If he was that drunk, I doubt he would have showered.
Even if y’all have never discussed strip clubs, out of respect he should have called and asked how you felt. Also, we know he lied about being just him and Al in the Uber. All around, this situation is beyond inappropriate and disrespectful. Sounds like you’ll never know the truth at this point.
I really am sorry you’re going through this situation. Once trust is lost, you almost can’t come back.
I’m sorry. I’d potentially try counseling but, he’s definitely lying. This really sucks. Staying out until dawn and sleeping “far away from the strippers” doesn’t seem likely at ALL.
For this being such a serious and infuriating post, reading:
“*He doesn’t really exude ‘come suck this dick’ energy*”
caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud.
Whether he cheated or not, the trust is gone.
He didn't answer calls, he was in the same room as old mat who was getting a blowie and didn't think "I should go home to my wife".. he stayed.
At the very least:
- He gets all the recommended STD testing and follow-ups (with proof to you) without any intimacy.
- He drops Al.
- Consult an attorney to get your ducks in a row.
You said it yourself: he doesn't like being told what to do. He's not a people pleaser. So if this friend was real, and this was all the friend's idea, why would your husband entertain this? Why not walk away? Instead he didn't leave. He was there. If a murder was committed, wouldn't it make him a suspect because he was there?
Whether or not he went through with the strippers doesn't matter as much as the fact that he chose to be there instead of going home.
- out late drinking
- switches to a strip club
- goes to friends house with TWO "strippers"
- answers the phone during sex
- "I was just there minding my own business while sex happened right on top of my phone"
Sure you didn't cheat, buddy.
Trust your gut! Your gut told you that was his voice, don't question yourself on this! If you husband has no way to truly prove his way out of what happened, you should not believe his story given the facts conflict with a night of being faithful to you.
edit to add: I'm sure between the two of them, Ben and Al, that tracking app you made him download - he'll find a way around it if he wants to. Guaranteed he doesn't just stop hanging around him. Personally if I'm at the point of making my partner install an app to track him or need to constantly check his internet usage, I'm just ending the relationship
Let’s take a step back… his never stayed out before. Has been reliable. Never been to strip club… some how leaves the strip club and third wheels it at a house that’s not his own when he has a bed and a wife to return home to and did not cheat… then what was he doing there?
I know you want to believe he was faithful but if you had heard this story from a friend what would you objectively think and what advice would you give… he did not mean to answer. End it, ask for divorce or get him to tell you who the women was so you can confront it. Of course he will give up Al… he blames Al and is trying to do anything to back track… would he give him up if he was truly innocent? He doesn’t like to be told so even that is out of character. Leave and give yourself space
Your husband think strip clubs isn’t a big deal and was hanging out with some man taking strippers over while you were in your house. Is that not enough?
First and foremost, trust your instincts.
But I also encourage you to not make big decisions immediately - maybe if you can go spend the weekend away in a hotel or airbnb just to clear your head, think and journal a bit. You don't have to decide what to do right now. I strongly recommend you take some time & space to process and breath and come back to ground from the awful free-fall you're in right now. Decisions made in panic, anger, fear and desperation are rarely ones you can look back on in future without regret, and this is the sort of decision you want to end up feeling was the right one for you.
And that's what you need to focus on right now. What is the right decisions for YOU. Not him, not your friends or family, you. So take your time to make sure you're honoring yourself here.
You don't owe anyone a 2nd chance if you don't want to, you don't have to have marriage counselling if you don't want to. Something is making you feel you cannot trust him, and without trust, a marriage is worthless as you will never be able to relax and feel safe and at peace in your self. The "what if" will make you crazy and never go away. There is not one right direction, no "should" that you need to worry about, do what is right for you and if other people don't approve or are unhappy about that, then that is their problem because you are the one who has to live in your own head and heart for the rest of your life.
Now, if after you've taken a few days to process and you decide you're not ready to end the marriage, then couples therapy is an absolutely MUST.
Trust can be rebuilt, if it couldn't then couples therapy wouldn't exist. But it takes time & hard work, and both people must be 100% in and willing to go through this time and work together. You will have good days and bad days, but if you're both 100% in and do the work over time, it could very well be that in a year or two, you can even say you're stronger than ever as a couple. It all depends on how willing he is to work with you on restoring that trust and showing you who he truly is.
Slow down, take some deep breaths, focus on yourself here.
I have a problem with a spouse who chooses to do anything in the “grey area” without explicit conversations about it first, but that’s because I can’t stand the “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” energy.
So you know for a FACT that he lied to you in that car about being alone in the Uber on the way to Al’s house, even if it was that lie was that the women were in the other car, he DEFINITELY lied about that.
Trust is so easily lost, and one lie can and will taint everything after. His one lie has brought into stark clarity that he’s willing to lie when it suits him, and now you have no idea what to trust. I can’t tell you whether or not to leave your marriage but I can say that whatever you decide, it’s ok to take your time. It’s ok to separate temporarily and figure out how you feel about moving forward. I would also suggest an STD test to be safe, make him get one too.
Girl trust your gut. I’d tell him he has one chance to tell me the entire truth or I’ll walk away if I wanted to try one more time to get answers. The fact any of this happened is a violation let alone if he cheated (girl he did). I wouldn’t want hard proof. He and his loser friend can go f all the strippers they wanted. I’d bounce
It would be a *huge* problem for me if somebody I was married to stayed out all night and didn't call to let me know what was going on — and I don't care if they were sitting up with their sick grandma. If I don't get a call at a reasonable hour to let me know what's going on, the next call I get had better be from the hospital.
Personally, I think the chance this guy *didn't* cheat is less than 1%, and the chance that it's the first time is less than 10%. OP has to decide what she believes, and what she can live with, but this guy is 44 years old, and in my book that's too damn old to be acting the fool on a work night, even if he *didn't* have a wife at home.
I can't say what OP should do, because everybody has their own breaking point, but IMO, his midlife crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, and it might be a good idea to hand him his walking papers and let him have it as a single man.
I would be 100% done if my husband did this. Because I can’t stay with someone I can’t trust and there were too many mistakes made. I don’t care how innocent and nerdy your husband seems.
Going to a strip club without knowing how you both feel about that as a couple at 1am on a random Tuesday?
Going to stay at a friend’s house in the middle of the fucking night knowing there will be strippers there?
Sleeping on a roof patio while Al and women do god knows what?? Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Sure, Jan.
Your husband is acting single. I bet Al is super happy because misery loves company. He’s newly divorced and wants a friend to do stupid shit with.
Your husband fucked up. Like people have commented, you may never know the whole truth. Your husband did that to you. He made you have that nauseous pit in your stomach. No good husband does that.
It sounds like you couldn't hear the female voices because they were too far away from the phone. If he had been sitting next to them, you would have heard them clearly.
I think that if you have had a great marriage up until this situation, and he has promised not to see this friend again, then you should listen to him when he tells you nothing happened. It would be awful to throw away your whole marriage over Al.
Your issue in couples counselling should be why didn't your husband come home when he could see things going in that direction? Why did he allow himself to get so wasted, and end up in a situation where by just being present, he put his marriage in jeopardy?
Do you **really** believe anyone would go to a single friend's house with 'strippers' (they were prostitutes, not strippers) just to... idk... sleep in another room while the friend fucks them? Do you **really** believe that? Whether you heard Al or your husband on the phone is truly irrelevant. What is relevant is that your husband walked into Al's place with an intention on mind, and that intention DEFINITELY was not to go to sleep while Al fucks the prostitutes in another room. What happened there, we will never know and from what it seems like, your husband will never admit to anything, but the intention was there. And that's enough.
Without any other bullshit.
Look him in the eyes. Tell him!
Your whole 9 year marriage that's been built on trust and respect is at risk of ending.
If he gets too defensive, he's lying. If he tries blaming you, he's lying. Because he's hiding something.
You just want the plain whole truth and if he can't give you that, then it's over.
Lack of communication destroys everything.
You're sat at home thinking you're happy and everything is fine.
When in fact something is up with your husband. Maybe he's not happy, he's getting bored.
Because no sane man who's married and happy would go to a strip club with "al" why is there a need to go to a strip club?
Some late night shenanigans for a bit of excitement to spark up the dull life cycle?
Strippers weren't enough so let's get hookers....
It sounds like a great idea at first.
But he feels guilty, he knows you're waiting up for him.
Al encourages him to live a little, he tries getting involved.
You ring and stupidly he accidentally answers and shits himself because he has nothing to say.
He's been caught red handed.
It's difficult when a male friend is encouraging these stupid decisions.
When in reality your husband should tell you if things ain't going great so you have a chance at fixing them.
Now it's up to you both to either save this marriage or not.
If you both want to work on happiness.... Great do that! But it'll take marriage counselling, sacrifice and possibly exploring some new great things.
There's a lot to unpack here.His behavior at the strip club and with the women afterwards is a huge breach of trust.[If he cheated](https://youtu.be/8OhhFRBllSI?si=ew-9Lki6ZAQezxbt), he needs to come clean and take responsibility. Regardless, marriage counseling could be a good first step to figure out if the trust can be rebuilt or if it's time to move forward separately.Don't be afraid to prioritize yourself.
You know him better than we do, no one here has the appropriate context to determine what you should do. Take a deep breath, think about your husband and what he would do in any given situation. I'd recommend some lengthy discussion with him and maybe counseling if you think it would help. People make bad decisions sometimes, that could be all this is *or* could be worse but no one here has the answer. Don't nuke your marriage because random internet strangers think it's unsaveable after reading a couple paragraphs.
Here’s the issue; you’ll never know the truth. He will continue to lie and gaslight you. It’s his word against an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence. Trust your gut. As the saying goes with married people that hang out with singles; single friends will make you single. The quick agreement to track each other’s phones and to go no contact with Al is an admission of guilt. This is a huge hit to trust; I suggest at minimum marriage counseling, no contact with Al and open phone policy. Sorry but no definitive answers here.
thats sucks. you dint have many plays here. you dont know al to catch a lie. you dont know tech better than him. it is odd that he doesnt like to be told what to do, yet he was a-ok with a tracker. its like he got caught & will do anything to get over this mistake. but what mistake? ha hanging out with loose women ir actually having intimacy? you can use this willingness.
explain to him how this is a major problem. & get him willing to give up his phone to a forensic analysist to perform a physical acquisition.
before you try this on him, you should first find a forensic analysist nearby who can perform this work just in case he calls your bluff. if you dont live in or near a big city you can contact a private investigator or the police & ask who they use.
so then you see if he is willing to do this. if he is still willing to lose his phone for a few hours so a physical acquisition can be performed, then hes probably innocent.
if hes not innocent he will start to object & make excuses. being a tech, he knows a full physical acquisition will be able to recover deleted items from his phone.
i dont know if you want to do all this. you could probably just ask him & see his reaction. but then you give him tine to really prepare his phone for this & tgen youve lost the opportunity to do the full acquisition if needs be.
I find it suspicious myself, but I’m not a real trusting guy to begin with. I think you have a right to be suspicious, maybe you need to do a little more digging and find some evidence before moving onto the next step
Even if he didn’t physically cheated he directed you and your marriage. He’s out acting single. Doesn’t come home until early morning the next day. There is no way to know (in absolute terms) whether he is lying morning the truth about cheating. He’s definitely lying if you’re certain of what you heard. That would be enough for me to not believe him.
Trust is broken, regardless. You and he want to do the work to fix it or nit. If you do, hanging out with Al would be a dealbreaker for me. So would being out all night and strip clubs. They’d be massive triggers for me.
So sorry, wishing you better days.
If they went back to ALs place alone, how did the strippers get there?
Would you stay with him knowing he went to a strip club?
You say he’s a geek and not the type to order someone to suck his dick. Does he never talk dirty to you in bed? If he did, would you be mad? Has he been suppressing himself sexually?
Is he the type to go to strip clubs? Because he did….
At best, he severely disrespected you and didn't care about the risks of hanging with a bad influence and strippers all night, assuming you would forgive him. At worst, he intentionally cheated on you and can never be trusted again. Either way, the marriage has been wrecked, and he needs to suffer the consequences or he will continue to misbehave. A marriage counselor may be able to get him to confess. Long road ahead to recovery from this, just keep that in mind. Respect yourself, because he won't.
As a married woman with a husband I trust if this type of situation happened, the trust would be obliterated. I don't think it would come back. I honestly would try at least a marriage counseling session or a few to see if there is anything salvageable but most likely I would have to end the marriage no matter how much it hurts.
Sounds like a crock to me. As others have suggested follow the money trail OP. I would 100% think he cheated if I was you and regardless whose voice it was, the mention was stripperS ( plural?) Al’s greedy….
UPDATEME
I’d honestly divorce him based on the behaviour you wrote about in this post alone, if it were me.
I don’t want to be married to a man who stays out past 4am on a work night, getting black out drunk, going to strip clubs, hanging out with prostitutes, spending time with other men who think this behaviour or speaking to women in that way is in any way okay or appropriate. I don’t want a man like that.
If you’re okay with this kind of behaviour and okay with never knowing for certain whether or not he cheated on you that night, then you can try marriage counselling. If you’re not though, then it wouldn’t be an overreaction to divorce him.
So the strippers came along in the Uber?
Seems he lied about that. If he wasn’t up to no good why not just Uber home? Why was he there alone at AL house? He’s a grown ass married man.
Does he think he’s living in an 80’s B movie? Al needs to find a single friend.
So they took an Uber to Al's alone, but the strippers were there, too? What did they take a magic carpet? That's fishy. If there was a bad connection, why didn't he call back? If his default is married man, why wouldnt drunk him call you back or just say hello?
I'm sorry, I know from experience, even nerdy star wars guys cheat and his story wouldn't add up for me. I might not jump into a divorce right away, but I certainly wouldn't just accept this malarkey!
I am a hard ass against men because too many of them think with the wrong head, if you get my drift. But I actually believe your guy from the way you tell the story. One way to check for certain is have him take you to Al and ask Al to tell you the exact details of the night in question. Don’t tell hubby what the plan is in advance and take his phone away from him so he cant warn, get stories straight. Anything goes fishy in this scenario, then you will know.
+1 to the comments that ultimately shift the focus to whether the behavior he DID admit to is something you’re ok with.
But also want to note that if you’ve been in a monogamous relationship for 9 years and you suspect your husband had sex with someone else, you may want to get tested /demand he get tested for STIs?!
It's pretty hard these days to accidentally pick up a phone call. So his story about picking it up and being confused would imo be more believable than accidentally picking it up. But it's still weird. Maybe one of the strippers picked up the phone.
It's also weird if he claims that normal strippers from the strip club went home with Al. That is also not something that usually happens. And if it does, then he should have gone home to his wife imo.
I would definitely snoop around. But you might never find out. And then you can't trust him ever again because you don't know if he did anything.
He also went to a strip club not asking you for permission. I don't really have a problem with stripclubs either, but if I never talked about it with my boyfriend, I'd want him to ask me first before going. If you've never talked about it, he doesn't know if you are okay with it or not and he's doing something that can potentially break his relationship.
Overall, think about what it would mean to stay with this man you can trust and doesn't ask you before doing something you might not like. Do you think he can ever regain your trust?
Isn't going to the strip club and bringing back prostitute cheating?
That AI is single he can do anything but why is your husband with him? I don't understand what more evidence you need?
You are in shock and in denial mode. Stop searching for proof that doesn't exist and husband will never tell you truth. Stop this futile exercise and stop hurting yourself.
Take some days off, relax and decide if you want to divorce or not.
You can move on. But you have to both be willing to do the work. Whether Ben cheated or not he put himself in a bad situation. That put you and your marriage in a bad situation. You can choose to learn to trust him again but you need to be sure he’s willing to behave as someone worthy of trust. I’d think about it for a while. Seeing a counselor is probably a good idea for both of you. Good luck.
At minimum he didn't have the courtesy to tell you he was planning to stay out and he lied about how many people were in the taxi so it makes believing the rest of his story harder in my opinion. I'd start from there 🤷🏼♀️
Also in my opinion if the trust is gone it's the beginning of the end. Feeling the need to ban him from being friends with someone and having a tracker on his phone tells me you don't trust him and you are going to worry every time he goes out now.
This is a tough one. Your husband made mistakes, but his explanation is possible. Personally I would have trouble not knowing. You said he is good with tech so looking at his phone is out.
I have one possible thing you could try, a polygraph. I'm not even saying you do it, but mention you're going to do it and see how he reacts. Go out to lunch one Saturday afternoon and on the drive home tell him you've set up an appointment for him to take a lie detector test. See how he responds. If you want to actually go through with it and have him take one? You do you. I know some people will say that if you need to do this then it isnt worth saving, but this situation is kinda unique because he could be cheating or could just have a crummy friend. If he did cheat chances are he will admit it so he doesnt humiliate himself.
Oh wait, I do have another option for you. You say he is good with tech, but there exists programs out there that can recover deleted texts. Bluff him and say you've purchased one. Say he has one chance to come clean now before you use it, and if he doesnt come clean and you find deleted texts showing he lied then there is no hope for reconciling. These programs really do exist so it doesnt need to be a bluff, but I imagine if he did cheat he will admit to it so that you dont go recovering those texts.
If you want to just divorce that is your call, if everything else has been great though I would at least try to see if I can find some answers. And if you do the tips I gave you and he does everything right and you \*still\* feel something is off then trust your gut.
Why is a married man staying out til 4am? There is absolutely no excuse. I go out with the girls to dance all the time. We care home by 10 or 11. Absolutely no excuse for a married person to be out that late. Period. Up to no good.
I’d try the couples therapy first, the worst that could happen is you delay divorce for a bit. But there is the real chance he didn’t cheat. On that chance I’d want to know that I’d tried before jumping to divorce.
Whether or not strip clubs is disrespectful is beyond the point. Bringing strippers or sex workers HOME is most definitely disrespectful. If Al is bringing women home with him, your husband had the duty to get an Uber to your house immediately.
I'm female and personally find strip clubs disgusting. I've let me husband know that strip clubs are off the table, and we did a joint bachelor/bachelorette party mainly so his friends wouldn't try to plan a secret strip club trip. However, if he did go to a strip club, I would be upset but I probably wouldn't assume any cheating was going on....they are a professional place of business and while they may get a lap dance, these places are usually pretty good about not letting their dancers be touched or anything like that going on. But to leave with them to a private setting when you are MARRIED?!?! Hell no. Absolutely hell no. He needs to learn to remove himself from situations. Even if he didn't cheat, he chose to go to his buddies house with strippers/prostitutes and that alone is a breach of trust.
Try counseling. But if it's not helping you find peace, there's no shame in leaving because of this. It's absolutely a justifiable reason for divorce.
Your husband knew you wouldn't be comfortable with him going to a strip club, which is why he didn't ask if he could go. You will never know what really happened that night and will never be able to trust him again. Even if he didn't cheat on you, which I doubt, he made the decision to ignore your feelings and disrespect you.
Ask your husband how he would feel if the roles were reversed and you were the one going to a strip club without telling him. Ask him if he would also give you a second chance and trust that you wouldn't cheat on him. Additionally, ask him if he would accept you going to a strip club without him.
If you decide to give him a second chance, make him call Al on speaker with you by his side and ask Al to explain what happened that night. Then, compare both versions and see if there are any inconsistencies. In addition, don't have sex with your husband before making sure that he gets tested for STDs. Just to be safe, you should also get tested because he might have cheated on you before.
You could try couples therapy, but in my opinion, it will be just a waste of time, money, and energy. Without trust and mutual respect, no relationship can survive.
If you hadn't received that call, do you really think he would tell you that he was in a strip club? I really doubt that Al was getting a BJ with your husband just innocently there watching it. Trust your gut; you know that he cheated on you and this probably wasn't even the first time, which is why he got good at covering his tracks.
Even if he gives you access to his phone, what guarantee do you have that he won't get a second phone without you knowing?
Talk with a lawyer to know your rights and start divorce proceedings.
> If you hadn't received that call, do you really think he would tell you that he was in a strip club?
And what are the odds that the first time this *ever* happened, OP got to hear? They've done this before.
It's a 50/50 he didn't cheat so jumping on him could be a problem if you're just like straight to divorce I would highly suggest that you find quality couples counseling or a third party you can bounce this off of but he's going to need to come clean with all the details absolutely everything even if he just kissed a chick or whatever it was because you're not going to be able to move forward even if you divorce him with no answers it'll mess with your mind forever
Does he at least acknowledge his behaviour was completely unacceptable and his relationship with Al is clearly not a good one? And that is made even more difficult if they are co workers…is he just gonna ice him out or what?
Does he just leave his phone around for other ppl to answer…standard rule is men tend to always have their phone in their pocket?
It’s a bad vibe for sure but if you don’t want to throw it all away see how he handles you tracking his phone and see how he next handles his relationship with Al, if he cuts him off or not…if he doesn’t part of me thinks that will be because he doesn’t want him spilling the beans
I don't think trust would ever recover, at least not 100% and you have to consider whether you can live with that fact for the rest of your life.
Once a liar is always a liar and once a cheater is always a cheater.
You don't have much choices here, you either accept something could have happened and live with it or divorce him.
Al being single is enjoying the wild side..more then likely his roped in your husband not caring his married..let's be honest it doesn't affect Al does it and Al would like to backup your husband
Or you can just get him extremely drunk and get a confession...unless he is willing to be hypnotised to confess the truth (don't come at me people..I'm being sort of sarcastic)🫣
I'm okay with strip clubs personally but I always made it clear to my husband no lap dances, leaving with strippers would absolutely be cheating in my eyes. As a married man he should have went home not accompanied them back to his friends house even IF nothing happened beyond that. Completely inappropriate.
I'm sorry to say, but if he's not cheating, he definitely doesn't respect you. Strippers, night clubs??? He's trying to live his party boy days and pretending that he doesn't have a wife. He's also gaslighting you and trying to make you think that your imagining things. Youre not paranoid, your taking your next step. Keep looking for divorce lawyers. I'm sorry he did this to you
You have to decide what you are willing to accept in your relationship since you will never know the truth. I certainly wouldn’t be making any concrete decisions until both you and your husband have full STD panels run.
Dont do stupid things in a hurry. Maybe there is a story.
This is where your knowledge of him tell you what you can believe or not.
Hard one but time will tell in the next few days.
I would at least separate for now. I bet as soon as you do he will start trickle truthing you. Being out to 4am, a prostitute in the background, Ohh it was a bad connection? There’s so much wrong with his story. Tell your friends and family, they know him better and regardless on if he cheated or not he did wrong. You will need support with whatever your decision and your friends and family are better then strangers on the internet.
Like others have said, check his card account and see what payments were made. Get AL number and get his side of the story (even if he lies, you’ll at least hear his voice and maybe get a better clue).
UpdateMe!
If you’re having doubts about leaving, ask him why he even put himself in that situation in the first place. A decision is a moment in time it’s not hours and hours of bad decisions. He could have called you to bail him out but he didn’t.
If you believe his answers then go to counseling to address your feelings and whatever he was expressing by his behavior. If you don’t believe him then you know what you need to do.
If it sounded like your husband, odds are it was your husband. Also he said the strippers weren’t in the uber with them - so how did the strippers magically end up at Al’s place? He is lying about them not being in the car. So he and Al picked up a couple of strippers and went to Al’s place with them, and yes, your husband was cheating.
Even if you assume he wasn’t cheating, going out to a strip joint without discussion and being out til 4 am - on a weekday! - without talking to you is a deal breaker.
Sounds like it is time for a divorce.
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You won’t find answers in his phone. Look at his credit cards and bank account for the money transactions of the day in question. The amount of money spent will give you the answer. Prostitutes costs money.
Al probably paid for it all. You know Al! Always getting me in trouble with my wife, that rascal.
Yes, Al probably paid. Or Ben brought cash. But that also means that Ben knew that strip clubs were not really just a grey area. It would look better for Ben if the bank statements did include an amount to cover a couple of drinks in the strip club. But then OP should check older bank statements to see if this was the first time.
When I caught my ex husband doing almost the exact same thing, I looked up the withdrawals, the ATM they came from, which was next to the strip club(the ATM number should be listed with the transaction), Google maps had his "timeline" which showed his locations, hotel charge, and his Uber rides lol. Some guys make it easy
Maybe. But if Ben brought cash it’ll show the withdrawal from a ATM or something. Or he could’ve used something like VENMO to transfer money back to Al or even directly to the girl. Or I don’t know, credit cards? Working girls even take those? I don’t think so. The nature of the business seems to me like cash front only. I don’t really know all the types of money transfers used in OP’s country, but it’s the safest bet. Probably nothing shows on the phone because he may have deleted it already or if it was an impulsive decision that happened for the first time. You usually don’t have long chats with prostitutes anyway. So asking to see immediately all his money transactions is as good bet as any. A negative answer from him is already a answer. And suspicious amounts of money payments are too. Edited to add: and ask to see them IMMEDIATELY. Not tomorrow, not he’ll print to show them later. Right now in all the online bank/credit app. Then she prints it and take her time doing her analysis.
Some places have a generic name so it’s not obvious that Ben paid for adult services. OP look for “Life Marketing” or “AB Promotions” or even just “Sasha’s Bakery”. Something that looks normal but you don’t recognize the charge. Like you would assume it’s your husband’s regular lunch place if you came across it in the bank statements.
Oh, so we think Al is real? The one OPs never met?
I speculated elsewhere in the thread that Al is the name Ben uses when he wants to bang hookers.
Follow the money! ATM and credit card.
Can you live with never knowing?
This is fucking hard man
This! I’m sorry this happened but the torture will not stop. You will never stop wondering! You will question his character, faith, the trust and the bond.
Been there and this is correct.
Same
Nah, she'll decide it never happened, because he likes Star Wars, and she doesn't want a divorce.
It’s like I know exactly what you mean.
That question cuts right to the bone. Well done.
My grandma's advice would have been "to put it out of your mind and move on". Not advice I was able to follow personally.
Because sadly, in grandma's day, they usually had no other choice. No education, born & bred housewives...thank God times have changed.
Backup now -- it wasn't who they were, but what choices they had if they left a marriage. My grandmother divorced her 1st husband (abuse multiplied by the death of their newborn) and the only reason she was "eligible" a decade later for my grandfather was because his wife had just died, leaving him with an infant.
She can know she just has to get smarter than the comments in here. Off the top of my head. Buy some audio recorders Encourage your husband to have that guy over for a boys hangout and tell him you'll go have a girls night at a friend's house. Set recorders everywhere they hang out in the house. On the night leave an anonymous message on the friend's car that says you know what happened on the night and are going to tell everyone, so he finds on his way over. Come home the next day and listen to the recordings. Deny everything about leaving the message on the car if the recordings comeback innocent. If they incriminate, then do whatever you want.
Strippers don’t really go home with anyone. Women who have sex for money however, do. So take that for what it’s worth.
Yea I was literally thinking the same thing. The trickle truthing smells clearly of BS….. That story makes no sense to anyone. It is most likely he slept with one of those women and thought there’s no way for OP to discover the truth. He probably figured he’s in it for the long haul anyway (as in they’ve been married for so long) so what is a “one time” thing going to do??? I would bet he did the nasty 💀
Even if he didn’t end up having sex with the strippers, going to Al’s place with them was such a terrible judgment call that he may as well have.
Some strippers have sex for money. Not all, but some.
it definitely happens, i have a few friends that have. my dad was broke as hell all his life but he was hilarious & he would quite a bit. with all the partying etc a lot of strippers live pretty impulsively
Your dad was passing out coke then.
[удалено]
Why fix this on a specific flavor of cheating? Partying till dawn with strippers is plenty deal breaker enough for many people
Thats for certain. I would glad I was "lucky" enough to get the butt-dialed call for clarity
Totally
Absolutely. This alone would be the deal breaker for me.
Same!!!
Same again! If his friend did bring a stripper back, why did he go with him? Why not get an Uber home? If I, as a married nan, was out with a single friend, who decided to bring strippers back to his house, I would get an Uber and nope right out of there, drunk or not. The guy is a total moron or a lying cheater. And since he seems to work in technology, that appears to rule out the moron aspect.
Even in the best possible scenario, where Ben and Al did go home alone, and Al invited the strippers over without warning Ben, why did Ben not text or call OP at any point, especially after getting the call from her? You would think that would be common courtesy if you were out drinking and were planning to sleep somewhere else, to text your spouse and let them know where you were. You would think that if you got an apparently dropped call from your spouse at 3 AM, you would go somewhere quieter and call them back. No, Ben’s story makes no sense, he was out partying with strippers and got caught.
Exactly !! So many outs, he’s a cheater
OP Let’s be real and have some common sense. Not only that but of course he was cheating. They each had their own woman. Cheating is the intimate touching, the sexual conversations, and being alone in an intimate setting with the other woman. You’re really going to believe none of that happened. If you do, I got some magic beans to sell you. Marriage counseling isn’t going to fix something someone doesn’t regret.
Good point about the women. Why would someone who is married get their own stripper to take home? That’s definitely different compared to just looking at them at the bar.
Check the bank records. Strippers don't go home with middle aged gentlemen unless it's a transaction.
Or there’s drugs involved. Had a friend who’s older brother sold cocaine and strippers would come over often. Brother had a nice pool and would let my friend use it and invite friends. I had no idea the guy sold drugs until I made a joke about the strippers all loving him to my friend. Another friend and old coworker from my bartending days used to bartend at a strip club and told me that an unfortunate number of the strippers were addicts. They would prostitute themselves for cash and/or drugs.
Exactly. There’s a HUGE very visible non-confusing line between being at strip club with friend/people to party and two guys chillin at home with some strippers. And it’s not even a line that has to be drawn. It’s just already there. No one needs to say to their partner “I have no problem if you go a strip club but I draw the line at taking strippers home” - of course that where the line is drawn - it’s drawn there for *everyone*.
If he truly loved you he would never do or say anything that would hurt you. Trust is the basis of a relationship, without that there is no relationship. How could you trust him again and always wondering what he’s doing or when it would happen again. He can spin the story however he wants but the truth is he could have left at anytime and Uber home.
Came to say this, I’d still divorce him even if he didn’t cheat. Wtf is he out and ignoring his phone at four am?
Btw if you're married, partying with strippers until dawn IS CHEATING
Unless its allowed in your marriage…then its just a Tuesday.
And Tuesday is practically hump day. Almost…
Its all Tuesday if you dont sleep
This right here! 🙌🏼🙌🏼
* on a Tuesday.
The sad fact is for the rest of your life you will not know if he cheated on you or not. What you do know is that he chose to go partying at a strip club with a friend til 4am in the morning and was not in communication with you. He chose to go home to Al's with strippers from the club rather than go home to you, at the very least, knowing there was going to be sexual activity. No one takes home strippers at 4am thinking they're going to play board games. Even if he thought that multiple women were all for Al, what was his plan, sleep in the next room? Why didn't he just get his own uber home then? He could have not got wasted, not gone to a strip club, he could have said woah mate no I'm married, I'm taking an uber home to my wife, not going to a single dude's house with strippers.... Whether he actually cheated or not you will literally never know because he's clearly not going to tell you if he did, and either you can put it behind you and trust he's telling the truth, or it's over. Given the whole situation, it seems pretty hard to trust him. He already made all these bad decisions. Sticking his dick in someone else's mouth is just one more bad decision. Being willing to cut out Al at least is a positive step; it's unlikely this will happen again if he has no other friends he goes out partying with, but you still have to live with what's already happened.
> No one takes home strippers at 4am thinking they're going to play board games. Even if he thought that multiple women were all for Al, what was his plan, sleep in the next room? Why didn't he just get his own uber home then? **mic drop**
Also.. why did he feel the need to specify that it was only him and Al in the car on the way to Al's house?
Because liars over share in hopes of being believed.
Right? Where did the strippers come from? But also, be fr. Strippers don’t tend to just follow people home on a Tuesday night.
Makes me think about that scene in Breaking Bad where Jesse takes the girl's hand to lead her up to his bedroom so they can play video games together.
This is the main thing - why would your husband put himself in this position in the first place. If he respected you, he wouldn’t have done any of this to begin with.
Yeah, any honest spouse hits the road home when things get this dicey
This. OPs husband made a series of decisions that night. At any time he could have said he was heading out and let Al do what Al wanted to do. But he didn't. Even if he didn't cheat, OP will never know for sure. But it seems suspicious as heck for her to call, not have him answer and when he does he only does because she hears some really suspicious activity going on. Als single and free to do as he wishes. But OPs husband needed to respect that the situation at that time was not something he should remain present for. It's pretty clear what Als intentions were that night and OPs husband had every ability to call a cab or an Uber to come get him. Does he really expect OP to think he was completely helpless?
I'm generally a trusting person, and I try to believe the best of people (mostly). My usual reaction is that if the partner has been trustworthy in the past and says they didn't cheat, then they didn't cheat. *But* this story has big logic gaps, as described above, so at the *very* least, I think the husband is hiding *something*.
All of this. OP has more than enough information ALREADY for me to know this isn't a relationship I'd want to be in, whether he cheated or not (he almost certainly did though.)
Meh - I could actually see going along to try to make sure the idiot friend was safe, honestly. If a mate of mine was drunk and taking strippers home, I'd say he was insane to have strangers over, especially multiple strangers. And one of my mates told me about taking strippers back to his hotel room with a mate - must have been a suite - and when they got back together he found out his mate never touched her, just talked about her studies, and current events. The mate told me later he really only went to make sure the idiot didn't end up naked and dead in an alley... But It's more likely the husband was drunk and went along with his mate, just because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Drunk and thoughtful just isn't a thing... Whether or not his was the non-self-sucking dick is beyond my ability to guess...
It’s just odd a man of his age is hanging out with another middle aged guy in the middle of the week getting hammered and going to strip clubs. That’s single guy, mid life crisis stuff.
> That’s single guy, mid life crisis stuff. Al is a recently divorced middle-aged guy. That's like, exactly who you described here.
I’m a happily married man in my forties and I would never put myself in a situation like that. Most likely he cheated imo. Pursue the divorce.
Right? This is something your already kind of an asshole boyfriend might do at 20, not a 40 something who's been married nearly a decade. I'd be really upset about the phone call. His excuse being he thought they had a bad connection doesn't fly. Why wouldn't he call her back, or message her to at least let her know what was going on? I'm a woman, but if I were in his shoes and my "friend" was in the background hanging out with strippers, I'd be calling my spouse back on repeat. "Honey, Al is over here acting like a dipshit and I'm, for some weird unknown reason, incapable of getting an Uber, please come pick me up" or something.
Might get downvoted for this one, but as a former sw, strippers are not really spending one on one time with guys who aren’t paying for more. And yes, plenty of unassuming, nerdy men pay for sex. I’m very sorry op, you’re unlikely to get the full truth out of this situation.
The first thing you need to do is ask yourself how you feel about these events even if he didn't cheat on you. He stayed out all night partying with a single friend and some strippers. He told you they went back to Al's place alone, but has very much admitted that the strippers were at Al's place with them. And they didn't just follow show up at a random customer's house without invitation. You also know from the timeline of when your husband and Al went back to Al's place that they got there very, very shortly before your phone call with him. So best case scenario, rather than coming home at 4 am, your husband went back to Al's place with Al and his lady guests and immediately went and passed out on the roof, then woke up to Al joining him on the roof and soliciting sex from the strippers. You don't say what time he actually came home, but if it wasn't shortly after that, you know he chose to stay after learning that was the plan for the evening. Even if he didn't actually have sex with anyone, is this behavior you're okay with?
If on the rare occasion I went out with coworkers or a male coworker given that most jobs are over around 5pm there’s still no chance I would “be getting home before 12am, I would be home by 9pm at the latest. He kept pushing his limits and nothing was said. I’m sorry OP but what your husband was doing and now did (strip club at 2am) is not what a 44 year old married man should be doing! Put your foot down now or this situation will get worse.
I would find it hard to believe that Ben immediately went to sleep on the rooftop patio the second they arrived back to Al's place, especially with the missed call at around 3:40 am. Also, when you DO pick up the call at 4am, if you're actually innocent, the thing you do is tell Al "hey man, I'm trying to sleep up here, and this is my wife on the phone, so go have fun." You don't just leave the line open and then hang up without saying anything, and leave your wife to fill in the blanks in the worst possible way. Maybe it was an accidental pick up in the middle of some action. I would get sober and awake REALLY fast if my spouse was calling and there were strippers present, and there would be immediate explanations, apologies, and I would be in an uber home ASAP. He definitely messed up. I don't know if he cheated. I would NOT be happy to be tracking my partner's phone or telling them they can't hang out with their friend. I don't know how you rebuild trust in a situation like this, because one of my expectations is that my partner and I don't put ourselves into situations where we raise these kinds of doubts. If strippers are okay or not isn't a grey area. Definitely going back to someone's place with strippers (or having them come separately) is not cool. My guess is that the women WERE in the car with the men, and he didn't answer the phone in the car because it would have been clear that he was heading to Al's place with strippers in tow.
This absolutely sucks because I feel like what can you do? The only way you’ll ever be able to trust him fully is if you’re somehow able to get a video recording of that night, which is most likely impossible. You know what you heard, and he knows what you heard, it just differs depending on what’s the truth. Although, something I want to ask. You said that your husband and Al took a Uber home, how did the strippers eventually get there? Was it an arrangement beforehand for them to meet them at Als? Or did Al give them his number? Or did your husbands? It doesn’t really add up. Also, who ordered the Uber? Your husband or Al? If it was your husband, check his Uber history, you’ll be able to at least see the exact time he left the strip club/got to Als, might ease up the timeline a little. Your husbands version really doesn’t make much sense, but depending how drunk he is I guess it’s possible? I really dont know
Why the hell would he feel comfortable staying at AL's knowing he brought strippers home? As somebody who was previously married and never cheated on their spouse in 27 years, I would not have stuck around for that! My reputation is worth too damn much!
His friend didn't bring two women home just for himself. There are two women because your husband was fucking one. His behavior was out of the ordinary, he didn't come home, you hear multiple women on the phone, and the only two guys around are your husband and Al. He will never tell you the truth. He will lie and gaslight his way out of it. And someone who can cheat on you, does NOT love you. You can't do that to someone you love. I'd 100% divorce him Also, just because he's nerdy doesn't mean he can't be more aggressive in bed and dirty talk like that. It's likely that he thinks you're not into it and so doesn't express it towards you. I've met plenty of men who were like that. You were so sure it was his voice on the phone, but as time goes by, you're talking yourself out of it because you don't want to believe it. Trust your initial thoughts.
Yeah nerds can be aggressive and dirty sexually for sure. All of this is out of character for him, why would the one line she heard on the phone being “out of character” mean it isn’t him? The whole thing is out of character? I’d sit down one on one with Al and get some answers.
Al is just going to lie. I wouldn't trust anything the husband or Al has to say. Especially since they've already had time to get a story put together. I'd just divorce and move on. He's in his 40s, married, going out to strip clubs, getting wasted, and fucking prostitutes. He has nobody to blame but himself. He absolutely will cheat again, even if he is forced to not hang out with Al anymore. He's shown what type of person he truly is and that he will cheat if given the opportunity. And there will be more opportunities.
Yeah that’s facts about Al lying. They have definitely had time to figure it out. If I’d gotten that phone call I would’ve been FLYING to husbands location. Ima figure this out NOW. Personally, this is a deal breaker for me too. Taking advantage of the “grey area” since they never fully discussed strip clubs, and then having prostitutes over at Al’s after? Hell no.
That’s my thing… if it’s a gray area… you ask! All he had to do was call his wife at 1 am and ask “uh, Al wants to take me to a strip club, are you cool with that?” Literally all it takes to avoid these kinda of issues. I feel like because it hadn’t been discussed rather than erring on the side of caution he felt like being naughty and getting away with something on a technicality.
I bet Al is the name Ben uses when he's banging strippers.
And a lot of men have a weird complex where they cant talk dirty or treat their wife that way because she’s “special” so they only do it with other women.
Ugh you are the company you keep right? So cheating or not he crossed a very serious line that has entered the territory of distrust. Trust is fragile, once cracked or broken, even if attempts to rebuild it are made, it’s never the same again. Your husband needs to recognize his questionable actions have rightfully made you worry about the stability and future of your relationship. Ask him, knowing all that he knows about that nights events, what would he do in your position if you had done all that he said he did and all that he has not said he did, would he be completely forgiving and comfortable with you? I think I would at a minimum ask for personal space, even if that means living together but living like you are separate. Let him feel what not having you as his wife feels like. Don’t cook, clean or anything for him, do not talk to each other, do not sleep next to each other. He needs to understand the gravity of his actions. I think also if you stay, I’d require mandatory STD testing monthly for a year or more. If trust is totally broken for you, staying in the marriage is not the right answer for anyone.
They took home strippers from the club. What amount of marriage counseling undoes that?
You know half the time it's not even the sexual transgression as much as the lying and breach of trust that makes cheating so heartbreaking. Even if he didn't touch those women he's not telling you the truth and you know this. I'm so sorry your husband made a stupid choice and has now jeopardized your marriage. If you want to try to salvage your marriage, couples therapy is your best bet.
The red flag for me is: why did Ben go to Al’s house instead of coming home? Why was he hiding out on the rooftop patio “trying to sleep” when he has a perfectly good bed at home?
If he was just planning to sleep off the bender instead of waking OP up, and Al called the strippers over later, why was he on the patio? Wouldn’t an innocent man crashing at his friend’s house take the couch?
Does Al live far from you? Are you in an area where it's difficult to find Ubers/cabs? It doesn't really make sense to me why your husband would have gone back to Al's with a few strippers just to sleep. Why didn't he go home instead? Or ask you to pick him up when you called at 4am? Nerdy guys who like Star Wars can also enjoy getting their dicks sucked... I don't know what I would do in your situation, but I do think I would have a really, really hard time trusting my husband after something like this. Even if he didn't cheat, he made a series of really bad choices that have put you in a very difficult situation. At that point, does it matter if he cheated? If you can't trust his judgment, then how can your relationship last? Those are probably the questions I would be asking myself if I were you.
The trust doesn’t recover until he tells you the truth. Otherwise he’s just a liar.
Going to a strip club anyway is a huge red flag, especially if he didn't tell you or see if you were OK with it. But you know what you heard, it was either you rang and he accidentally answered it while up to no good or his newly divorced friend was being a sleaze and he surrounded himself with losers. But I don't know your husband, but you said he doesn't like to be ordered around but agreed to your term straight away. Was it out of guilt? Tell him he needs to he 100% honest with you if you are to move on and build trust because if he lies and then you find out he could have told you and you could be healing, there will be no coming back. The fact he hung up instead of saying sorry, "I'm drunk, that was AL", and set you at ease instead hung up and had time to come up with a lie. Wouldn't sit right with me
And all this happened on a Tuesday?! Trust your gut.
He can swear he didn't cheat on you all he wants, but he keeps changing his story so it's hard to believe anything he said. Trickle truthing is what he's doing, and it's not a tactic used by innocent people. Let's apply Occam's razor. If the simplest explanation is probably right, then he cheated on you.
Going to a strip club until 4am without telling your wife shit is enough for me to be consider it cheating. He got caught red handed. The "this dick isn't going to suck itself" shows you this man was very comfortable around these women. Probably not his first time talking to her and you have no idea if they even went to a strip club. These could just be women from a bar. He put himself in a position where there's alcohol and naked women. That's a temptation to cheat even if you never intended to. He has no consideration for your feelings. How would he like it if you went to one of those wiggle dick places until 4:30am then call you worried only to hear a sex solicitation from your friend.
I agree about not going to a strip club. I would ask him for more details of the club like name, location, how the space was, the building and then I’d go check it out to see if it matches with what he said. And then, since there, why not go inside and have a little chat with the strippers. They have nothing to lose. Quite the opposite, if he was really there and did something wrong and his wife divorces him, the strippers will be likely gaining another loyal client. I’d start there and do my own DD on the case. If the husband can’t tell the truth, then I’d go after it. Talk with Al, check bank transactions, his gps (if he uses google maps it might be possible to check his location history), deleted messages, I’d even try to track his Uber driver and try to talk to him too. A 9yo marriage is worth the work (she said it was a happy marriage and it’s clear that she loves him) because even though he made an incredible amount of mistakes that night, he could be saying the truth. All I’m saying is I would never be able to stay knowing that he is lying, but I could never leave knowing that there is a chance that he is *not* lying. Again, if I really loved him and had a happy marriage to that point. Find. The. Truth. ETA: I think OP’s husband is lying. I think he cheated. But as I said, I couldn’t leave without being 100% sure. I’m the kind of person that just have to know all the answers, I don’t like working with assumptions. So I’d go to get those answers myself. Until I have the answers, no intimacy at all and I’d get both of us checked for dsts. ETA 2: I like the idea that I read here and I second it: OP should ask her husband to call AL on speaker and compare the versions of what happened that day and check for inconsistencies.
Great advice. A rooftop patio at a strip club open on a tuesday until that time. Check all of his story. I just don't understand thinking it's okay to go to a strip club and not at least run it by your wife first.
If it were my husband, I’d check credit card statements, bank statements and atm for cash withdrawals. And another thing is if you haven’t washed his underwear, look for dried residue from cum and vaginal fluids, crusties. No one ever thinks about that. And they each had their own women. That was No Accident.
Why not go to the strip club and talk to the women they met? They have nothing to hide.
He cheated. Why else did he go to his friend’s house at 4 am on a Tuesday morning. Of course he’s letting OP out a tracking device on his phone NOW. He knows how bad this looks and that he cheated.
Nothing ever platonic comes from bringing unknown strippers home with a married 44 year old man at 4am. He could have noped out and went home instead.
did he come to you with this wild story after he realized he butt-dialed you? that’s called damage control. do you want to live with this, hopefully one-off, event in your head? whomever was calling for his dick to be sucked was very close to your husband’s phone. nothing else makes sense. I hope you get the answers you need to move forward and live your best life! 🍀🍀
Being out til dawn partying with strippers would be enough for me.
Does your husband have smart watch? My watch tells me when I was sleeping, or "working out" if that were the case here. With any luck, you might have your answer sitting on his wrist.
His friend brought a stripper for him. He cheated. Be honest with yourself.
He cheated
You're upset and ready to divorce over this. I feel like it's already over. The whole time your husband was out, he had the choice to go home or leave the situation at any time. He could have left when Al decided he wanted to hang some more with the strippers alone. He could have left when they went back to Als place. He could have left when they had their drinks and it was clear Al was wanting more than just some entertainment at the club. There were choices that led up to this. I agree that this situation sucks because you'll never truly know. But it sounds like you are having a hard time moving past this. Al is single and can do whatever he likes. It sounds like you trusted your spouse to do what is right. It sounds like he either engaged in cheating or allowed himself to be placed in a situation where your trust in him was hurt. The trust you have may never come back. Especially if you can never get complete answers as to what truly happened that night. I think it's important to start with your feelings and go from there. You have a right to be upset. Your feelings are valid. And it's totally okay to want to divorce your husband for placing himself in this situation.
So he recently started hanging out with AL and probably was hitting the bars to pickup women to have sex. This time they weren’t lucky at the dive bar so they decide to go to a strip club instead to pickup women. Your husband loses track of time while he is having sex. Maybe he got too drunk after the sex to come home or maybe he just was having too much fun having sex that he didn’t care. Your husband cheated. He probably has been cheating. Now you have to get an STD test and figure out if you can convince yourself he didn’t cheat while questioning if he will do it again. WAKE UP! There is no way your husband is an innocent lamb in all of this.
You won’t be able to build trust until you know for a fact and it’s impossible to know anything for a fact. So was he at the strip club at 4 or at Al’s? I doubt he would have access to the strip club roof, and why would there be girls up there.
Here’s the thing, at the end of the day do you TRULY believe it’s possible that he answered on purpose, didn’t say anything for several minutes, hung up thinking it was a bad connection without saying anything, and didn’t call you back despite just knowing it was after 4am on a Tuesday night and he had several missed calls from his wife. Here’s what almost definitely happened… he tried to silence his phone, but accidentally answered it. He either saw that it was answered later and hung up, or pushed some button without ever knowing it had been answered. I don’t know if he cheated, but I feel pretty comfortable saying I know he deliberately ignored your repeated phone calls at 4am on a Tuesday when he was drunk with some stripped and his shitty friend when he should have been home.
He likely cheated, but why is your husband hanging out with a guy who’s taking him to dive bars, strip clubs, then bringing women home and having sex with them? If he’s not cheating that whole night would hav been extremely awkward.
even if his story is true, the moment he knew Al was bringing home strippers was the moment he should've ended the night and went home to you.
Sorry, OP, but deep down, you know. We don't want it to be true either, for your sake. This is awful and you don't deserve it. Go see a lawyer, get an STI panel done and forge on with it. The trust is now broken. You'll forever side eye anything he says. You can't possibly live like that for another 30+ years. It's crushing for sure but he made many bad choices that night that have led to this point. Keep your dignity and tell him to find somewhere else to reside.
It is all bs. I would tell him you will stay, with no more late nights with, or he will be divorced with him. Open devices, and plan date nights with you. Long gone are the times your husband just brings home money and you tolerate everything. At 44 I had a three year old. You are hardly old.
Hmmmm. I would be walking myself into a strip club asking the girls there some questions. I would be calling Uber and talking to some drivers. I would be talking to Al. Even though they probably coached each other he may slip up. I would be visiting neighbors to look at Ring cameras. I’m not even joking. I would be putting Sherlock Holmes to shame. Usually your husband is home by 12. Usually he’s never out like this on a Tuesday. He’s not been going to strip clubs throughout your marriage. In one night he totally breaks character and does all of the above, then follows that up by going to his friend’s house where strippers are PRESENT?! Not one stripper. Pay attention to that S. That’s plural. More than one. More than one stripper for more than one customer. Yet he’s saying he didn’t do anything? I understand your hesitation to believe it. I certainly don’t. He had to have known when he left that strip club that he and Al were going to a private residence with multiple strippers. There’s no way in this world that there was any confusion about what their plans were upon arrival. For he and his friend. Or the strippers. Following that up with the fact that you actually heard women’s voices and the response of a man on your husband’s phone. It just so happens that you called and caught the conversation at the exact moment Al was in there trying to lure him into cheating? It just so happens that he intentionally answered the phone but just decided not to say hello? It just so happens that he intentionally answers his phone to talk to you, his WIFE, with strippers IN the room. Nope. I’m not buying it. You called mid blow job. He was trying to fumble with the phone. Maybe hoping to reject the call. Maybe flipping it over so he didn’t have to see your name while his penis was in another person’s mouth. In his drunkenness he hit the wrong buttons. He accidentally accepted the call. Letting you know exactly what was going on. “This dick isn’t going to suck itself.” That’s not a line a buddy says to a friend to rope him into what’s going on. That’s a line a man says to a woman as he’s urging her to give him a blowjob. Taken just one at a time some of the above facts could create a reasonable doubt. Taken all together, I just don’t see very much evidence that he didn’t cheat. You, literally, only have his word. Which isn’t trustworthy considering the entire night he conducted himself like a single man.
He may be pulling a Bill Clinton and clinging to the falsehood that he didn’t cheat because he didn’t have penetrative sex. It was “just” a blowjob. Some men go this route mentally to try to excuse themselves in their own mind. To assuage their conscience they just keep telling themselves it wasn’t “real” sex.
You can always try the BS approach. Tell him you did talk to an Uber driver, or a stripper, or got Ring camera footage. Then watch his face. Though I do agree with above comments that these weren’t just strippers. Either they are strippers and prostitutes. Or they are prostitutes they picked up after they left the strip club.
I think your husband started hanging out with Al, his single "friend" who is living the single life, which amounts to covering up his loneliness with partying. It's possible your husband has been hanging out with Al and feeling some strong impulses to relive his younger days. Or maybe he never really partied and became enamored with Al's lifestyle. It's possible he did more than get drunk and could have been inebriated in more than one way. I'm willing to bet he went out with Al just to have some drinks and they got wasted, someone suggested strip club, they went, and then he made a bunch of bad decisions that he now regrets. I'm sorry. But his story doesn't really make sense. I'm willing to believe that Al was the catalyst for this shit but your husband should have come home when the subject of a strip club came up. He chose to see how far he could take it. I love my wife and have never and would never cheat on her. But if I were drunk and coked out in a room full of prostitutes, it's very possible I would. That's why I don't get drunk and coked out in a room full of prostitutes. If he didn't physically cheat on you, that'd be impressive. But it would still be irresponsible as fuck. Some people think that the shit people do drunk is a window into their true desires. I disagree. I think the shit people do drunk is them giving into their base impulses. I've done things while drunk that I wanted to die over the next day. That's why I don't drink anymore. No judgment here if you stay with him. But his days of going out drinking have to end. I think he needs to quit drinking. If you don't want to deal with all that shit, divorce him.
You know what you heard. Don't doubt yourself. It's very possible he didn't cheat and it was his friends voice....but it's a huge red flag that he is surrouding himself with strippers until the early hours and just supposedly hangs around while his friend(?) apparently engages in sex acts with them. This part alone would be enough for me. The trust can't be recovered until you're completely sure he's telling you the truth and that's going to be pretty much impossible. Do you feel like you can continue without ever really knowing what happened? I couldn't. Sorry this happened to you OP.
If he had no intention to do any cheeky thing, he would've been sleeping with you instead of going to his friend's house. And it couldn't be a pure and innocent night that he was just watching tv there while his two friends were playing monopoly with the strippers. If you and your husband still want this marriage, then try to go to the marriage counseling. But you've to make sure he's willing to rebuild the trust with you and you're willing to move on. If not, then don't waste the time. The longer you struggle with the question, the more you hurt yourself.
Don’t ask him if he cheated, ask him if he engaged in specific acts. He may not have cheated in his mind, but he may have gotten his dick sucked.
Did he cheat? Who knows? Is his story BS? Completely. A married man at that hour needs to be ubering his ass home to his wife - not his recently divorced buddy’s house.
If he drops that crappy friend and stays in line like he always had then I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and, I’d believe he didn’t cheat. If he ever comes even close to that line again all bets would be off and I’d toss him
Idk, my partner is white (I am black) and he and I both think strip clubs are a big deal. It’s not cultural, it’s a normal boundary. Let’s assume he *didn’t* have any kind of sex that night. What does this picture still paint? I don’t know how it’s responsible, fair, or reflective of him being in a marriage to carry this night out *without* cheating and call this anything short of a five alarm fire. This was a mess, I’d find my partner repugnant afterwards, and I think your standards have to get higher. How does he even explain this evening? Getting too drunk doesn’t automatically mean you blow off your whole life.
OP please get an STD test in the next couple of weeks if you proceed intimacy with your husband if you end up taking him back with stricter boundaries, and watch out for signs on things they don’t test for in STD panels like herpes, if your husband did cheat and hopefully he would use a condom that doesn’t protect from skin to skin viruses like herpes so that’s another thing to be mindful of. If he’s been having late nights with Al in the past stuff like that may have happened before too… I would also call Al and ask him his recollection of the night to see if there’s inconsistencies between the two stories.Chances are he won’t tell you the full truth but maybe you can piece things together a little more.
When do strippers go with strangers? Especially to a house
I think you have to ask yourself which you are more comfortable with: 1- Assuming he cheated, but never really knowing one way or the other, while continuing the marriage. OR 2- Divorcing, never really knowing if he cheated or not. Only you can answer that question. Can you continue the relationship when your trust is shaky at best? Can you justify divorcing, and all that entails (splitting house, finances, debt, etc) with the possibility that he’s just an idiot who put himself in a bad situation one time? If it were me, I would seek a marriage counselor to help establish boundaries and parameters for him to re-earn my trust with the stipulation that one more red flag, and I’m out- only because neither of you have any way to prove or disprove the cheating. Especially because nothing like this has happened before, and if he was cheating- he’s really bad at it and will show signs ifl it continues! I would also require both he and myself to do a full STI panel, just to be safe.
I'd be doing more than banning Al and a tracking device. There's enough circumstance to put him on the couch/kick him out and demand the onus of proof that he is not cheating is on him. Put him on notice that he has put your marriage in a precarious position. Even if he didn't cheat, there are so many wrong things about his behaviour where he allowed himself to be in this position. It sounds grotty, but did you check for signs that he had sexual activity when he came home? If he was that drunk, I doubt he would have showered.
Even if y’all have never discussed strip clubs, out of respect he should have called and asked how you felt. Also, we know he lied about being just him and Al in the Uber. All around, this situation is beyond inappropriate and disrespectful. Sounds like you’ll never know the truth at this point. I really am sorry you’re going through this situation. Once trust is lost, you almost can’t come back.
I’m sorry. I’d potentially try counseling but, he’s definitely lying. This really sucks. Staying out until dawn and sleeping “far away from the strippers” doesn’t seem likely at ALL. For this being such a serious and infuriating post, reading: “*He doesn’t really exude ‘come suck this dick’ energy*” caught me by surprise and made me laugh out loud.
Ben genuinely thinks you’re going to buy this and he’s going to get away with this. Stay neutral, make a plan, and leave QUIETLY.
Whether he cheated or not, the trust is gone. He didn't answer calls, he was in the same room as old mat who was getting a blowie and didn't think "I should go home to my wife".. he stayed.
At the very least: - He gets all the recommended STD testing and follow-ups (with proof to you) without any intimacy. - He drops Al. - Consult an attorney to get your ducks in a row.
You said it yourself: he doesn't like being told what to do. He's not a people pleaser. So if this friend was real, and this was all the friend's idea, why would your husband entertain this? Why not walk away? Instead he didn't leave. He was there. If a murder was committed, wouldn't it make him a suspect because he was there? Whether or not he went through with the strippers doesn't matter as much as the fact that he chose to be there instead of going home.
- out late drinking - switches to a strip club - goes to friends house with TWO "strippers" - answers the phone during sex - "I was just there minding my own business while sex happened right on top of my phone" Sure you didn't cheat, buddy. Trust your gut! Your gut told you that was his voice, don't question yourself on this! If you husband has no way to truly prove his way out of what happened, you should not believe his story given the facts conflict with a night of being faithful to you. edit to add: I'm sure between the two of them, Ben and Al, that tracking app you made him download - he'll find a way around it if he wants to. Guaranteed he doesn't just stop hanging around him. Personally if I'm at the point of making my partner install an app to track him or need to constantly check his internet usage, I'm just ending the relationship
Let’s take a step back… his never stayed out before. Has been reliable. Never been to strip club… some how leaves the strip club and third wheels it at a house that’s not his own when he has a bed and a wife to return home to and did not cheat… then what was he doing there? I know you want to believe he was faithful but if you had heard this story from a friend what would you objectively think and what advice would you give… he did not mean to answer. End it, ask for divorce or get him to tell you who the women was so you can confront it. Of course he will give up Al… he blames Al and is trying to do anything to back track… would he give him up if he was truly innocent? He doesn’t like to be told so even that is out of character. Leave and give yourself space
Insist on a polygraph test and watch his face. Next he's going to swear he doesn't remember what he did.
And also make him get tested for STDs
Your husband think strip clubs isn’t a big deal and was hanging out with some man taking strippers over while you were in your house. Is that not enough?
First and foremost, trust your instincts. But I also encourage you to not make big decisions immediately - maybe if you can go spend the weekend away in a hotel or airbnb just to clear your head, think and journal a bit. You don't have to decide what to do right now. I strongly recommend you take some time & space to process and breath and come back to ground from the awful free-fall you're in right now. Decisions made in panic, anger, fear and desperation are rarely ones you can look back on in future without regret, and this is the sort of decision you want to end up feeling was the right one for you. And that's what you need to focus on right now. What is the right decisions for YOU. Not him, not your friends or family, you. So take your time to make sure you're honoring yourself here. You don't owe anyone a 2nd chance if you don't want to, you don't have to have marriage counselling if you don't want to. Something is making you feel you cannot trust him, and without trust, a marriage is worthless as you will never be able to relax and feel safe and at peace in your self. The "what if" will make you crazy and never go away. There is not one right direction, no "should" that you need to worry about, do what is right for you and if other people don't approve or are unhappy about that, then that is their problem because you are the one who has to live in your own head and heart for the rest of your life. Now, if after you've taken a few days to process and you decide you're not ready to end the marriage, then couples therapy is an absolutely MUST. Trust can be rebuilt, if it couldn't then couples therapy wouldn't exist. But it takes time & hard work, and both people must be 100% in and willing to go through this time and work together. You will have good days and bad days, but if you're both 100% in and do the work over time, it could very well be that in a year or two, you can even say you're stronger than ever as a couple. It all depends on how willing he is to work with you on restoring that trust and showing you who he truly is. Slow down, take some deep breaths, focus on yourself here.
I have a problem with a spouse who chooses to do anything in the “grey area” without explicit conversations about it first, but that’s because I can’t stand the “ask for forgiveness rather than permission” energy. So you know for a FACT that he lied to you in that car about being alone in the Uber on the way to Al’s house, even if it was that lie was that the women were in the other car, he DEFINITELY lied about that. Trust is so easily lost, and one lie can and will taint everything after. His one lie has brought into stark clarity that he’s willing to lie when it suits him, and now you have no idea what to trust. I can’t tell you whether or not to leave your marriage but I can say that whatever you decide, it’s ok to take your time. It’s ok to separate temporarily and figure out how you feel about moving forward. I would also suggest an STD test to be safe, make him get one too.
Girl trust your gut. I’d tell him he has one chance to tell me the entire truth or I’ll walk away if I wanted to try one more time to get answers. The fact any of this happened is a violation let alone if he cheated (girl he did). I wouldn’t want hard proof. He and his loser friend can go f all the strippers they wanted. I’d bounce
It would be a deal breaker for me if my husband went to a strip club.
It would be a *huge* problem for me if somebody I was married to stayed out all night and didn't call to let me know what was going on — and I don't care if they were sitting up with their sick grandma. If I don't get a call at a reasonable hour to let me know what's going on, the next call I get had better be from the hospital. Personally, I think the chance this guy *didn't* cheat is less than 1%, and the chance that it's the first time is less than 10%. OP has to decide what she believes, and what she can live with, but this guy is 44 years old, and in my book that's too damn old to be acting the fool on a work night, even if he *didn't* have a wife at home. I can't say what OP should do, because everybody has their own breaking point, but IMO, his midlife crisis is going to get worse before it gets better, and it might be a good idea to hand him his walking papers and let him have it as a single man.
I would be 100% done if my husband did this. Because I can’t stay with someone I can’t trust and there were too many mistakes made. I don’t care how innocent and nerdy your husband seems. Going to a strip club without knowing how you both feel about that as a couple at 1am on a random Tuesday? Going to stay at a friend’s house in the middle of the fucking night knowing there will be strippers there? Sleeping on a roof patio while Al and women do god knows what?? Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Sure, Jan. Your husband is acting single. I bet Al is super happy because misery loves company. He’s newly divorced and wants a friend to do stupid shit with. Your husband fucked up. Like people have commented, you may never know the whole truth. Your husband did that to you. He made you have that nauseous pit in your stomach. No good husband does that.
It sounds like you couldn't hear the female voices because they were too far away from the phone. If he had been sitting next to them, you would have heard them clearly. I think that if you have had a great marriage up until this situation, and he has promised not to see this friend again, then you should listen to him when he tells you nothing happened. It would be awful to throw away your whole marriage over Al. Your issue in couples counselling should be why didn't your husband come home when he could see things going in that direction? Why did he allow himself to get so wasted, and end up in a situation where by just being present, he put his marriage in jeopardy?
Do you **really** believe anyone would go to a single friend's house with 'strippers' (they were prostitutes, not strippers) just to... idk... sleep in another room while the friend fucks them? Do you **really** believe that? Whether you heard Al or your husband on the phone is truly irrelevant. What is relevant is that your husband walked into Al's place with an intention on mind, and that intention DEFINITELY was not to go to sleep while Al fucks the prostitutes in another room. What happened there, we will never know and from what it seems like, your husband will never admit to anything, but the intention was there. And that's enough.
Without any other bullshit. Look him in the eyes. Tell him! Your whole 9 year marriage that's been built on trust and respect is at risk of ending. If he gets too defensive, he's lying. If he tries blaming you, he's lying. Because he's hiding something. You just want the plain whole truth and if he can't give you that, then it's over. Lack of communication destroys everything. You're sat at home thinking you're happy and everything is fine. When in fact something is up with your husband. Maybe he's not happy, he's getting bored. Because no sane man who's married and happy would go to a strip club with "al" why is there a need to go to a strip club? Some late night shenanigans for a bit of excitement to spark up the dull life cycle? Strippers weren't enough so let's get hookers.... It sounds like a great idea at first. But he feels guilty, he knows you're waiting up for him. Al encourages him to live a little, he tries getting involved. You ring and stupidly he accidentally answers and shits himself because he has nothing to say. He's been caught red handed. It's difficult when a male friend is encouraging these stupid decisions. When in reality your husband should tell you if things ain't going great so you have a chance at fixing them. Now it's up to you both to either save this marriage or not. If you both want to work on happiness.... Great do that! But it'll take marriage counselling, sacrifice and possibly exploring some new great things.
There's a lot to unpack here.His behavior at the strip club and with the women afterwards is a huge breach of trust.[If he cheated](https://youtu.be/8OhhFRBllSI?si=ew-9Lki6ZAQezxbt), he needs to come clean and take responsibility. Regardless, marriage counseling could be a good first step to figure out if the trust can be rebuilt or if it's time to move forward separately.Don't be afraid to prioritize yourself.
You know him better than we do, no one here has the appropriate context to determine what you should do. Take a deep breath, think about your husband and what he would do in any given situation. I'd recommend some lengthy discussion with him and maybe counseling if you think it would help. People make bad decisions sometimes, that could be all this is *or* could be worse but no one here has the answer. Don't nuke your marriage because random internet strangers think it's unsaveable after reading a couple paragraphs.
Have him take a polygraph. If nothing happened he should jump at the chance to be prove he’s not lying.
amazing
Second this. Get the polygraph. Even if he didn't touch them all his behaviour that night would be enough for me
Here’s the issue; you’ll never know the truth. He will continue to lie and gaslight you. It’s his word against an enormous amount of circumstantial evidence. Trust your gut. As the saying goes with married people that hang out with singles; single friends will make you single. The quick agreement to track each other’s phones and to go no contact with Al is an admission of guilt. This is a huge hit to trust; I suggest at minimum marriage counseling, no contact with Al and open phone policy. Sorry but no definitive answers here.
thats sucks. you dint have many plays here. you dont know al to catch a lie. you dont know tech better than him. it is odd that he doesnt like to be told what to do, yet he was a-ok with a tracker. its like he got caught & will do anything to get over this mistake. but what mistake? ha hanging out with loose women ir actually having intimacy? you can use this willingness. explain to him how this is a major problem. & get him willing to give up his phone to a forensic analysist to perform a physical acquisition. before you try this on him, you should first find a forensic analysist nearby who can perform this work just in case he calls your bluff. if you dont live in or near a big city you can contact a private investigator or the police & ask who they use. so then you see if he is willing to do this. if he is still willing to lose his phone for a few hours so a physical acquisition can be performed, then hes probably innocent. if hes not innocent he will start to object & make excuses. being a tech, he knows a full physical acquisition will be able to recover deleted items from his phone. i dont know if you want to do all this. you could probably just ask him & see his reaction. but then you give him tine to really prepare his phone for this & tgen youve lost the opportunity to do the full acquisition if needs be.
I find it suspicious myself, but I’m not a real trusting guy to begin with. I think you have a right to be suspicious, maybe you need to do a little more digging and find some evidence before moving onto the next step
Even if he didn’t physically cheated he directed you and your marriage. He’s out acting single. Doesn’t come home until early morning the next day. There is no way to know (in absolute terms) whether he is lying morning the truth about cheating. He’s definitely lying if you’re certain of what you heard. That would be enough for me to not believe him. Trust is broken, regardless. You and he want to do the work to fix it or nit. If you do, hanging out with Al would be a dealbreaker for me. So would being out all night and strip clubs. They’d be massive triggers for me. So sorry, wishing you better days.
Whether he cheated or not, he put himself in a bad position. He also didn't even contact you to let you know plans, stayed out late, ect
If they went back to ALs place alone, how did the strippers get there? Would you stay with him knowing he went to a strip club? You say he’s a geek and not the type to order someone to suck his dick. Does he never talk dirty to you in bed? If he did, would you be mad? Has he been suppressing himself sexually? Is he the type to go to strip clubs? Because he did….
At best, he severely disrespected you and didn't care about the risks of hanging with a bad influence and strippers all night, assuming you would forgive him. At worst, he intentionally cheated on you and can never be trusted again. Either way, the marriage has been wrecked, and he needs to suffer the consequences or he will continue to misbehave. A marriage counselor may be able to get him to confess. Long road ahead to recovery from this, just keep that in mind. Respect yourself, because he won't.
Why was he hiding on the roof instead of catching an Uber home???? I call bullshit!!
Surprise him with a lie detector test
As a married woman with a husband I trust if this type of situation happened, the trust would be obliterated. I don't think it would come back. I honestly would try at least a marriage counseling session or a few to see if there is anything salvageable but most likely I would have to end the marriage no matter how much it hurts.
Sounds like a crock to me. As others have suggested follow the money trail OP. I would 100% think he cheated if I was you and regardless whose voice it was, the mention was stripperS ( plural?) Al’s greedy…. UPDATEME
I’d honestly divorce him based on the behaviour you wrote about in this post alone, if it were me. I don’t want to be married to a man who stays out past 4am on a work night, getting black out drunk, going to strip clubs, hanging out with prostitutes, spending time with other men who think this behaviour or speaking to women in that way is in any way okay or appropriate. I don’t want a man like that. If you’re okay with this kind of behaviour and okay with never knowing for certain whether or not he cheated on you that night, then you can try marriage counselling. If you’re not though, then it wouldn’t be an overreaction to divorce him.
Even if true the story itself is not a good look.
So the strippers came along in the Uber? Seems he lied about that. If he wasn’t up to no good why not just Uber home? Why was he there alone at AL house? He’s a grown ass married man. Does he think he’s living in an 80’s B movie? Al needs to find a single friend.
So they took an Uber to Al's alone, but the strippers were there, too? What did they take a magic carpet? That's fishy. If there was a bad connection, why didn't he call back? If his default is married man, why wouldnt drunk him call you back or just say hello? I'm sorry, I know from experience, even nerdy star wars guys cheat and his story wouldn't add up for me. I might not jump into a divorce right away, but I certainly wouldn't just accept this malarkey!
I am a hard ass against men because too many of them think with the wrong head, if you get my drift. But I actually believe your guy from the way you tell the story. One way to check for certain is have him take you to Al and ask Al to tell you the exact details of the night in question. Don’t tell hubby what the plan is in advance and take his phone away from him so he cant warn, get stories straight. Anything goes fishy in this scenario, then you will know.
Just do what you think is right, lol, Reddit is the WORST place in the world for relationship advice.
+1 to the comments that ultimately shift the focus to whether the behavior he DID admit to is something you’re ok with. But also want to note that if you’ve been in a monogamous relationship for 9 years and you suspect your husband had sex with someone else, you may want to get tested /demand he get tested for STIs?!
It's pretty hard these days to accidentally pick up a phone call. So his story about picking it up and being confused would imo be more believable than accidentally picking it up. But it's still weird. Maybe one of the strippers picked up the phone. It's also weird if he claims that normal strippers from the strip club went home with Al. That is also not something that usually happens. And if it does, then he should have gone home to his wife imo. I would definitely snoop around. But you might never find out. And then you can't trust him ever again because you don't know if he did anything. He also went to a strip club not asking you for permission. I don't really have a problem with stripclubs either, but if I never talked about it with my boyfriend, I'd want him to ask me first before going. If you've never talked about it, he doesn't know if you are okay with it or not and he's doing something that can potentially break his relationship. Overall, think about what it would mean to stay with this man you can trust and doesn't ask you before doing something you might not like. Do you think he can ever regain your trust?
Isn't going to the strip club and bringing back prostitute cheating? That AI is single he can do anything but why is your husband with him? I don't understand what more evidence you need? You are in shock and in denial mode. Stop searching for proof that doesn't exist and husband will never tell you truth. Stop this futile exercise and stop hurting yourself. Take some days off, relax and decide if you want to divorce or not.
You can move on. But you have to both be willing to do the work. Whether Ben cheated or not he put himself in a bad situation. That put you and your marriage in a bad situation. You can choose to learn to trust him again but you need to be sure he’s willing to behave as someone worthy of trust. I’d think about it for a while. Seeing a counselor is probably a good idea for both of you. Good luck.
Plot twist, there were no girls at Al's place.
My ex husband let me put a tracking app on his phone too. He cheated with 6 more women after that.. just sayin girl. Don’t waste more time
At minimum he didn't have the courtesy to tell you he was planning to stay out and he lied about how many people were in the taxi so it makes believing the rest of his story harder in my opinion. I'd start from there 🤷🏼♀️ Also in my opinion if the trust is gone it's the beginning of the end. Feeling the need to ban him from being friends with someone and having a tracker on his phone tells me you don't trust him and you are going to worry every time he goes out now.
Show up at the strip club with a bunch of money and get the truth from the hookers
This is a tough one. Your husband made mistakes, but his explanation is possible. Personally I would have trouble not knowing. You said he is good with tech so looking at his phone is out. I have one possible thing you could try, a polygraph. I'm not even saying you do it, but mention you're going to do it and see how he reacts. Go out to lunch one Saturday afternoon and on the drive home tell him you've set up an appointment for him to take a lie detector test. See how he responds. If you want to actually go through with it and have him take one? You do you. I know some people will say that if you need to do this then it isnt worth saving, but this situation is kinda unique because he could be cheating or could just have a crummy friend. If he did cheat chances are he will admit it so he doesnt humiliate himself. Oh wait, I do have another option for you. You say he is good with tech, but there exists programs out there that can recover deleted texts. Bluff him and say you've purchased one. Say he has one chance to come clean now before you use it, and if he doesnt come clean and you find deleted texts showing he lied then there is no hope for reconciling. These programs really do exist so it doesnt need to be a bluff, but I imagine if he did cheat he will admit to it so that you dont go recovering those texts. If you want to just divorce that is your call, if everything else has been great though I would at least try to see if I can find some answers. And if you do the tips I gave you and he does everything right and you \*still\* feel something is off then trust your gut.
1) why the fuck did he go to a strip club? 2) text Al and demand he tells you wtf they did 3) divorce his ass.
You came to redirect for "sanity voices" 🤣🤣🤣 oh hun..... thats cute.
From experience, trust your gut. They always deny , act all sweet and tell you how much they love you.
Why is a married man staying out til 4am? There is absolutely no excuse. I go out with the girls to dance all the time. We care home by 10 or 11. Absolutely no excuse for a married person to be out that late. Period. Up to no good.
I’d try the couples therapy first, the worst that could happen is you delay divorce for a bit. But there is the real chance he didn’t cheat. On that chance I’d want to know that I’d tried before jumping to divorce.
Whether or not strip clubs is disrespectful is beyond the point. Bringing strippers or sex workers HOME is most definitely disrespectful. If Al is bringing women home with him, your husband had the duty to get an Uber to your house immediately. I'm female and personally find strip clubs disgusting. I've let me husband know that strip clubs are off the table, and we did a joint bachelor/bachelorette party mainly so his friends wouldn't try to plan a secret strip club trip. However, if he did go to a strip club, I would be upset but I probably wouldn't assume any cheating was going on....they are a professional place of business and while they may get a lap dance, these places are usually pretty good about not letting their dancers be touched or anything like that going on. But to leave with them to a private setting when you are MARRIED?!?! Hell no. Absolutely hell no. He needs to learn to remove himself from situations. Even if he didn't cheat, he chose to go to his buddies house with strippers/prostitutes and that alone is a breach of trust. Try counseling. But if it's not helping you find peace, there's no shame in leaving because of this. It's absolutely a justifiable reason for divorce.
Your husband knew you wouldn't be comfortable with him going to a strip club, which is why he didn't ask if he could go. You will never know what really happened that night and will never be able to trust him again. Even if he didn't cheat on you, which I doubt, he made the decision to ignore your feelings and disrespect you. Ask your husband how he would feel if the roles were reversed and you were the one going to a strip club without telling him. Ask him if he would also give you a second chance and trust that you wouldn't cheat on him. Additionally, ask him if he would accept you going to a strip club without him. If you decide to give him a second chance, make him call Al on speaker with you by his side and ask Al to explain what happened that night. Then, compare both versions and see if there are any inconsistencies. In addition, don't have sex with your husband before making sure that he gets tested for STDs. Just to be safe, you should also get tested because he might have cheated on you before. You could try couples therapy, but in my opinion, it will be just a waste of time, money, and energy. Without trust and mutual respect, no relationship can survive. If you hadn't received that call, do you really think he would tell you that he was in a strip club? I really doubt that Al was getting a BJ with your husband just innocently there watching it. Trust your gut; you know that he cheated on you and this probably wasn't even the first time, which is why he got good at covering his tracks. Even if he gives you access to his phone, what guarantee do you have that he won't get a second phone without you knowing? Talk with a lawyer to know your rights and start divorce proceedings.
> If you hadn't received that call, do you really think he would tell you that he was in a strip club? And what are the odds that the first time this *ever* happened, OP got to hear? They've done this before.
Yep. But before they were done by midnight. This time it just took longer.
It's a 50/50 he didn't cheat so jumping on him could be a problem if you're just like straight to divorce I would highly suggest that you find quality couples counseling or a third party you can bounce this off of but he's going to need to come clean with all the details absolutely everything even if he just kissed a chick or whatever it was because you're not going to be able to move forward even if you divorce him with no answers it'll mess with your mind forever
Does he at least acknowledge his behaviour was completely unacceptable and his relationship with Al is clearly not a good one? And that is made even more difficult if they are co workers…is he just gonna ice him out or what? Does he just leave his phone around for other ppl to answer…standard rule is men tend to always have their phone in their pocket? It’s a bad vibe for sure but if you don’t want to throw it all away see how he handles you tracking his phone and see how he next handles his relationship with Al, if he cuts him off or not…if he doesn’t part of me thinks that will be because he doesn’t want him spilling the beans
I don't think trust would ever recover, at least not 100% and you have to consider whether you can live with that fact for the rest of your life. Once a liar is always a liar and once a cheater is always a cheater.
You don't have much choices here, you either accept something could have happened and live with it or divorce him. Al being single is enjoying the wild side..more then likely his roped in your husband not caring his married..let's be honest it doesn't affect Al does it and Al would like to backup your husband Or you can just get him extremely drunk and get a confession...unless he is willing to be hypnotised to confess the truth (don't come at me people..I'm being sort of sarcastic)🫣
I'm okay with strip clubs personally but I always made it clear to my husband no lap dances, leaving with strippers would absolutely be cheating in my eyes. As a married man he should have went home not accompanied them back to his friends house even IF nothing happened beyond that. Completely inappropriate.
I'm sorry to say, but if he's not cheating, he definitely doesn't respect you. Strippers, night clubs??? He's trying to live his party boy days and pretending that he doesn't have a wife. He's also gaslighting you and trying to make you think that your imagining things. Youre not paranoid, your taking your next step. Keep looking for divorce lawyers. I'm sorry he did this to you
Other than this occasion, has he displayed sketchy behavior before? Does he tell lies, does he hide his phone or have unaccounted for time?
You have to decide what you are willing to accept in your relationship since you will never know the truth. I certainly wouldn’t be making any concrete decisions until both you and your husband have full STD panels run.
Dont do stupid things in a hurry. Maybe there is a story. This is where your knowledge of him tell you what you can believe or not. Hard one but time will tell in the next few days.
I would at least separate for now. I bet as soon as you do he will start trickle truthing you. Being out to 4am, a prostitute in the background, Ohh it was a bad connection? There’s so much wrong with his story. Tell your friends and family, they know him better and regardless on if he cheated or not he did wrong. You will need support with whatever your decision and your friends and family are better then strangers on the internet.
Like others have said, check his card account and see what payments were made. Get AL number and get his side of the story (even if he lies, you’ll at least hear his voice and maybe get a better clue). UpdateMe!
If you’re having doubts about leaving, ask him why he even put himself in that situation in the first place. A decision is a moment in time it’s not hours and hours of bad decisions. He could have called you to bail him out but he didn’t. If you believe his answers then go to counseling to address your feelings and whatever he was expressing by his behavior. If you don’t believe him then you know what you need to do.
If it sounded like your husband, odds are it was your husband. Also he said the strippers weren’t in the uber with them - so how did the strippers magically end up at Al’s place? He is lying about them not being in the car. So he and Al picked up a couple of strippers and went to Al’s place with them, and yes, your husband was cheating. Even if you assume he wasn’t cheating, going out to a strip joint without discussion and being out til 4 am - on a weekday! - without talking to you is a deal breaker. Sounds like it is time for a divorce.
lol who goes home with strippers?