Auntie SparkNotes: My Boyfriend Went to a Strip Club

Hi Auntie,

Me and my boyfriend of one year are in a wonderful relationship, even though it’s long distance. We both go to two different college but always try to facetime when we’re free and visit each other as often as we can. However, this past weekend, he did something that really made me angry. He went on a 3-day trip with some of his guy friends and almost got a lap dance. He told me before he went that one of his friends had always wanted to go to a strip club just to experience once. I told him that I was very uneasy about it but he assured me that he would not touch any of the girls and would text me as much as he could while he was there. He also said he just wanted to go for the experience and to chill with his friends. So, I let him go, albeit uneasily.

He did text me the whole time he was there and he came back from the trip a day later. Two days passed when we just talked normally and he told me about his trip and how all his friends had gotten lap dances except him. The third day, while we were talking, I asked him about the strip club again and how it was. He said he hated it and felt disgusting and guilty the whole time. Then I asked him about lap dances again and he still said that all his friends had gotten one and a woman came up to him and offered him but he said he wasn’t interested. The way he said it made me feel doubtful, so I asked him again, and this time he told me the truth. He said that the strippers pressure you into it and he was super drunk and he missed me a lot so he told me he hesitantly said yes to a lap dance. He and the stripper went into the private room where he sat down but he told me that before anything happened, he felt too guilty and just ran out while telling the stripper he couldn’t do it. Next, he told me that the only reason he did it was because he missed me and my touch a lot and he felt as if he could pretend the stripper was me. He swore on my life and our relationship that nothing happened, he didn’t touch the stripper, and he left before the lap dance could happen. He told me he felt guilty the whole time and that he would never f*** up like this again and was almost in tears.

I honestly could see the regret and guilt in his eyes but I just don’t know if I can trust him now. This is really hard for me. I gave him my trust to go to the strip club, trusting that he would just go for one experience but he betrayed my trust. I told him to give me some time so I could deal with this and to earn my trust back. What do I do Auntie? I really want to forgive him because he did eventually tell me the truth after I kinda pried it out. Please give me advice. I can’t stop thinking about how he almost betrayed me. I don’t even know if I can trust him when he said nothing actually happened between him and the stripper.

I’ll be honest, Sparkler: This is a hard, hard letter to answer.

And that’s not because it’s so weird or so terrible, but because it has so many moving parts.

There’s the question of your personal feelings about strip clubs (and the inherent commodification of sex and/or women’s bodies therein) in general, and why you object to them, and whether your boyfriend shares those objections.

There’s the question of where you draw the line that defines “betrayal” (in this case, at getting a lap dance) and why.

There’s the question of your describing this excursion as something you “let” your boyfriend do, and whether you’d grant him the same power to sign off on (or veto) how you choose to spend your time with your friends.

And of course, there’s the question of your boyfriend’s honesty (or lack thereof) and whether his initial choice to hide the truth is indicative of something about his character, or your relationship, or both.

In short, Sparkler, it’s a lot to unpack. But at the risk of oversimplifying a very complex problem, I think your answer comes down to just one thing… and that’s trust.

And I’m not talking about the surface-level trust issue of his having almost gotten a lap dance when he wasn’t supposed to. I’m talking about the deep-down, overarching trust that makes or breaks a relationship—and in this case, that makes the difference between a betrayal and a mistake. Do you trust in your boyfriend’s character? Do you trust that he’s telling the truth about how gross and ashamed he feels? Do you trust that this was an experience he fully intends never to repeat, not because you won’t “let” him, but because doing so is not in line with his own genuinely-held values?

And perhaps most importantly, do you trust yourself to be mature and generous enough not to punish him for the rest of your relationship over one instance in which he disappointed you? How long do you intend to make him work to “earn back” from your trust? At what point, if any, do you intend to move on? Will you be able to watch him go on future trips with his friends, and trust him to be faithful to you, without setting minute rules about where he’s allowed to go and how he is and isn’t allowed to interact with other women? (And keep in mind, sweet pea, that the longer you guys stay together, the more the people around you will begin to pair off permanently—and the more your boyfriend will be attending bachelor parties at which strippers are a likely if not unavoidable component. )

You’ll have to come up with your own answers to these questions, of course. And if what you decide is that you can’t stop dwelling on what he did—and can’t imagine a future in which you’re not forever asking him to prove to you that he’ll never disappoint you again—then yes, it’s probably time to break up. The alternative is a miserable scenario that isn’t fair to either of you.

But with that said, I do hope you’ll at least consider forgiving your boyfriend for what was, all in all, a pretty understandable mistake. He was drunk and curious and made a decision against his better judgment that he immediately regretted. And while of course you’d prefer that he hadn’t done that, it is the kind of error that even a very decent person can make. Even if he initially didn’t come clean with you about it, it’s not hard to see why; he’d screwed up, he knew it, and he knew you weren’t going to be happy about it. Add to that the fact that he clearly isn’t proud of what he did, and you’ve got a scenario in which very few people would be eager to admit the truth.

And yet, despite having a lot of reasons to lie about what happened—not least that you would never have found out the truth without him telling you—your boyfriend chose to be honest with you. He admitted his screw-up, he apologized, he asked for forgiveness. That’s not a small thing, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d handle a similar situation more decently. So if there’s a chance of you treating this like a forgivable error and letting it go, in the name of accepting that your boyfriend is a human being with flaws and foibles (not to mention in the name of setting a precedent for how you’d like him to treat you when you make mistakes), it might be a chance well worth taking.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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