To think some people are taking life advice from dysfunctional people and wrecking good relationships?

Yabu. Everyone has agency over their own decisions. You can take the advice offered from all sorts of different people, consider it, and dismiss the ones you don’t agree with.

If the relationship is genuinely happy and fulfilling then no, I don’t think these women are being convinced to leave them. They may leave them for what on paper seems like an arbitrary reason to you, but it will be because they are overall unsatisfied with them. That is perfectly acceptable. It’s okay to have internet strangers validate how you feel and help you see you are allowed to change your life.

Also, just because someone doesn’t give you all the nitty gritty details of why that relationship (which may seem loyal and happy to a stranger) is unsatisfying or unhappy, doesn’t mean wasn’t so.

I disagree with this completely. I come across threads almost daily written by women who are being put through hell by their partners and they are asking for others to tell them if they are overreacting or if it really is as bad as they feel. I think places like MN is invaluable to women who are being manipulated, gaslit and abused. It's a very confused and lonely place to be if you can't seek help.

Well they’re not happy, but the way people put their own spin on a dilemma is quite extraordinary. I’ve seen a post that’s been taken down obviously by the poster saying her daughter doesn’t like her step dad because he tells her to tidy her room. The M has said this is the one thing they ask of her & she’s kicking off asking begging her mom to leave her marriage. He’s been in her life from a small child (now 11) she’s in his will, he contributes financially & emotionally. There is no difference in treatment of her to his bio son & the advice given has ranged from he’s an abuser. I bet he’s abusing her & he must be the bad guy. You’re a terrible mom, you’re not listening blah, blah blah. This mom hasn’t asked for relationship advice but how to deal with her 11yo by all accounts is being an 11yo. There is nothing in her post to suggest there’s a sniff of anything untoward. She may very well not take the advice but with so many people saying the same thing is it totally reasonable to doubt yourself. Are you missing something & the minute she questions herself & goes and asks her child if something more sinister is happening she acted on that advice. She’s allowed her trust to her H to be broken.

There is responsibility in giving advice but people rarely listen to advice anyway. often they post to vent and be validated. OP's themselves can be dysfunctional..how often have we read something where we thought blimey this should be asked to police/solicitors/women's aid not MN?? Sometimes these posters just want to vent and I wouldn't worry that homes are being wrecked by MN advice. Like, I can remember more posters who return to their abuser despite MNers practically begging them not to..you overestimate people's ability to listen to reason and follow instructions.

Also, if this apparantly harmful trend exists outside of the imagination of those who dislike the advice, I'd have expected to see it reflected in divorce rates. Which are generally falling.

I've seen this too, I had one friend leave her marriage "Because the magic had gone". She had a small child, her husband was (to me at least) really lovely. Kind, supportive, funny.. and he was utterly broken when she left him.
She wanted hallmark, and thought she deserved it.

Yes, some of the conclusions jumped to by responders leaves me gob smacked at times. 🤷‍♀️

And, sometimes, sadly, it seems a few posters love the thought of a break up.

I don't know a single person in RL who has walked out of a happy, healthy relationship "on a whim". Quite the contrary, the people I know who have split from their partners have typically agonised over it for ages and thought about it very carefully.

I do think some posters on relationship threads are ridiculously quick to suggest that the OP should LTB. But equally, I think some posters have incredibly low standards and and don't expect enough.

I honestly don't believe that any person in a happy, healthy relationship is suddenly going to walk out simply because a few people on the Internet told them to do so.

Absolutely. I strongly believe if you are having a relationship wobble, you should never discuss it on MN!

Yup, same as the crew who have zero friends. The minute someone posts about a crack in a friendship they all pile on to say “ditch the bitch”.

A greater likelihood of choosing marriage when your peer group is married, and remaining in the marriage despite doubts because to leave it would mark you our socially isn't what we're discussing though. Nor is the possible 'social contagion' of divorce. Which is a disputed theory.
The OP would have us believe that there is a pattern whereby women are leaving good marriages to supportive loyal husbands on the basis of online advice. I'm saying I have never known this. And I'm asking if anyone who believes otherwise has an example to prove me wrong. An example of a woman in a good, happy marriage to a supportive loyal man who has upped and left him because people on line have told her to.
I'm willing to bet there won't be one. Because OP will have no idea of the character of an online strangers husband, how happy that woman is, or whether she followed the advice to leave. She is simply seeing the advice to leave and filling in the gaps herself to conclude that the advice is causing a social problem.

Agreed. Unfortunately it happens with therapy too - the person starts focusing more and more on their own perspective and start to feel entitled and then cause havoc in their lives. In my experience the ones who actually are in abusive relationships don't feel entitled enough to leave. People are starting to conduct their relationships mediated by social media and now, worryingly, AI.

I see lots of people on here telling women to leave their marriage over every little misdemeanour. They have no issue in advising women to upend their kids life for no other reason than boredom. Being a mom is mundane, being desperate for a break is normal & men not thinking the same is a tale as old as time.

yet I wonder how many of these women comment & take stock of all the problems that come with blended families? Are these women offering SP the same grace when they’re struggling to cope with the challenges of SC, are they the same women complaining their SC are ungrateful telling other women to leave.

im not some marriage nut who thinks women should stay in unhappy marriages. But I do think when you make a promise you should try your best to to keep it especially when kids are involved. Me suggesting you work at it & exhaust all avenues before leaving isn’t me saying don’t leave. I’ve had periods in my own marriage that have seen me unhappy but I’ve also come through the other end & couldn’t be happier. Unless you’re being abused & abuse isn’t your husband telling a white lie about something stupid like have a pastie for lunch & not the salad he was going to have.

im also confused as to why leaving would be the advice on purely one anecdote, from one perspective about people you don’t know. Unreasonable people don’t think of themselves as unreasonable. For all they know the OP is a nightmare with high expectations & a habit of exaggerating.

'Working through a marriage' comes from an era where women couldn't have their own bank accounts and couldn't get a mortgage on their own. It comes from a time when you just had to put up with doing all the housework because men didn't do that.

Now women don't have to do that.

MN is one example there is some great advice given in a mature intelligent way written by adults, then there is advise that sounds like it been given by an immature 12 year old ie 'well just take him for what you can' 'just tell him to give you the house' 'he slept with your best friend so of course the judge won't let him see the children' etc.

But there has if people take life changing legal advice off random people on the internet they have bigger problems they need to get on with, take some personal responsibility

This. It sounds like absolute infantlising nonsense to me. I give most women the credit that they are breaking up because the relationship was not good or they decide they would rather be single and independent.

Because relationships are not obligatory. Personally there are very few men I'd ever be interested in having sex with and and a tiny, microscopic, invisible to the naked eye number of those I'd willingly have a relationship with. Fortunately DH is one of them.

I’m talking about situations where a relationship is solid but imperfect - stable, loyal, mundane at times, and dissatisfaction that might otherwise have been worked through gets amplified rather than examined.

You’re right that many women stay far too long in genuinely unhappy or unhealthy relationships. That absolutely happens. I don’t think that contradicts what I’m saying, I think both can be true.

These women are unhappy.

Unfortunately, all too often, 'work through' actually means learn to settle and put up with things - with the burden on this placed on the woman with the man just carrying on as before.

Is stable, loyal, mundane enough?

Maybe they'd simply be happier without having to deal with all that crap and be by themselves.

This idea that you should work through things is in many respects one that rests on the concept that you can't leave a relationship that's okayish. There has to be something drastically wrong with it.

This isn't about chasing some Instagram perfect life or dubious ideas about romance and living happily ever after.

It can simply be about not wanting to pick up those holey underpants from the middle of the bedroom floor and watch the same things on TV every night for the rest of your life because 'thats just what you do' when you married and you have to stay married for the rest of your life.

I think there's an growing element of understanding you don't get a second chance at life and if you don't grab it you'll regret all the things you didn't do more than the things you did. This is a freedom men have always had to a degree that women never have. Women are now realising that things don't have to be like that. You don't have to compromise all the time (and unfortunately compromising usually gets done a lot more by women than by men because women are socially conditioned to conform and be passive to a much greater degree than men).

It's ok to leave someone for a 'shit reason'. Because someone else's 'shit reason' might actually be a massive fuck off huge ick that totally destroys the love for life and sense of spirit of fun within you.

'And the people giving that advice are often living chaotic, emotionally unstable or completely unaccountable lives.'

How can you possibly know this about people who post online?

I agree with both of these posts. The divorce rate would be through the roof if the ‘hard truthers’ on here had their way.
Additionally ‘some women on here put up with a lot of shit from useless men’ and I am often staggered at the excuses made for these useless men.

Agee
There does seem to be a lot of projecting (man haters)

My cousin listened to her very toxic best friend who advised her to end her marriage. She now regrets listening to someone who she thinks was probably jealous of what she had.

Who does this? Marries someone and then divorces them because their bf told them to? Anyone who does this isn't ready for marriage.

I absolutely agree. My cousin listened to her very toxic best friend who advised her to end her marriage. She now regrets listening to someone who she thinks was probably jealous of what she had. It’s scary when you see similar dynamics on here. We should all be much more discerning when it comes to the motives of others. So many nut jobs spewing absolute nonsense. These advisers often very clearly do not have their own lives together but for some reason adopt the role of being a moral authority. Weird! Gives me hand that rocked the cradle vibes.

I've seen this a lot. Only today I eye rolled when someone posted about all the male apologists on a thread. It was one where neither partner was terribly unreasonable but they had an issue that they had a conflict on. OP was I think genuinely asking who was right and some posters felt her Dh was in the right. It wasn't a philosophical debate about a patriarchy, it was a normal relationship difference of perspective but anyone who didn't agree automatically with the woman was a 'male apologist' apparently, because this man represented all men and the OP all women. I can't imagine how narrow minded the poster who said this is.

A pal of mine actually left a really good bloke after spending hours a day on the r/relationships subreddit, she admitted eventually that it had poisoned her into seeing red flags where there were none and believing minor disputes and misunderstandings were malicious and cruel on his part.

She still regrets ending it, he was a lovely, solid guy who really didn't do anything wrong - she's now sworn off internet relationship advice as it often doesn't come from as benevolent a place as it can seem at first glance!