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

Anyone who leaves a relationship on the say so of a random on the internet wasn’t in a good relationship to start with.

I’m not sure about this OP.

On the one hand, I was talking to a someone today about a former colleague who was an absolute nightmare. Very divisive, manipulative and difficult to work with. She has taken early retirement and is now retraining as a….therapist.

but I’m not sure I’m seeing many women leaving good marriages- from real life experience ( as well as mumsnet) I’d say it’s more common for people to stay in shitty marriages and relationships- despite the good advice they get to LTB!

Why is stability more important than fulfilment though? Some people might feel more fulfilled and stable being single. You can fall out of love with someone regardless of how stable and nice they are and ultimately the only reason anyone needs to end a relationship is that they don’t want to be in the relationship any more. Reality doesn’t have to be mundane and unexciting, I’m sorry if yours is!

I'm not lonely or bitter - I am married happily for more than 30 years to a decent guy who occasionally drives me crazy or does something hurtful - like most happy relationships.

I have often said LTB on MN and that is because I read about women putting up with abuse, financial abuse, and misery. I read about lives where children think it is normal for daddy to not talk to mummy for days at a time (it isn't).

I don't say ltb for situations where people may genuinely have a different point of view than me - even if I disagree. So if a woman posts her husband went to a strip club on a stag and spent money they didn't have - if she is only concerned about the money and not the strip club I won't weigh in on that. Even though I would actually leave my husband if he went to a strip club.

Like a previous poster what MN has shown me is that there are women out there who live in situations that are, frankly, brutal to spend your life in - not solid stable loyal or mundane. Just a way no one should live.

Agree.
People come to me for relationship advice, I always tell them not to ask someone who has been single for 4 years and direct their query to someone happily partnered.

I’ve certainly not seen women leaving men on a whim. But I don’t watch people on insta or tik tok trivialising their lives for likes. And no one I know IRL has done this.

What I’ve seen more of is women being treated badly and staying far too long, hoping that it’ll get better. And other women who’ve made that difficult decision to leave sharing their experiences.
Many women don’t recognise huge red flags (me included) and some outside perspectives are really useful to see what’s happening.
How many women who post here and really should leave actually do? Probably not that many. That’s why there’s so many posts from unhappy and unappreciated women.

Agree. Probably the single biggest shock of Mn for me has been how many women are in unequal, unhappy relationships, without thinking other options are available.

I suppose the problem is that there is no one, objective definition of what ‘not ideal, but not divorceable’ really looks like. On balance I think I’ve seen more threads on this site where the OP has been encouraged to ‘talk it out’ over things that I would never characterise as fixable than threads where she’s being egged on to leave him because of toast crumbs in bed.

I agree with almost all of the LTB comments on here and often make them myself. I'm not bitter and lonely. I've been happily married for over 20 years. I think you're mistaken if you think the LTB-ers are single and bitter. A lot of them are just baffled at the shit that fellow women put up with from their partners. A man doesn't have to be violent or actively abusive for you to decide you'd be better off without him.

This. You don't leave someone you've built a life with on a whim.

Every day here 🤣

What does this mean?!

It's not something I've observed in real life, but certainly some people on here are a bit too quick to be all 'LTB' for guys who haven't really done much wrong or for whom it's like 'OK, maybe you wouldn't tolerate that, but other people it might be genuinely forgivable' , especially of there are other good aspects of the relationship

I wonder...

I think when we read women telling other women to LTB it usually sounds justified.

What I see more often is women being told to go NC with parents, ILs or other family members for the most seemingly trivial of reasons. Yes, your MIL might be a pain in the arse who constantly witters about her friend you’ve never met, and she may have once gave your DC chocolate after you said not to but you only see her twice a year so suck it up for the sake of your DH.

I’ve not really seen this - even on Mumsnet - but I can believe it does happen because people are easily lead, and because it takes a LONG time to learn about relationships (what’s good and healthy and what isn’t).

I guess if you’re not clear in your own mind about what you want and/or if you haven’t had much relationship experience, then you could be easily swayed by someone else’s opinion (or pressure).

I have. When I was younger, I noticed a lot of people (male and female) tended to copy their groups in terms of being single or not. I thought that was ridiculous, but a psychologist said it's a known phenomena. We've always had people listening to their mums/friends whatever, even those sometimes those people will have had trauma which makes them, understandably, fear relationships.
More recently, everyone seems to ask Reddit or Slate or whatever, and some of the people have literally nothing better to do than try to stir. And some might genuinely have been through bad things that lead them to think marriage/having kids or whatever is a bad idea. Sure, that always happened in real life, but at least then they had to deal with the consequences of their actions.

Yes yes and yes!

I’ve only ever seen the threads where people tell the OP to end it through the other partner being an absolute twat.

If they are not happy they can leave. They don't need a reason. I think far more are stuck in !miserable relationship s as they don't have the means to leave

I completely agree with this and the person you quoted. I'm happily married for over 20 years to one of the good guys. I can't believe some of the awful shit women on here are having to deal with from their husbands/partners for years and years.
Only thing I will say is that it's often not acknowledged on here how difficult it must be to leave. Some posters seem to think people can just walk out before a thread reaches its 3rd page. That's hopelessly naïve

I am not buying this perception as fact myself OP. I have never ever seen a poster decide on here or anywhere online or on real life that they will leave husband/ family/go NC tomorrow because x said so.

We also have to debate our definition of ' good ' and what this means. The definition of good in the 1950s is not going to be the same as our definition today. We know so much more now, as women especially. We have access to information and opportunities in a different way that allow us to grow beyond the 1950s perception of say what a ' good' marriage tangibly involves.

I can agree with the sentiment that LTB just isn't as simple, easy or applicable in so many cases I see on here. There are many complexities to why LTB might not be ideal at a given time, even in the face of pretty crap behaviour.

My feeling is that we now have much better language, descriptions and means of discussing and sharing experiences of human behaviours that are not ' good' but we have been endlessly bloody programmed, as women especially, to believe is ' good'. We are systematically brainwashed to believe and accept that we are not good if we don't do significantly amounts of things on our role as women, wives and mothers.

Not on your god damn fucking life would I ever enter into a relationship at my age with a male. Why? Because in my understanding now of women, men, society and pervasive drives, women are always disadvantaged. No to that thank you. Therefore, there's no such thing as a' good' relationship in that sense because a woman would always have to accept a vulnerable position. Unless - there are no children, no financial reliance, no family expectations, no societal expectation ( e.g women are csrers, nurturers, must provide sex).

Ones definition of good is not another's.

My current definition of good in terms of any relationship is only that with myself and limited bursts of minimal interactions with other humans.

Never have I ever encountered anyone going no contact with family without absolutely agonizing and endless abuse in some form, often hidden, for years. You'll never provide proof to validate your perception as none of us have full details of what's going on in the entirety of one's relationship with others.

What I find more befuddling are the multiple daily threads on here of (predominantly) women choosing the bottom of the barrel absolute looser of looser partners!
They must know some magic between the sheet tricks because honestly cocklodger after cocklodger.

It’s pretty arrogant to think you know better than the person who is actually in the relationship whether or not it’s ’genuinely happy’ or ‘healthy’.

AIBU is a wierd forum for this behaviour though. Its very polarised - both the poster, who of course only puts their POV forward and some of the responses (usually the first responders strangely!) which don't recognise that relationships are often about compromise. People use AIBU to justify their frustration whereas in a normal world its better to discuss it with the person you have an AIBU with. The whole "No is a complete sentence" that you see so frequently is just bizarre. In the main its not a complete sentence and is incredibly rude. I'm not sure who these people are but I would guess they aren't very happy or in balanced happy relationships.