That my exH was the controlling one, not me. That it’s not normal for a new dad to be staying out all night drinking with his mates and leaving me to deal with a newborn who woke up hourly at night leaving me exhausted the next day and he’d come home at midday and go to bed. When I objected to this I was not being controlling at all despite what he claimed.
That it is impossible to eat any kind of chocolate, biscuits, cake, crisps, and bread EVER, nevermind every day and still lose weight despite me being evidence to the contrary. Except for the cake, I rarely eat cake.
How little exercise a lot of people do.
How children can’t possibly be expected to walk anywhere and expecting them to walk a mile to school in winter is almost equal to abuse. Poor darlings might get cold and/or wet and die of hypothermia.
How poor reading comprehension is.
How being a full time carer for an elderly parent isn’t ok if you need to claim benefits and women should get a full time job too.
How ignorant many people are about autism and ADHD. If you survived to your 40s without a diagnosis then you can’t possibly have either and you’re just after benefits and special
treatment. The fact your life has been a mess of varying degrees all along is neither here nor there.
That the FWR board is full of intelligent and witty women who are fighting for us all.
That a lot of men are more depraved and generally worse than my own experiences taught me.
How little I knew about politics and things like the a Good Friday Agreement.
How a read of Classics can turn a bad day into day that ends in laughter.
How people are struggling on salaries beyond my imagination.
I’ve always been fascinated by the claim
that things only happen on mumsnet and not in real life. Are posters on here not real people? Sure, some people post absolute BS but I find people struggle to believe that things aren’t true outside of their own experiences.
That whenever I’m stuck and need help I can turn to mumsnet and get suggestions and solutions. I don’t have friends IRL and use mumsnet a lot for my social interaction and advice. Some advice is batshit but a lot of posters have offered great advice and this has been especially helpful with my elderly mum and my dc.
I’ll always be grateful to the poster who helped me out with essential school equipment when I was skint and dc’s dad wouldn’t buy anything for high school.
How strangers on the internet support others. I got so much support when DS’s dad died suddenly and unexpectedly. He had no interest in Ds and only saw him once as a baby but I was met with kindness and I formation on how to get support for ds.
Conversely, how utterly vile some posters can be to others in need and pick on their spelling and grammar instead of offering anything supportive.
I joined mumsnet in around 2018 and I think I was looking for help with a now ex. I got my arse handed to me a few times at first and learnt a lot.
As a result of the relationships board and others I’ve learnt to value myself and to raise my bar when it comes to men. It’s made me try to instil the same standards for male behaviour in my DDs. That’s still a battle thanks to their dad but I’ll keep going. I feel a great sense of responsibility to raise Ds to be a good man who values women and doesn’t engage in misogyny.
Thanks to mumsnet I don’t feel the need to have a man to complete me. I’m complete as myself. I was raised in a society that said women needed to be married to be deemed worthy and successful. My mum still wants to see me married because that’s how she was brought up. She is baffled that I can be happy single.
That some people genuinely don’t want children and are happy with their choice. When I was younger I thought they’d change their minds and found it hard to believe they really didn't want children.
I think I’ve also learnt that despite being relatively poor, not having great qualifications at GCSE due to school refusal as a teen, being single, a full time carer, single and lone parent, not being able to drive and probably a whole host of other ‘deficiencies’, that I’m a valuable member of society and that I’m actually doing well and raising my dc to succeed.
I do have a degree and a few post-grad qualifications but the lack of a good hand of GCSEs still bugs me. People make assumptions that I’m uneducated because I’m “not working”. Try being on call 24/7 for an elderly relative and say you’re not working when you’ve experience it yourself.
I love mumsnet. It’s a place of humour, support and experiences I’ll never have or understand. It’s also a cesspit at times but I still love it. It’s taught me a lot and I’ll always be grateful for that.