to think that most DIVORCE is not always the answer?

[heyhay]

I am new to MN and have found the forum to be very useful. I am a bit concerned though that it seems most women are being told to leave, divorce their partners if they misbehave? AIBU to think that this is too negative?

Domestic violence isn't misbehaviour.

Yes and no. There are times when people do appear to jump to the "leave him" conclusion rather quickly, but these are generally women who have had very bad experiences with men, so it's not unexpected. Once bitten twice shy and all that.

On the other hand, some of these women do see the warning signs early, and there have been many threads where the OP has stuck with a partner only to discover that she might have been better off leaving him when she first had problems. It does swing both ways - and I think few people would be willing to leave their partner for no reason other than an anonymous perosn on a forum advsed them to. If it makes them look at their partner and not like what they see, however, that is down to them. Most posters advise counselling before divorce anyway, when you read into it.

Please do read more threads before jumping to conclusions though. It is unreasonable to judge the many by the actions of the few.

if this is with regard to teh thread you have just posted on YABVVVVVVU

in any case, you simply cannot generalise, in RL the people I know who have divorced have done so for very pertinent reasons, having tried their best.

what do you call misbehaving? not taking out hte rubbish? pants on the floor?

or hitting your wife? beating the children?

there are a lot of women in abusive relationships, being told to put up with it/try harder/ don't wind him up removes the onus from teh partner to change their behaviour or seek help with their issues

I think it is far too damaging to try to make women stay with abusive partners.

you need to define misbehaving really

I think people on MN jump to say 'leave him' far to quickly as well. Sometimes justified, more often it's not.

I never noticed "Do you, animula, promise to accept acts of violence upon your person" in any part of the marriage service I took part in ..., so, I guess that it is, indeed, deemed acceptable to insist your marriage not contain that element. And bring it to an end if it does.

Domestic violence is unacceptable. women are still conditioned to accept way too much emotionally, psychologically, and physically abusive behaviour towards themselves.

It is good, yes, really good, to name it for what it is, and to insist, on behalf of all those doubting themselves, that it is wholly unacceptable.

I've seen people jumping to what is possibly a hasty conclusion over "emotional abuse" and saying leave him.

If a person is being emotionally abused they should feel able to leave and feel better once they have moved on however, I think its often difficult to tell from a few posts over an internet forum if certain behaviours do actually constitute that.

I'm not talking about really obvious threads where the behaviour has been irrefutably unreasonable and abusive and the OP is clearly affected by it. I mean the ones that are kind of hard to say without more info.

I think that might be where the OP is coming from, but if the OP is talking about domestic violence of something then, YABU!

Marriages are full of ups and downs. very rarely will you find a post on mumsnet about how the marriage is happily ticking along, it is only crisis points that reach the pages of MN.

in such cases we obviously only have the posters PoV. so yes we should try and see both possible sides of teh argument.

but i am assuming you are posting this due to a thread you have just been on that has involved domestic violance.

Having been in a very violant relationship i can say that violance doesn't stop, it escelates.

I am not in the run screaming from the house brigade but i am also blessed with the experience to know that there are some aspects of married life that simply cannot be "worked through"

I think TottWriter sums it up perfectly. No one is going to leave the father of their children purely because some strangers on a website tell them to. If they leave, it'll be because life is unbearable as it is, and sometimes they just needed that final affirmation that they're right.

Domestic violence is NOT misbehaviour.

Completely agree with Butterfly.

Domestic violence is not "misbehaviour"

suggest you educate yourself about how many women in this country, and others, are suffering at the hands of violent men

And personally, I would give the same advice to each and every one of them

Physical violence... zero tolerance

if you don't agree with that approach, there is a serious problem in your make-up

or you are an abusive man

Thank you all, i am sure i am going to learn more. I think that i have been grossly missunderstood on the other thread. I actually thought that i was being rational/constructive.

hassledge, very well said

whenever I see the "you are wrong to tell a woman to leave her relationship" posts I jut sigh

because I afford women a bit more emotional intelligence than to be swayed by a few anonymous posts on'tinternet

heyhay...you weren't

being an apologist for violence against women is never "constructive"

except for abusive men

OK I will jump in here and say:

THE OP HAS SAID SIBU

(just going on past experience, you know :o

maybe i could ask the Op to do a search on a couple of my old posting names (fattiemumma/mamazon) and the words punch/kick/rape

i am sure they will help enlighten you to just what "misbehaviours" are not things you should be discussing over a glass of wine and the apprentice.

or has she
hmmm

nope.

stealth, no (s)he hasn't

I think in general YABU

Although sometimes posters are really in the middle of something and in a lot of distress, and I think in that situation it is only right to tell them to take some time and think about things, and also talk to someone in real life (unless they are in immediate physical danger or something). A lot of people extrapolate too much from the information given. Obviously in the case of physical violence it is black and white, but there are a lot of posts where the woman thinks her husband is cheating on her and loads of people come on with 'Oh I reckon he is' 'He definitely is' etc. on very limited info

Abuse is never on, be it physical, emotional, financial or living with someone who is addicted to substances and making everyone's life hell because of it.

OK, ignore my last post then, sorry. I read "I am going to learn more" as a kind of admission she was wrong but I think I was wrong.

Pamela, this thread isn't about "cheating or not cheating"

it is about a heavy object being thrown at a woman's head, with intent, by a man, in front of her children then showing zero remorse about it

don't use it as another dig in your crusade against the "just leave him brigade"

it is misplaced here