To be "confused" about people's relationships on MN?

[AnnyR]

I have only been reading these forums for a few weeks and am increasingly confused/worried about many people's reactions relationships.

There seems to be a stock answer of "kick him out" or "leave him" when someone is having a bad time with their DH or DP. Is this why we have such a high divorce rate at the moment?

I wonder because I think that no-one is perfect and there is no such thing as a perfect relationship. Having been married for nearly 25 years I know that it is hard to stick it out sometimes. Both of us have done things to hurt and upset the other over the years, but we stick together for loads of reasons. Mainly because we ultimately love each other. And because we have DC who need both of us.

Obviously, cases of domestic violence are different - I don't think you should always stay together no matter what. Also, I am not religious and didn't make vows in church, so I am not coming from that angle either.

But why are so many Mumsnetters so quick to advise people to leave?

I am genuinely confused and sad :(

tc, voice of calm reason

Ah well, the problem is TC, that the message to women that they can walk out on their marriages when their men are treating them badly, is almost as seditious now as it was when Nora slammed the door on the doll's house.

Most people now accept that women have the right to leave physically abusive relationships. But any other relationship - well actually, people feel really uncomfortable with the notion that women have the right to be treated as real grown up human beings whose feelings actually matter, particularly when they have children with the man they want to leave. All that guilt- tripping about staying together for the sake of the kids, when what we know is that children brought up in unhappy households, learn to accept unhappiness as normal, all that minimising of disrespect, contempt, inequality loneliness, unfulfillment, all that denial about how entitled, unfair and contemptuous some men are in their relationships, because women are the ones who are expected to nurture and work at relationships. Men aren't really conditioned or expected to do that, although many of them (the good ones) do so anyway, because they respect and love the women they live with and don't expect her whole being to just revolve around them.

And if we say that men who do actually work at their relationships are the norm and that's what people should expect men to be like, we're called man-haters. Whereas the people who say "oh all men are as vile as that, what are you complaining about" for some reason aren't called man-haters, even though their opinion of men is obviously exceptionally low. I suspect that in many cases, it's women comforting themselves with the notion that they shouldn't expect better.

And the idea that there are uppity women out here who do expect better and would rather be single than settle for less and advise their sisters along those lines, is profoundly upsetting for those women who settle for less and even more upsetting for men who are determined not to give more.

Caveat: That does not mean that I think every single poster who doesn't urge someone to leave an abusive partner is in an unhappy relationship themself. I just think that might be true in some cases and given that some people here have seen fit to post sweeping idiotic generalisations about people on one side of the argument, I don't see why I shouldn't post similar about the other side.

Rude interruption warning....obviously no po0int phonig as you're on here. Happy birthday! failure to deliver card yesterday due to dismal inefficiency+tragic crippledom.

spelling could use a little work.....

I don't think you'd get a lot of men posting about leaving unhappy (not abusive) relationships because I think they tend to be willing to stay and not split up.

The reasons being, they are going to see a lot less of their children, they usually have to leave the marital home and they'll have to pay maintenance. Or avoid it if they're a twat. So I think men think will stick with being unhappy rather than thinking they'll end up very unhappy.

Obviously this is not all men.

I disagree, I do see statements of the kind you are reffering to ad even I have at least once said that it would be my course of action, but it has been where I have been truly shocked by the OP's relationship problem.

I also see a lot of "can you try relate" answers so I don't think it is always a "kick him out" reaction at all.

I think many women who end up posting on here about relationship problems have usually reached the end of their tether and are seeking advice from an external body. I have had bad and good relationships and I am horrified by what some women on here are dealing with.

When you take into consideration that 1 in 4 women is a victim of domestic violence and 2 women die weekly as a result, I am not surprised that so many people have horrible relationships generally.

It shows that different forms of abuse (emotional, physical and mental) must be quite rife in relationships IMO.

I don't read the relationships thread so maybe there is more os a tendency to give the stock answer there.

on mn some people enact out their specific agenda.and this is borne out in advice given.

Dadwandersin, it's a myth that men will have to pay maintenance if they split with their wives, most non resident parents (90% of whom are men) don't bother paying any maintenance at all and no-one makes them. Only 40% of NRP's pay maintenance. Of them, the payments are extremely low. 5 years after divorce, most men are actually better off financially than they would have been if they had stayed married and most women are financially worse off.

And yet still women are more likely to file for divorce....

Have you got a link for those stats?

[[http://www.publications.parliament.
uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmworpen/118/11807.htm]]

The stats I've seen are:

27% don't pay and 53% pay the full amount.

You are saying 60% don't pay and the 40% who do don't pay a lot.

And these are the ones who go through the CSA and not through private agreements. (like I did)

It should be 100% but that's a perfect world and divorce etc isn't.

I've found one.

www.gingerbread.org.uk/uploads/media/17/6842.doc

I don't think it's a perfect world to think that all parents should be financially responsible for their children whether they live with them or not, except in exceptional cases where parents are in prison, mentally unable, kids are in care etc.

The figures are Gingerbread's. I can't access your link, are you saying that your figures are related to all those which go via the CSA? I think Gingerbread's figures are all NRP's.

Can't be bothered to read ten pages of this, but now I've read Pag's response on page 1 I'll say YYY to that. I will add though, that I think the people who hang out on relationship threads and offer advice are often/mostly people for whom relationships have not gone well, and they are often looking for validation/justifiction of their own negative experiences by mirroring them (and their less than happy outcomes) in the ones posted here. Some of them don't want a happy-ever-after answer to the OP's problems. They want to feel a kinship with others whose love-lives have gone tits up.

Some advice is truly excellent and well balanced though.

Do you think 90% of Dads want to be non-resident parents?

I know I wouldn't have.

Fellatio,

Well said.

Having said that, there have been some horrendous stories of abuse posted and people have shown amazing kindness towards those who have been abused. I guess the moral is to stay out of there if you have a small gripe and only post if you have a very serious problem. However, hard for someone new on here to know that.

There is a thread out there (actually in AIBU) at the moment where a woman is complaining that her husband is not doing more one week after their first child was born. For most people, that is a really tough time and not a time to take any relationship decisions. However, there are several posters who have slammed the guy and said, in the OP's position, they would kick him out (another version of "leave the twat").

Dadwandersin - I don't think that 90% of dads want to be non resident. I think many of them would prefer to continue living with their children in an unhappy marriage. Which is not a reasonable option.

If a parent - any parent - doesn't want to be a non-resident parent on divorce, then they need to take a really active role in parenting their children during marriage. Are they going to be the ones who sort out the kids' PE kits, make their lunches, arrange their playdates, buy and launder their clothes, be the contact for the school to ring if a child is ill and needs to be collected? Are they the ones who are going to downshift their careers, go part time, refuse promtoion and business trips because they need to be there for their children, damaging their pensions and marketability in the process?

Most men choose not. And in doing so, they are choosing to risk that if they divorce, it then makes complete sense not to disrupt the children's lives any more than necessary, by keeping the status quo and awarding residency to the children's primary carer.

Fewer men would be non resident parents on divorce, if more of them actually took on more of the parenting of their children during marriage. (Having said that I suspect that there would actually be less divorce in the first place as well, because couples would be happier if they were treating each other with respect and equality.) I will be emphasising that to my DS when he's old enough - that he needs to think about how he is going to balance being a parent and a worker, becasue I think it's something women are extremely conscious of (they have to be) but men simply aren't asked to think about - the default is that they will opt out/ butt out of family life and focus on work and I actually think many men would prefer to have more balance and would have better relationships if they did. But they have to make an active effort to choose that path and they aren't going to do that as long as balancing children, parenting and work is considered primarily a woman's problem.

Meanwhile, the fact that most men don't want to be NRP's,doesn't give them an opt out on discharging their financial obligations to their children. It should be a national scandal that there appears to be a deep-seated belief, that parents aren't actually responsible for their children unless they live with them. But picking apart the reasons for that belief, is probably a discussion for another thread.

OP I've not read all ten pages but just wanted to say I completely agree with your post. I quite often see comments as you describe on relationship threads, where there isn't abuse going on; often more just a lack of communication. When I then post to try to give the thread a bit more 'balance', I get flamed .

I do think it's sad. Men aren't aliens and they're certainly not all bad, but you wouldn't think so from reading threads on here sometimes

Didn't mean to bold all that!

HerBex,

At what point do you believe in abandoning a marriage, especially one involving children?

Whilst I have posted many times that I do not believe people should stay together if there are genuinely irreconcilable differences, I do believe that marriage vows should be taken seriously. Divorce should be the last option, not the first one as soon as you become unhappy with your partner.Otherwise, why bother with them at all? It is not just a good excuse to buy an expensive dress and have a big party.

I am aware that it's not an excuse to buy a big dress and have a big party Larry, but thanks for the tip.

This assumption that people bail out of relationships at the first hurdle is really patronising and very annoying. All the women I know who have ended relationships (and it is all women - the men I know were unwilling to divorce), did so only after years of bending over backwards to try to make their relationaships work. No one leaves a marriage or a long term partnership where there are children, on a whim. They do so when they cannot see any possiblity of change and they know that they are going to be unahppy for the rest of the duration of this relationship and that whatever new hoop they jump through, will not make any difference, because they are the only one who is actually putting effort, brainspace and work into trying to nurture this relationship.

That I think is the point at which I would say bail out - when you absolutely know that there is no possibility of change. And IMO that is when people who bail out, do so - not at the first hurdle, I have more faith in the intelligence and integrity of most people than that.

HerBeX That might be the case in your experience, but it doesn't chime with what I know of my brother's recent separation.

The fact in that case was: they married young, they both bent over backwards to try and make it work, but in the end they had to give up.

And if anyone was EA (constant criticism, putting partners down in front of friends/family, super-controlling about money etc) it wasn't him, it was her.

Incidentally, the same is true (in my view) of my father's marriage. He is not allowed to see his children without her present, sometimes has to contact us in secret from public phones, has little say in how their money is spent and I've seen her shove and swear at him. He will never leave, and would rather take any amount of angry/abusive behaviour from her because...I honestly don't know.

I have no axe to grind here. I just wanted to offer something to soften the possiblity that these women you know 'because they are the only one who is actually putting effort, brainspace and work into trying to nurture this relationship' represent some kind of universal weighting of relationship work/suffering in favour of women.

HerBex,

Why don't you try and just answer a question and have a discussion? Diatribes are just not that interesting, whether or not you agree with them.

Your subset of friends must be very skewed if no men were willing to divorce at all. And generalisations such as "no one leaves a long term partnership on a whim" are clearly untrue, and also the word "whim" is a patronising take on my question. There are a whole slew of situations between a "whim" and irreconcilable differences.

You don't have much faith in men's integrity at all, however much you protest that you do. You subscribe to the concept of the idealised man and measure all others against it. Then you say that you like men because you like the idealised man (who no more exists than the happy Stepford Wife) and the fact that you believe a man can live up to the ideal means you do respect men. Respecting men (or women) means respecting them despite a reasonable number of faults, not only if they live up to the ideal. (And, the above does not mean that anyone can act like a pig and deserve to remain married. It does, however, mean that they deserve to be judged in the round and over a period of time.)

But I didn't say women did I daff? I said that in my case it happens to be women I know who ended the relationship, and who bent over backwards for years to try and make it work before they eventually gave up, but that doesn't mean I universalise my experience, I've said so earlier up the thread. The advice to bail out of a relationship at a certain point, would be the same for a man or a woman, why would anything I have posted not indicate that?

I just think that advice would be more likely to be needed for a woman simply because this is Mumsnet, and so of course it's women who are asking. And in RL, in many cases it is women who do most of the work on the relationship, simply because we are the ones who are socialised to do so (look at teenage girl's and women's magazines compared to stuff for boys and men) but of course it's not always the case. The more men who believe that it is their role to nurture their relationship like your brother, the better. However, I also think that the more people who become aware of issues like emotional abuse (and the other new fangled stuff) the better, because then they won't get dragged into relationships like your DB and DF or if they do, they will recognise what's going on much sooner.

LOL Larry, I don't have much faith in your integrity, but luckily I don't think you are representative of all men.

You really are very funny, telling me what I think. I thought I was having a discussion, basically if you don't agree with what I say, I'm not discussing, I'm having a diatribe.

You are too funny, really you are. I can't take you seriously.

Well I guess that my subset of friends is quite skewed, in that actually, most of them are happily married/ in long term partnerships.

I only know a few people who are divorced and most of them are work colleagues. I'm 45 so I ought to know more divorced people I suppose, maybe I've just been unlucky...