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 :(

It makes more sense in context halfcaffodils

swallowedafly I think it means the subversive notion, that being a single parent is better than being with a man who doesn't respect you. For your children as well as you.

People panic and get angry when they're confronted with that idea.

I meant it in the sense that most women are indeed strong enough to go it alone, and get a lot of support. I wasn't swaying to either side.

Herbex explained it better.

swallowedafly I would agree with you there about the supposed high moral stance of 'staying together for the children', from personal experience of what my parents were like.

Not that I'm bitter at all about being lied to all the way through childhood about what a healthy relationship looks like, or anything.

I've only just joined Mumsnet and I've decided that I won't read any more "relationship" threads. I have been staggered at what I have read and at how quickly the threads deteriorate. I've found it peculiar and (although I really don't consider myself a drama queen) a little bit frightening to be honest. Still, it's been a lesson. Don't ask strangers for advice about anything really important if you are feeling vulnerable!

I thought you meant the fecking mums and dads on mn

I have to say though that I spent quite a bit of time in Relationships when I first joined MN, then stopped because I found it was starting to skew my outlook on the world.

A bit like when you google diseases and become convinced you've got them: I found myself looking at DP and my relationship and thinking 'Was that abusive...?' when it really, totally wasn't.

I am a bloke and a v. long time lurker and haven't read all of the thread. Someone said much further up that the divorce rate could be indicative of women not being prepared to put up with rubbish in relationships, and I am largely agreeing with this.

I think the key is 'expectations' and what waas not seen as 'abusive' back in the day, is so now. Abuse can be as broad as interfering wit hsomeone's self-esteem. But, one has to have a sense of their own self-esteem to recognise it being compromised. So as women's sense of themselves rise, so the interpretation of 'abuse' gets caught up much more quickly and regularly.

Having said that, I don't think "leave him' is the stock response. IT's just more noticeable due to it's extreme measure. Cool, measured advice doesn't attractthe same notice.

well said Rohanda

thank you goat.

I think the advice tends to "ground" you as to what is normal, and what definitely is not. I have posted in the past about certain issues - the responses kind of fell in the middle between "DH is being a bit of a twunt" and "you secretly like being in control, go on admit it" The reality is pribably somewhere in the middle. Though I did get one or two "leave the bastard, I wouldn't put up with that" posts.

Sadly I have seen on MN how some other relationships are. Mine is not 100% perfect, but it is million times better than many that are posted in that topic.

yes Portofino re the grounding bit. Iam not 'in a relationship' as many otehr posters aren't, so it does have advantages: 1 you can be a bit detached, without being indifferent and 2. it's an opportunity to reflect on waht 'went wrong' in previous relationships, guided by your own life experience and what others say about their own experiences.

HerBex,

I don't think the idea of a single parent being a happier state for children (as opposed to being in an unhappy marriage) has been "subversive" since at least the early 80s. When my parents got divorced in about 1986, it was rapidly becoming normalised with absolutely no stigma attached.

The reality, though, is that children, on average, do better in a working marriage with two parents. Though children are highly adaptable and will cope with any kind of loving family, seeing a working relationship and having a same sex role model is the ideal.

It is, of course, a compromise and no child is happy in a toxic marriage (and I know that from first hand experience). However, to leap from there to the idea that single parenthood is as good as a happy marriage is plain wrong and, to me, means that marriages which are imperfect but where both partners fundamentally respect one another, should be worked on pretty hard before being given up on.

It isn't just the relationship threads. There are two AIBU threads where the theme of "he is being a manipulative,inconsiderate bastard - you are not valuing yourself enough" escalated extraordinarily quickly. What worries me is that when the OP starts to back-track, explaining that the original rant is being misunderstood, the back-tracking is somehow perceived as the manipulative partner having mysterious power over the OP and then intensifies the "he is being a manipulative, inconsiderate bastard" theme. The possibility of the OP thinking "shit, I've fallen into a howling pit and I'm being misunderstood" certainly doesn't seem to have occurred to those doing the howling!

Swallowed,

Ethnocentric??

www.healthymarriageinfo.org/docs/May08Marriage_Brief3.pdf

Well, here is one paper from a reputable organisation that claims that, ceteris paribus, children do better with two parents.

Clearly, there are a huge number of confounding factors, one being that the income of the household tends to drop when parents get divorced. Confounding factors are nearly impossible to entirely eradicate in this kind of study.

I totally accept the fact that there are other more important factors than family structures to childhood outcomes. However, that does not mean that you can ignore it altogether.

I don't know where you are based but, I remember telling my friends at Cambridge Uni in the 80s that my parents
were getting divorced and none were particularly shocked or treated me differently thereafter. Given the number of single parent families these days, it would be hard to stigmatise such a large number of households.

Swallowed,

The confounding factors are simple to name but hard to deal with statistically, especially as there are feedback loops going on (divorce leads to lower disposable incomes, for instance). I would hate to be a statistician doing the study. I assure you it is not simple!

Of course, feckless fathers do exist (and the much rarer feckless mother) but again it is hard to deny that running two households costs a lot more than running one and that separation itself makes a big hole in the household balance sheet (lawyers' costs being the main one).

There's a stigma about single parents on benefits, I've never heard any criticism of single parents who support themselves.

So it is about money

Ah yes, the Centre for Policy Studies, a right wing think tank that's not going to be biased at all is it.

If you take income out of the equation, there is simply no difference between being brought up by a single parent or two parents. None whatsoever. Study after study has proved that. No-one wants to hear it, I wonder why not?

As SAF says, income and education are the biggest variables as to whether you have good or poor outcomes in terms of truancy, ill health, A level results, criminal involvement etc. A child brought up by a rich single mother, or a poor but educated one, is statistically likely to have much better outcomes than a child brought up by two poor uneducated parents.

Single parents are likely to be poorer than the average because as SAF says, most of them get no financial support from the deadbeat fathers of their kids and that is what skews the figures. The fact that they are poor, not the fact that they are single.

The outcomes for Bangladeshi children were worse than for any other BME group 10 years ago (don't know if that is still true). That is becauase they were poorer than any other BME group. The answer isn't not to be Bangladeshi, the answer is to raise the average income of Bangladeshi families. Exactly the same with single parent families.

Oh and I'm still waiting to hear what the characteristics of my idealised man are.