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 :(

HerBex,

At least I have supplied a link to a paper which has considered a number of academic studies, unlike your post which just makes a number of assertions.

Are you seriously telling me that a father is of absolutely no benefit to his son? That is your implication.

Your idealised man:

Earns minimum £500k per annum but all money is "family money".

Manly in the bedroom but verbally asks for permission every step of the way during sex.

Does a minimum of 50% childcare but recognises that a mother's instinct is always right.

In the intervals between covering his £500k job and doing his 50% of the childcare (no female paid help allowed as that would be demeaning, although probably allowed to hire a good looking male cleaner or nanny) he must spend time swatting up on feminist literature and attend the odd pro-feminist march (though not try to BE a feminist, as that would be presumptuous).

Realises that due to centuries of patriarchy, his generation of men (and a few to follow) have to atone by coming strictly second in the household pecking order (merely to provide a balance to the rest of society, of
course).

Has to "get" that the above set of expectations is not an anti male position but a compliment to men and that the very few who cannot live up to it are reasonably considered to be "twats, twunts or wankers".

Obviously good looking, well read etc.

I think that would probably cover it :).

Blimey, boyf has just said "he knows me in real life then?"

:) Touche.

ALT GR + e will give é, Larry. Or if you don't have ALT GR, then CTRL + ALT + e will do the same thing. :)

Short of domestic violence or emotional abuse, I think couples should try their darndest to make a marriage work for the sake of the children. There is a lot of 'happy mother happy children' talk whereas my preference, as a child of an unhappy marriage, was for my parents stay together than my parents splitting up and moving onto different partners who have children together and I would be the fifth wheel in both households.

What I don't understand is why women marry twunts in the first place? I owe it to myself and my unborn dcs to do full due diligence on my future life partner, because getting it wrong hurts everybody whatever you do. Once the damage is done, it is done. Everything else is just mitigation.

Blueshoes this thread might satisfy your curiosity.

Am I reading the same Relationships board?
People hardly ever say "Leave him!" Some of us know that the most severely abused are the least likely to take that life-saving advice, having been thoroughly trained to confuse misery with love.

While you really won't see a whole lot of "Leave him!"s, you will see experienced women patiently guiding a VICTIM to perceive the truth of her predicament. This invariably includes much encouragement to tell all to as many people in real life as possible - hardly the advice of a bunch of internet control freaks.

I confess I find it weird that so many people still hold fast to the tenet that any husband/father is better than none. Some are awful.

If a marriage does not work out, I have the greatest respect for lone parents and those who put the interests of their children above any desire to get paired up again quickly.

"Why do women marry these twunts".

I do believe that there are some unsavoury women as well. Not all men are bad, just because your marriage didn't work, and not all men are the same.

Women have affairs, women cheat-they're just better at not getting caught.

I'm sick of women fighting for equality yet being determined to be more equal than others. If a marriage doesn't work then it's either one of you or both of you together, causing the issues. Not necessarily the man.

I do like Larry's perfect man it does sound about right.

As MN is about 99% women posters I think reading relationship's etc gives a skewed view on life.
I would have thought it was 50-50 who was at fault in relationships unless we are saying women behave better than men or men are worse than women.

I don't think it's helpful to think of relationships in terms of "fault". It helps more to think of dynamics, how the relationship works, what each person is getting out of it, what the assumptions are and whether the benefits of the relationship, are being fairly shared out to each of the parties in that relationship. So if one party is getting far more out of a relationship at the expense of the other's happiness, energy, self-respect, time, human potential etc., it's a question of re-balancing that relationship so that both parties can function happily in it.

The problem comes when one party is not ashamed to be the beneficiary of having a massive amount more benefits in the relationship, than the other party and doesn't actually want to re-balance it thank you very much, because they're doing nicely. That's when you have to look at whether it's possible for people to work towards re-establishing the balance of benefits, or whether they are always going to be weighted towards the selfish person who thinks s/he is entitled to get more out of the relationship than the other person.

It's not a question of saying women can be nasty too; that's just asinine, it's obvious that women can be nasty too, no intelligent person would argue the opposite except to be bothersome. But this is mumsnet, the majority of posters who are complaining about their relationships are women and as with any post about any subject, you just have to take on face value that they are telling you the truth about their relationship because if you ask people for help, there's no point in just giving them half the story because that way you will only get half the advice, which always seems to me to defeat the purpose of askign for advice in the first place.

Havng said that, I'm sure that you will often get people only telling half the story because they've already made up their minds what they want to do and don't want advice, they want validation. And that's fine too, this place is big enough to give people whatever they want to get from it.