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 :(

I know what you mean, OP, I think

I never post in relationships for several reasons-

1. You can't get a true idea of someone's relationship from one side of the story, written on the internet.

1. I don't feel qualified to give advice- advice that could make the poster's relationship worse, not better, if I get it wrong. I think it's quite a responsibilty, tbh.

1. I would never post about any aspect of my own relationship on here, because from threads I have seen, it seems to be very difficult to give an accurate portrayal of your relationship by keyboard. People jump to all sorts of conclusions given just one excerpt, and their own history reinvents it into something they recognise- it's only normal. But I would rather seek advice from a friend who knows me, my DH and has seen our relationship first hand, tbh

Does anyone, in all seriousness, think that someone would end a relationship because someone on a talkboard tells them to?

Sadly, it seems to be far more usual on here that women are prepared to put up with the most awful, horrible treatment than leave, and I think that is incredibly sad :(

(not meant in the 'sneery' way).

Not sure I agree TheSecondComing.

I think its far more likely that people downplay horrible behaviour. You see all sorts of nastiness dismissed as 'not that bad' or 'you know what men are like'.

Besides...you can offer advice, its not compulsory to take it.

I agree with nearly everything Swallowedafly posted.
I hate this hand-wringing about broken families and divorces.

It's basically people complaining that women aren't prepared to put up with shit in their marriages anymore. Most divorce petitions are filed by women. Married men are the happiest group in society, single men are the least happy. What does that tell you about who benefits most from marriage?

People don't tell posters to leave because he's left a dirty cup on the kitchen surface. They tell a poster to leave because it has become obvious from what the poster is saying, that she is the only one who is working on the relationship.

Sometimes, telling someone that you have decided that you need to split, is the kick up the arse they need, to start working on the relationship with you. It is a terrible irony that women spend years telling their husbands they aren't happy and their husbands ignore them or say they are nagging. And then, when the wife at last ays "OK, I've had enough, I'm off", there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, there is "but you never said you were unhappy" "what have I done wrong" "let's go to counselling" "I'll do whatever it takes". But by that time, the love has gone and it's all too late.

If more women said earlier on "I am not prepared to settle for such a piss-poor relationship, I will leave if this is all you're offering" and meant it, maybe it wouldn't get to the stage where all the love, respect and willingness to go the extra mile, has been eroded by being taken for granted for years.

Teling women that they can leave, is a really necessary thing to do. Because those who believe they can't, have absolutely no negotiation-power. Knowing that leaving is an option for both parties, is more likely to lead to people treating each other properly IMO. It doesn't mean people leave each other; where a relationship is basically good, it means they are conscious that they can but don't want to so bloody well put the work in to make sure the other person doesn't want to either.

what HB said 10000 X

What has come as a revelation to me is not how often people are advised to kick their dh out, but how many crap dh's and dp's there are and how much women actually put up with. If, of course, the woman is telling the truth. But then what we are commenting on is not the truthfulness of that particular story, what the posters on Relations are saying loud and clear is: this you have just described is unacceptable behaviour. And from what I can see, the behaviour described often is.

Speaking as someone who was brought up by parents in a good respectful relationship and am now happily married to a good man, I do not see it as my duty to encourage other women to put up with crap. Why should I? I don't buy the idea that all men are like this, they're babies really, you can't expect any different. Oh yes, you can! And if you're not getting it, then I don't see why you should be grateful.

There are a number of posters on here who believe all relationships should follow a formulaic template and allow for no variation. Surprisingly enough (not!), most of them are divorced and now see this as the ideal state of being.

There is also an incredibly strange, what I would term "teenagerish", view about a marriage in that it should be all about romantic love and feelings should never change. This view entirely disregards children and other family, while paying lipservice to putting their needs first.

Some relationships are not 50/50, sometimes people prefer a more "old fashioned" template. It is not even always the man who has it easier. Also, few relationships are good all the time. Most go through rocky passages which can be worked through if both parties are committed to their marriage. A relationship is an individual thing which can only be judged on its own merits and over a long period of time, assuming it is not (in the old fashioned sense of the word) genuinely abusive.

The MN relationship section is all about splitting couples up, although for some reason a lot of the people who cheerlead the call prefer to call for counselling first, in between insulting (generally) the man. I think that makes them feel better about themselves.

Its only redeeming feature is that there have been some heartbreaking stories of real abuse on here and people do offer amazing support and correct advice in these circumstances.

I get that people can be very unaware of how dreadful their own situation can be, and need an outsider to point this out to them, I also think there are a handful of embittered MNers who project their own hurt and distress onto others and do cry 'Leave him' in a very black and white way.

My DP had a severe breakdown a couple of years ago, during which he had dissociative episodes (kind of like waking nightmares) where he'd treat me in the horrible, traumatising way that he'd been treated as a child.

If I'd posted about that on MN at the time I'd have been told to leave pronto. In point of fact I was aware of how much it looked like an abusive relationship, challenged him on this and told him that if he didn't get some help to deal with the original trauma/stress/exhaustion that was causing it he'd never see me again.

He did get help. We're still together. Though the way he treated me during that time was sometimes really awful, I have no regrets about staying the course.

Things aren't always black and white.

This shit about the only reason people call for other people to leave abusive relationships because they are embittered; FGS is all I can say, it's on a par with wankers who say the only reason women want equal pay is becuase they can't find a man to support them and therefore have to earn their own living. It's utterly pathetic.

You would not have been told to leave Daffodils; you would have been told to make sure that he was told in no uncertain terms that it was his responsiblity to get help. Which is what you did, which is why you are now together.

It is just bollocks to say that you would have been told to leave.

I say: [after a bit where I acknowledged that soemtimes people really do need the awfulness of their situation pointed out to them] 'there are a handful of embittered MNers who project their own hurt and distress onto others'.

You read: 'the only reason people call for others to leave abusive relationships is because they are embittered'.

I guess there's no point debating what some notional MNers might have said had I posted about something I went through two years ago. But the above does illustrate the kind of selective reading that can lead people to jump to conclusions when reading others' posts.

larry, could you clarify for me what you mean by "old fashioned abuse" please

do you think that some of the ways in which abuse is recognised "these days" is a bit new-fangled and, frankly, a little bit silly ?

I recently followed a thread where the OP was complaining that her househusband dh was not meeting her standards - he wasn't taking the child to soft play, swimming, mother and toddler groups etc etc and she could do it all so much better.

Quite a number of people did have sympathy for the dh, but there was this group who immediately turned up and urged the OP to leave/kick him out.

Of course if a man is violent/abusive/nasty then get rid, but I'm always irritated by those SAHM who say "I'm a mother , not a housewife " when in actual fact they're often not pulling their weight yet on come the KHO brigade who say that a bloke who does a 14 day should certainly be doing his own washing/ cooking the dinner/ getting up to the dcs in the night/and of course never ever see his mother again.

I wasn't just referring to your post Daffodils.

YANBU

I was going to post exactly the same last week.

Some very valid arguments have been made here (HerBex and Swallow) but really some people should think twice before advising anyone in a vulnerable moment to get their act together and tell the sorry bastard to fuck off for something quite trivial.

LOL at old fashioned abuse as opposed to the new fangled stuff.

Peter Andre,

Old fashioned abuse = ANY physical violence or repeated intimidation by another means.

The "new" definition adopted by people on here include single acts of shouting, the odd sulk etc. And there is an assumption that, within a dysfunctional relationship, the woman is always acting with complete rationality, whereas the norm is that both parties are behaving nastily towards one another.

I cannot think of any examples where a woman has been told to leave her partner because of "single acts of shouting or the odd sulk"

the OP may have started with that premise, but as a thread progresses, it is very ofen the case that this is part of a much bigger, and more worrying picture

women don't post on here in desperation about an "odd sulk"...how patronising to infer that is the case

And, yes, I do think some people on here are anti-abuse Mccarthyists...they look for it in every relationship and, suprisingly enough, they seem to find it.

Can you actually link to a thread where a single act of shouting or sulking has been defined as abuse Larry?

Bet you can't.

PeterAndre,

I have seen that table that is always linked to re abuse where it specifies that a single act can be abuse. No idea whether you are one who believes it but certainly plenty do.

And, there is nothing patronising in challenging your viewpoint. Lots of people post here over small issues, they do not realise it is the preserve of potential divorce only.

A single act of physical or sexual abuse can be abuse, of course it can FGS.

I'd be very surprised if that chart says a single act of sulking can be abuse though.