The relationship section of MN makes my blood boil.

[aaaaaaaaargh]

I will never set virtual foot in there again. I have imprints on my forehead of the keyboard from where I have been banging my head against it. It makes no SENSE!!! I have a jaw like Jacob Marley. There are so many threads like this:

OP: The other day I was a miserable cow, kids were stressing me. He came home to a complete shithole and then proceeded to clean up. I could sense he was a bit miffed at the state of the house so I told him to cook his own fucking dinner. He wanted to tell me about a problem with work, but I was pissed off and told him I wasn't interested, tell someone who gives a shit. He then shouted that I didn't give a toss about him and stomped upstairs. I can't live like this anymore.

Reply: He cleaned up?? How controlling is he? He then tried to make you listen to his work problems? What about YOUR problems?

Reply: He's emotionally abusive, but you know this don't you.

Reply: Definitely controlling, he doesn't care about what you want. He wanted to make you clean up and listen to his problems. Why the fuck are you cooking his dinner?

Reply: He shouted at you? This is abusive behaviour. You don't have to put up with this, you need to really think about how to proceed. Has he shouted before? This isn't normal.

Reply: Well actually, you weren't too pleasant to him. Perhaps you should look at YOUR behaviour.

Reply (to above poster): Great support there, this woman lives with an emotional abuser. Don't speak if you haven't got anything constructive to say. Don't listen to that poster OP.

Etc, etc....

I know that a lot of people in seriously abusive or violent situations have been helped in this section, and that that is an extremely good thing, before you point that out to me.

But some of the replies on other threads!!! Madness.

IME it's the women who have lived through DV that tend to have the more gentle posts. They remember how different it seems when you're going through it and how being blamed for putting up with it makes you feel so bad that you're less likely to leave because it simply confirms everything your abuser has said about it being your own fault.

#You have posted under a different user name - you said as much.

Not sure what you mean.

some of this is very very insulting to users of the boards

when you post for advice about a situation you sift through the responses and weigh them up, you expect a range of imperfect responses because people aren't perfect and there are all the usual limitations of only presenting your side of a story plus the weirdnesses of the Internet in general. Posters are not ignorant of this. You pick out what's useful don't you?

#Your opinion feels quite a lot like an attack on woman, you couldn't back it up with any actual examples,

I could back it up with actual examples, but as I explained much earlier, I'm not going to.

and you sound aggressive and a bit troubled.

I can assure you I'm not.

Well my turn to wade in and add my shillings worth. I have never name changed but I see why for privacy and perhaps to get a different reaction people would, it in it's self is harmless unease the intent is to deceive.

I would challenge the assumption that someone made a few posts ago that this internet site and in particular this part of the forum are inhabited by women only, or that the women who do post on her support other women. The very nature of this debate shows quiet clearly that different agendas are being played out. In general I agree with the OP and have been dismayed at how often "blame" seems to be a one way street and the first recourse of some posters is to advise leaving or assuming infidelity. A recent post about keeping secret a savings account was seen as permissible for a woman but not for a man. A woman poster was saying she was nervous about her husbands ability to budget as they lost money in an investment property, erm could that be because the housing market fell off a cliff rather than choosing a bad house or a bad area? We never found out as no one bothered to ask, it was just a given that the man was "feckless" with money. The fact that she was included in the decision to buy the property seems to suggest that she could have raised an objection or should think about how they both could have learnt lessons rather than look to blame.

Sometimes especial in benefit threads this place is more like a bear pit rather than a community of support and OBJECTIVE thinking and response. A recent post of mine that was both controversial and very very angry as I felt such a sense of injustice that I had to vent, was picked apart because I was angry? All I would like to see is people not dog whistle responding, using there experience and knowledge to further discussion not just spout off, and instead of jumping to conclusions draw out as much information as can be correctly be gained before condemning man women or child.

Good post Notthefullshilling.

OP what are you trying to say?

That you don't like the opinions given on the relationships board? Well offer a differing opinion then! No one's stopping you. If the consensus disagrees with you then maybe there's a reason for that.

Are you saying that you don't think relationships helps people? Well that's patently untrue. As posters on this thread and threads over there will testify.

It just sounds like you're saying you wish more people had the same opinions as you. Well, sorry to break it to you, but... that's never going to happen.

I think that posting under a namechange to be provocative (and that's what expecting a flaming amounts to) is trolling actually. And if it isn't, it isn't really having the courage of your convictions, because you have effectively deleted your posting history so that people don't know 'who' in MN terms they are talking to. Is it someone with a record of belittling women? Is it someone who appears ignorant generally? Is it someone who has asked for advice about a crappy relationship themselves in the past, and is in denial and lashing out? We don't know any of this, because your namechange hides it all. Yet people are replying to you, OP, in their usual guise, which gives you the advantage. That is why you are being perceived as cowardly.

is that the thread where the husband was always eating out for lunch and going on skiing breaks with his friends and generally being a bit feckless with money - so feckless he had actually forgotten about the OP's £20k inheritance that she had set aside for career development, rather than let him piss it away?

Just because the majority disagree doesn't meant the dissenting voices are wrong, madonnawhore.

Most of our culture reinforces male dominance over women. Why should the one site that is female dominated and seeks to concentrate on a women's needs and feelings without seeing the need to say 'but what about the man' result in so much consternation I wonder?

It is not man-hating to adopt a female perspective and automatically validate a woman's POV unless she is being obviously unreasonable. It simply creates a level playing field in a culture that still affords men many more advantages than women.

I'm glad things got sorted with your DH in the end, longlegs.

I don't see how the relationship boards can be that bad, people wouldn't use them if they broke up happy marriages - can a happy marriage be broken up?

It just gets bigger and bigger here, busier and busier. It must be more right than wrong, or people would just stay away and it would be as quiet as the feminist section.

I'm sorry to nit pick sunshine, but a bias for or against one gender does not make a level playing field.

Creating a positive bias for a group that is discriminated against does create a level playing field. In the same way that positive discrimination had to be adopted in order to rebalance the playing field for black people in white-dominated societies.

men's views, experiences and opinions are privileged everywhere else and you think it is an unfair bias to give women the same here?

Best is to stay away, otherwise its just frustrating. I don't think some of the posters there could keep a relationship if they really did what they said have agendas, but others seem sane, trick is to tune the nutters out.

Your point being what MitchieInge? And I hate to tell you and everyone else but losing a house because of debts, or a marriage break up because of debts, or not trusting someone enough to let them choose what and where to buy lunch can all seriously dent any plans for career development. Lazlo's hierarchy of need suggests that in order to learn someone has to have the stability of a roof over their head, food on the table, and emotional stability. So maybe him forgetting was his way of not putting pressure on her. But see this is what happens we do not have his side of the story so you and I trade interpretative ideas of what is going on in the lives of people we do not even know. I truly think some people get of on the power invested in them by this here interweb thingy.

Agree shilling.

I have been married for nearly 20 years and one thing I have learned is that both my DH and I can be abusive, controlling, bad-tempered and (on one occasion) physically violent - just to be clear, that last applies to me too. Most of the time, though, we get along very well and I know for sure that we love each other. There have been times when I have hated him so much ... but then calmed down and realised that, actually, he has a point. We have created a relationship that works and I have learned a lot about myself in the process.

I feel that relationships can be a balance of power and sometimes the power slips in one direction or the other. In many cases, I suspect both sides need help digging themselves out of the hole they are in. Of course leaving someone is often the right/best thing to do, but labelling one person as 100% bastard and the other as 100% saint/victim is just too simple and doesn't always help a person understand and move on emotionally, whether they stay in the relationship or not.

You could possibly argue that female discrimination isn't the same as racism, but I'd disagree with you.

The full-time gender pay gap between women and men is 14.9 per cent

Interruptions to employment due to caring work account for 14% of the gender pay gap

64% of the lowest paid workers are women, contributing not only to women's poverty but to the poverty of their children

Nine out of ten lone parents are women. The median gross weekly pay for male single parents is £346, while for female single parents it is £194.4

Women experience DV at least 3x more than men.

4x as many women than men are killed by their partners/ex-partners.

1 in 9 women will be raped.

Still think we're equal?

Just because the majority disagree doesn't meant the dissenting voices are wrong, madonnawhore.

Well, you see, I would generally say that on balance it does. If those dissenting voices are massively in the minority.

I've seen loads of threads on relationships where the opinions are evenly split into two broad camps. And everyone gets a fair hearing.

But if some distressed woman is posting about how a guy she brought home forced himself on her and someone like troisgarcons says she's a slutty bint who was asking for it, not a lot of people are going to agree. And quite rightly.

Notthefullshillings post is a god example. She's trying to equilaterally gender flip a situation about a woman with a secret savings account. Her assertion is that it was okay for the woman to have one, but it wouldn't be okay for a man, and that is unfair.

Well, yes, okay, all things being equal it would be unfair.

If you had a situation where both partners split everything equally and earned the same money, yet one of them had a secret savings account then it would be quite a reasonable reaction to say that that person was being out of order.

But the argument falls down because so often all things aren't equal. It's precisely because nothing's equal that a woman feels like she has to have a secret savings account. Because her H is the breadwinner, because maybe he's financially abusing her. It's those sort of subtleties that some posters are being obtuse about.

but why read there at all if your own life is so fabulous? It's a support board, for the giving and receiving of support. And the entertainment of voyeurs?

I don't read many threads there, they can be very upsetting. I feel defensive of those who give their time and experience and wisdom to help others - if you think they are making mistakes or delivering bad advice do you step in to help?

My point, notthefullshilling, was that you were trying to suggest some anti-male agenda had cast this man into role of feckless with money when actually he just was feckless on a daily basis. And it wasn't a secret account, he'd just forgotten about it. But don't let the facts interfere with your polemic.

We must be reading different threads OP.

The responses that make my blood boil are:

OP: My DP is constantly using porn/dating sites/webcams and won't have sex.

ANSWER: Don't let it upset you. Men are visual creatures after all and it's just fantasy. How about getting down to Agent Provocateur and treating him to the real thing? (followed by the ubiquitous 'lol')

OP: My husband wouldn't take no for an answer last night and then I woke up to find him having sex with me.

ANSWER: I won't call it rape, perhaps he was just a bit horny and couldn't control himself. Could he be depressed? Why didn't you want sex anyway?

OP: I do everything in the house. It just wouldn't occur to him to put a washload on, to give the DCs their medication or even to feed them if I wasn't there.

ANSWER: Well men just don't see dirt do they like we do? What about getting a cleaner?

Interesting what makes some posters angry, eh?

I have seen threads like you describe, OP, but IIRC in Chat & AIBU, not Relationships I don't think.

A lot of relationships issues are discussed in Chat & AIBU; some stuff that's grossly inappropriate for that section.

So I think, being pedantic, that people are justified in saying that is not the general tone in Relationships, where there are a lot of heartbreaking stories from abused women