to think that too many women need permission to leave abusive relationships?

[ginmakesitallok]

This is a thread about a lot of threads.

My heart always sinks when I see a thread with "is this abuse?", "is this normal?' Etc in the title. Where the op is obviously not happy in a relationship but somehow feels that unless their partner is being"abusive" or not normal then they should just put up with it?

Surely it doesn't matter whether partner is being "abusive" or not, surely the fact that they are not enjoying their relationship any more is sufficient reason to ltb? In fact even if p isn't being a bastard none needs "permission" to leave?

I understand that sometimes people need their point of view validated and need support to leave, but there seems to be an unwritten rule that in order to leave a relationship it needs to be abusive?

It's worse when I read ops talking about how they are spending time gathering evidence, noting events etc, before they leave. You don't need proof! Just go!

I kicked my ex out, he was on the tenancy agreement so could have stayed if he had forced the issue, but I didn't give him much choice.
I went to the local family centre group which nearly all of our mutual friends attended and told evereveryone in grear detail exactly what he had done to me and our sons. Abusers are bullys and cowards and when confronted with his behaviour, when he realised he couldn't gas light me anymore and that I wouldn't fall for his shit, he folded.
Not only sm I sick of women having to justify themselves, I'm sick of them feeling they have to hide or explain away the behavior of their abusers.

And yes people in abusive relationships can help themselves hugely by evidence gathering (I'm talking seeking profesional support and getting things recorded not playing Sherlock) before they leave to get the best chance of protecting themselves and their children in the future.

If you haven't sought help or had a professional document things and you don't leave at crisis point with visible evidence the process of protecting yourself can be even more stressful than with evidence.

I have been musing on this recently. I used to avoid this area of MN but started reading and commenting here a while back. It seems that there are so many abusive men. There are so many women living in fear. I can't quite work out what is going on.

I then wonder if doing something abusive makes you an abuser? Does it always? under what conditions could someone do something abusive and not actually be an abusive person? A little like the advice to parents that they should tell their child about their behavior. "That was naughty" rather than "you are naughty" If you tell a child they are naughty they internalise this and it starts to constitute their identity. Could this be the case with someone who is abusive? An "abuser" we are told does not recognise their behavior as abusive or take responsibility? Is this always the case? if they can't recognise it themselves are they accountable in any meaningful way?

Is it possible to be an "abuser" who isn't in total and full control of what you do, recognise it as wrong and continue? Do people haplessly fall in to patterns of behaviour? Is it possible that the dynamic in one relationship precipitates this behaviour whilst another relationship might be healthier?

My feeling is this, the social conditions in which men are raised, the way they are forced to perform masculinity from an early age, the way media portrays men, the way that other media like pornography portrays women ensures a pretty endless supply of misogynistic men. The scale of the problem makes me think that it isn't enough to just throw labels around and prescriptions of LTB.

What are we going to teach our sons? because not only are they subject to forces that shape their identities and insist upon gender performance, but they have the contradictory forces that label and assign guilt/shame that also constitute their self identity. The two are inextricably linked despite being contradictory forces, the result is the same. men who are emotionally damaged, angry, shameful, resentful, fearful, proud, but most of all judging themselves always in relation to the other, they identify themselves by what they are not, the binary opposites of men and women. They aspire to be what we tell them they must be, they can only do this by internalising a hatred of the things they can not be. Only recently a man I am close to said "it is ok for you, you have it easy, a home that is yours to escape to, bills paid, I have to live like this, working. otherwise I have no where and no escape" He is an "Alpha male" but the mask slipped and beneath it...vulnerability, fear, envy... I didn't feel afraid, I felt sad. He is an abusive little twat, gaslights, stonewalls, denies he feels anything, tells silly lies, is terrified of showing his feelings and generally has a very shit life, as do the women who get involved with him.

Boo hoo for him

Yes boo hoo, because he has a rather shit existence, his behaviour does impact on him, he is the totality of his life experiences and social conditioning. A victim of a different sort, an emotionally stunted individual who can never allow others to support him, who judges himself harshly against a set of imposed criteria of what men should be. Lots of others just like him. lashing out, punching things, making others cry tears they can't themselves cry, making others suffer outwardly for the fear and frustration they feel inwardly.

No woman should stay in a relationship she doesn't want to be in. No one should be abused. No one has the right to abuse others, but there is always a binary relationship btw abuser/abused. One cannot exist without the other. So my question remains...other than LTB what can be done? Its not use saying "lock em up" we shouldn't be raising boys who become abusive.

Have you been in an abusive relationship?

He has a CHOICE not to be nasty. Why are you friends with him?

This thread is getting right up my nose. I think I shall leave it be.

Hmm, Mini. Have you considered the possibility that he is not as sorry for himself as he made out? That you thought you saw a mask slipping, but actually underneath was a different mask?

If you want to learn more about abuse and abusive mentalities, you could start with the links on the EA support thread in relationships.

oh dear, and yes women have a choice to leave their abusive twits????except for a long time women were conditioned to stay put, society judged women who left harshly. But now they can,...and often they don't, but why? Because they lose sight of who they are, they lose self-esteem, their parents conditioned them to always try, because society teaches women to fix relationships, to facilitate the smooth running of the family, to pick up the pieces, to keep going and to blame themselves. If women become the sum of their lived experiences, can the same not be said of men? If he has a "choice" she also has a "choice" but that is a very simply way of looking at things!

Perhaps woowoo22 your irritation is entirely due to your misunderstanding what I have written

CharlotteCollins...oh like a conspiracy theory no, it was an unguarded comment. And no he isn't mine to have to deal with thankfully. I am quite fond of this silly man and despair of him. He has no idea how dysfunctional he is, why would he, if he knew he wouldn't be dysfunctional in the first place! Of course some people are just plain evil. I mean narcs are nasty, but did they choose to be raised in a way that created their disordered personality?

I don't want to read it again. I have read a lot of the links on here. I have also read a lot about personality disorders. Another anomaly to wonder at: why do BPDs get their hands held whilst Narcs get vitriol thrown at them? I wonder why because BPD shared certain characteristics with Nacisism, and both are disordered and problematic in the way they treat other people. They cause misery to the people around them. But BPDs tend to be women (ie women are mad paradigm) men are narcs (the men are bad paradigm). It always comes down to the same narrative; women are victims, men are baddies. This of course is often the case, but this narrative has historical roots. At some point women became "victims" because Eve was bad, as were unmarried women, they were witches in the 1400, women who liked sex they are demons, possessed by the devil, women who rule are evil (never clever or brave or great leaders) and so what happened?

So, these labels and list of characteristics...these too are culturally manufactured, not absolutes. Psychology, Psychiatry and on line experts are not discovering previously unknown little nuggets and facts! they are simply shaping the way we see things and understand them.

Tbh I really wish I'd had a place like mn to come and ask about my relationship when I was being abused. I would never have called it abuse at the time.

I had no idea that what I was experiencing wasn't a one off unique to our relationship but part of a wider social problem.

I had heard of wa but didn't think they were for young childless women like me.

In the end I was lucky to escape with my life but if I'd had advice and support sooner I could have escaped the mental and physical scars I'll never recover from.

Thank you Jackie. That has helped me to understand.

Jackieharris I am glad you are safe now, time heals a great deal.

Op i think i understand where you are coming from.
I kicked my dh out a month ago after years of low level ea.
It took a year from realising something wasn't right to finally saying enough is enough.
In 4 weeks I've not contacted my friends for support, I've dropped out of threads on mn who were supporting me and I only started to apply for benefits yesterday.
Why?
Because inside I've been thinking ' if I hadn't made a fuss' i.e. 'this is my fault I'm in this situation '

I really needed people to give me permission to think about myself and not to think that making a fuss was the worst thing in the world.
It's heartbreaking to realise that my self esteem is so low but that is my reason.

No, I don't know, and thank you for telling me. I didn't know that there were legal reasons why proof would be needed. Thank you for educating me, rather than just jumping on my ignorance.

Mumsnet helped me leave an abusive marriage just three months ago (I had a different username).

I found links on here to definitions of emotional abuse. That helped enormously. When things got seriously physically dangerous, I already had an exit plan, thanks to the advice of random strangers on mumsnet. I had spoken to citizen's advice bureau, contacted the local domestic violence helpdesk, and calculated what benefits I and the children would be entitled to.

Without mumsnet, I and my children might well still be in that abusive and dangerous environment. But now we are safe (ish) and the children are no longer at risk from witnessing it all.

Sadly, it did take a police incident to get us the practical help we needed.... We have a non -molestation order because of legal aid, which was triggered by an actual incident of physical violence in front of the children.

I respect the women who have the courage to ask on mumsnet if their situations are abusive. I have learned so much from reading those threads!!! (especially on the relationship board).

(by the way, I don't plan to live on benefits forever, but they have been a lifesaver for me and my children)

OP, half the reason why women end up staying in these relationships are stupid simplistic attitudes like yours.

Please educate yourself on the psychological effects of domestic and emotional abuse before posting crap like this.

Some women need permission to leave abusive relationships, because they have needed permission to do anything, ever.

I volunteered in my local Women's Refuge when I was 18. One of my duties was to help women transition from the refuge to living independently. I once brought a 62 year old woman shopping for house bits and pieces. She got to choose knives and forks and sugar bowls, for the first time ever, without seeking approval from someone else. She had had an abusive father, then 40 years of being married to an abusive husband. When she picked out a cutlery set, she looked to me for approval. Me, 18, and having never purchased such items.

This woman was just so accustomed to seeking approval for everything she did. She had never been allowed make a choice, any choice, for herself.

That's why some women need permission to leave an abusive relationship. That, and the fact that people outside the relationship often don't witness the abuser being abusive, so refuse to believe that this is the case. Thus making it much harder for the abused woman to seek support, and leave.

I admit that reading some of the threads on here about abusive relationships really opened my eyes to some of what really goes on behind closed doors.

Before that, I would have had a rather simplistic and naïve concept about what actually went into extricating oneself from one.

Thanks to MN, I can now see that in most cases it absolutely isn't that simple at all to just walk away.

It was an education for me, and I take my hat off to those of you who have managed to get out.

What ignorance. Those women love their husbands and if you had any real knowledge on the matter you would see why. Often these women have been with their partners for many years. Not everyone does relationships the 'jezza kyle' way. You sound very young so maybe that is why you started that thread.

Fgs mummyBtothree, I've said before that I'm ignorant about the subject, hence starting the thread. Don't know what my age has to do with it?

Parsnip, the reason for starting the thread was to educate myself. Perhaps one of the reasons people stay with abusive partners is because of the patronising opinions of others, who seem to think that women who don't understand the psychological effects of abuse are ignorant.

....they are.

You could have simply gone on the women's aid website and your questions would have been answered for you. Posting something like this on here just reinforces the opinions many abused women already have of themselves that the abuse is their fault.

And to whoever said narcs should be treated the same as those with BPD, that's a fabulous idea!! Why don't we also do the same with psychopaths??