AIBU to find the relationships forum here so depressing?

[aquaella]

I am new here and just been looking round the site and forums. I have looked at the relationships forum and I understand this is where people in distress go when relationships breakdown or with other personal problems but reading it makes me feel like nearly all relationships are fragile, fraught with difficulties and hanging by a thread. It makes me feel that to have a good marriage that lasts it would have to be some kind of miracle! Is this true or is it just the nature of the forum that makes it appear so awful?

I do find it depressing in the same way I find the news depressing because other people suffer so much and so little can be done about it. I wouldn't find it depressing if I had no sympathy. Still I can see how my meaning could be misconstrued.

I will have further dig around and see what I find on the site!

Yes, it's often depressing to read the Relationships forum, but it's depressing because of the appalling situations the posters are in, and how crushed their self-esteem often is after years of unhealthy or abusive relationships, financial control etc etc. it's instructive as hell on how difficult it is to leave that situation, and set up a new life, and how hard it is for some women to even acknowledge their situation is abusive. It's a snapshot of an often hidden world of women's domestic suffering, and why things like Women's Aid are more important than ever.

Actually aquaella there are probably thousands of people who, without feeling they currently have anything to contribute, read relationship threads and learn an enormous amount from them.

The great thing about MN is that, over time, it will broaden one's horizons and introduce you to the possibility of questioning your own assumptions. It may lead you to demand greater verisimilitude in the fiction you read or the journalism you follow. It may help you to be kinder to the people you meet in real life.

I had to stop reading the relationship board in my hormonal pregnant mood. I convinced myself my dh was having an affair because clearly that's what all men do.

I wish that I had known about the relationships board when I was going through the hell that is an EA relationship. I didn't know about gaslighting. I couldn't understand why my partner could recall an event so differently than the way I remembered it, and always in a way that put me in the wrong. If the board saves one woman from going through what I went through we should celebrate it, not label it as depressing.

No one is going to go on the relationships board and say "I've never been so happy". It's skewed in favour of misery, that's what it's there for.

Hide it.

I went through my own abusive relationship and divorce. I don't want to hear about other peoples' so I have it hidden.

I try to answer with advice if I think it would be useful. I tend to feel very guilty though and don't want to be the smug married one. It has made me feel very grateful for my DH but a lot of OPs have problems with friendships and family which resonate with me. I wish I had had MN during difficult times with friends and family. It would probably have saved me from making a lot of mistakes and I would have put up stronger boundaries. My very first post (now deleted) made me understand a very difficult situation years after the fact. I want to thank the people who replied to me at that time.
to all those going through shitty times at the moment.

The Relationship forum is a real eye-opener, and yes it is depressing that so many people are being so badly abused. In ways they can't always see themselves.

And though I am in a good relationships, it has helped me - I do question assumptions about the fair distribution of work in the house, and I have become more assertive.

It is also helping me to educate my sons about healthy relationships

You are right, I think even the people on there would agree it is depressing. That is exactly why they are posting. Lots of the issues are ones they can't talk about in real life. It provides a safe anonymous place to get help and advice or just a hand hold. It is a shame you feel the way you do - why not feel compassionate rather than depressed? You are very lucky that your world is so perfect that you do not have to experience the trauma that many of the 'depressing' posts are about.

Don't read the posts if you don't like them.

What zero and harp said