to find the martyr level here surprising?

[achieve6]

I love MN but I'm honestly shocked at posts saying things like

1. I do (insert list of 100 items) for him but he does nothing for me, what should I do
   
   
2. I am being taken advantage of financially but want to buy a magic wand rather than sort it out or leave
   
   I might need a break from MN already. I think my blood pressure is going up. I don't know women like this in real life. The odd one in my 20s...but not now. Maybe because I don't have the tolerance.

[LazyLouLou]

Why? Does she spend time noticing when people get so angry they forget themselves a little bit and commit the act they are decrying?

Be honest. You had a pop at the OP for labelling people, then proceeded to attach a handful of labels to her. You even have added that little 'sorry' at the end... and we all know that you weren't

[TenForward82]

You can be in favour of social change and also in favour of individuals taking responsibility for their own lives and happiness. The 2 are not mutually exclusive.

[thecatfromjapan]

You may think it's unnecessary but I think the de-personalisation of political experience is necessary and astonishingly liberating.

What has been happening in America is both utterly grim but also amazing. The criminal justice system is part of a racist society and massively skewed against people of colour.

This year, my social media has exploded with voices refusing to let this remain 'isolated' incidents. A mosaic of noise and protest is audible and visible - in a public place.

I truly hope change will come.

I am excited by this, and I hope it sheds some light on why I find the OP's somewhat shallow post so retrogressive and -frankly - banal.

S/he must live in a shoe-box to have failed to understand the political imitations of moving issues from the political to the personal and vice versa.

[EponasWildDaughter]

OP, you said I'm not talking about those who can't. I'm talking of those who have no exit barriers, no financial vulnerability.

How do you know who 'can't' and who just mafically 'can'?? Your idea of what constitutes a resonable 'exit barrier' is simply that. Your idea. Financial vulnerability is just one of a hundred barriers.

You sound like my mother when faced with someone struggling with something she herself has no experience of. Such as depression, emotional abuse by a partner, PND, fear of change, pressure from family ideals - ''Why don't they just 'pull themselves together' ''

[choli]

I can understand the ones where someone finds themselves financially dependent on a jackass. The ones I don't get are the "I pay all the bills and do all the housework, but he still treats me like crap and treats my kids like crap" threads. I mean, really, you have kids from a previous relationship, you are able to support yourself, but you will let some guy treat you like dirt just to have a man?

[Owllady]

I don't know, I do think it's immature to not look at people's behaviour and situation deeper, sometimes it's okay to tell someone that, knowing it may hurt their feelings but with hope they have the capacity to look at why they feel the way they do. I did mean sorry, I'm fully aware that achieve is a person and what I posted May have hurt or angered her.

[popcornpaws]

I have made the decision to stop reading the weight loss boards.
Too much talk of being good/bad, can't lose weight because…and all manner of bullshit excuses.
If you don't want to lose weight don't pretend you do, don't waste money on slimming clubs then go for a chippy on the way home!
People hold down jobs, bring up families yet pretend they can't control what they eat as their just too tempted by cakes.

[HowDdo2You]

It's the disablist ones who claim to be so called carers that me.

[maybebabybee]

People hold down jobs, bring up families yet pretend they can't control what they eat as their just too tempted by cakes.

How lovely.

[shovetheholly]

I think you ignore the fact that there is a process or a narrative (or whatever you want to call it) about coming to terms with being in a dysfunctional and unhappy relationship. I am a strong, independent person - but I didn't even realise I was unhappy in my previous relationship for years. I was young and it was all I knew.

When some people post in 'Relationships' you can tell that they are at a kind of transformative point in their realisation about their own position. They often cerebrally know that they are being taken advantage of, but their emotions haven't yet caught up. Sometimes you can actually hear this - a very large number of people will say something along the lines of 'This isn't OK is it? But I still love him. But it's not OK.' You can tell that, by the very act of writing about it, the poster's views are changing, but that they haven't come to that moment of making a decision.

That's not martyrishness - it's confusion, emotional struggle. The advice and support that is provided is often given (whether consciously or unconsciously) to help bring about enough of an alignment between head and heart that the poster can take meaningful action. I don't believe that anyone posts on Mumsnet relationships that their partner is emotionally and physically abusive, thinking that they are going to get people advising them to stay! So there is a kind of tentative 'trying out' of a new way of looking at things going on, and that's important.

I actually think that sometimes the board can go too far - that there can be relationships that are equivocal or where there isn't that much evidence, and there will be a chorus of 'LTB' which maybe doesn't do justice to all of the grey areas of human experience and all of the ways in which relationships can be complicated. On the other hand, there are many cases where a woman's situation is absolutely black-and-white, and she sees it as grey and minimises. It's a tricky balance, which is why it's good that there are a range of views expressed in those cases. In cases of serious and unequivocal abuse, though, it's very, very rare to see posters offering anything but support to leave.

[ThumbWitchesAbroad]

I think that in many cases it's a case of "not bad enough to leave, not good enough to stay" - and in those circumstances, the default position is the easier one, which is nearly always the status quo.

Plus you have to remember that people almost always post only the shit things that happen in their lives, because really there's nothing to discuss when things are going well. And when something is particularly shit, then their posts are going to be on the negative side, rather than being completely balanced and fair.

So what I'm saying is that these relationships aren't always as bad as they seem from what's being posted; but then some, of course, are actually a lot worse than the OP realises :(
Usually though, when that latter case occurs, the OP's eyes are opened by other posters as to just how bad her situation is - she's been conditioned by longterm abuse to accept that this is just how things are, so it can be quite confronting to realise it's all shades of wrong.

[thecatfromjapan]

I think we need a 'go away Katie' emoticon.

[LazyLouLou]

cat did you read the recent news piece on the shootings in America?

Young, unarmed man shot in his car and there is no public outcry. Why?
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/zachary-hammond-police-killing_55c0e240e4b0c9fdc75dfda3

It may be that there is something more rotten at the heart than racism... that voice crying for justice may itself be at the heart of the corruption.

S/he must live in a shoe-box to have failed to understand the political imitations of moving issues from the political to the personal and vice versa. Isn't that what you are doing too?

To be honest, I could wish you start a new thread on this. If it could be done without all the shouting.... it would be an interesting sociological debate.

[LazyLouLou]

But having seen you'd rather label me than discuss, maybe not!

Never mind.

[TenForward82]

catfromjapan still confused as to why we're talking about black people. Unless you feel that dysfunctional relationships are a black people problem more than a white people problem, and that is for a "political" reason? Are you black? Otherwise I can't follow your train of thought here.

Not going to get into a race debate, btw.

[YouTheCat]

It took me 15 years to leave my alcoholic husband. At least 10 of those years, I could have left from a financial point of view. But with 2 children with additional needs, no support whatsoever and a total fear of the unknown, I didn't feel able to. It was a 'better the devil you know situation'. I might as well have been a single parent for all the parenting that the exh did but I had no help. There was no forum to listen and advise me. I had no clue there were places I could go. I had no friends who weren't also his friends and who would have told him anything I said against him (been totally alienated).

He wasn't abusive until the last few years of our relationship. It really is not so black and white. You sound very naive.

[Lashalicious]

I agree with Pandora and Mint Julep and the other posters. The manipulation is so skillfully done, the abused are confused, question themselves and it is a process to realize what is happening.

[EponasWildDaughter]

you

I took a long time to leave my first marriage. I'm not going to say it was abusive because it wasn't. It was not a healthy relationship however, and should have ended long before it did.

I took a long time to leave because i feared the fall out. I feared upsetting the children. I feared upsetting my parents. I feared being public enemy no.1 in our small community, and small family. I feared admitting the truth. Yes i feared the financial fall out but that was way down the list.

When i did leave some of what i feared wasn't as bad as i thought. Some was worse, and the physical abuse i suffered at the hands of XH on the day i left was totally unexpected. This was before i was a MNer. I know now this is a risk you need to be prepared for.

[pigsDOfly]

How lovely for you OP to live in such a black and white world. For so many people life is just not that cut and dried.

Clearly you see yourself as so full of wisdom if you're able to read a tiny snapshot of someone's life and know the answers to all their problems.

As pp said, you need to work on your empathy.

[thecatfromjapan]

I've pmed you, lazyloulou.

[thecatfromjapan]

The other reply wasn't to you, lazy, it was to ten.

I've pmed you.

Ten, I've tried to explain in words. I thought it was quite clear. Obviously it wasn't.

I can do no more.

[FanOfHermione]

achieve a few things came to my mind.

One is that you are using the example of your friend who left with 3 young dcs. My first reaction was 'well why didn't she leave earlier, after her first child rather than waiting to have another two with an abusive twat?' or are you saying that your friend DH only became abusive/a twat after the third child? I'm not sure your friend is the best example. Or rather she is the rigt one, the one of a woman who tried hard, very hard to save her marriage, one who maybe didn't see any issue with the way her H was behaving. It took her TIME to sort things out in her head before being able to leave.

The second was to think about how I was thinking when I first came on MN. First reaction was to be :( and appauled at what some women are going through. Then in the second phase after a few months/a year, I though 'but why aren't they leaving him/why are they not listening?'. Then I had a third phase where actually I started to think that my own relationship wasn't that dissimilar :( and I needed to grow a backbone.
And then, after sorting out my own marriage, I feel I can now actually support these women. Because yes, you don't always see what is right in front of you. And it doesn't matter if the OP doesn't seem to listen. The important bit is that you have put a seed in their mind and THAT will help them get a better understanding of what is going on. And they will leave. Maybe just just right now because you have told them to do so. But in 6 month, in a year. You need to accept that you can only start to help them where they are and to show them a way out. But you can't make them. But having that road laid out in front of them will help them immensely when they are finally` ready to move on/to be more assertive.

I mean, it's great that you have never ever found yourself in that situation. I would probably have said the same thing when I was 30yo. And then life got in the way ....

[LazyLouLou]

I have responded, cat

Flounces off.... Katie style

[TenForward82]

Fanof, I think you're confusing my post with the OPs. Not sure why that is.

I was the one talking about the friend with the 3 kids. It did take her time. She had some cultural /family issues that prevented her from leaving, and the pregnancies were accidental. I don't think anyone is doing things the right way, but when you get a whole bunch of people saying LTB and they defend him or stonewall, it's frustrating. I fully appreciate it's not always simple though.