to wonder if anyone has actually Left The Bastard after MN said so, and regretted it?

[JeanneDeMontbaston]

I keep seeing people say that 'LTB' is terrible advice. I know it puts people's backs up, especially when the OP is clearly not in a place to hear anything so blunt, or has a complicated situation that means she clearly can't just dash out of the door.

But I'm confused by the criticisms. Has anyone actually left their partner because other people (not necessarily just MN) said so? And if so, did you regret it?

I admit I'm biased, because MN did tell me repeatedly and firmly to leave my ex - who wasn't a bastard at all, but absolutely wasn't right for me and did have faults I shouldn't have had to put up with. And it was the right thing.

But I wonder, are there people who really do feel they were pressured into leaving a generally good relationship because of trivial faults? Or AIBU to think this is really pretty rare?

I cannot stress strongly enough that I am NOT against posts which urge women to leave.

I am against posts that bully, harangue, guilt-trip, scoff, jeer and cast doubt on the authenticity of posts.

I don't like these anyway but when you're dealing with domestic abuse, they are harmful in the extreme and playing right into the abusers hands. It's a horrible thing to do.

Exactly, Doit.

And I hate the "OP has no intention of leaving" posts.

It took me 5 years from that seed of permission being sown for me to gtf out.

Yes I agree. It takes a while to change your mindset. You don't just go "oh yes, good idea I never thought of that!" It's a whole turnaround in your thinking. Never mind the practicalities

I agree with notdavidtennant, altho I've never said there's an ow, I can pretty much pinpoint the posts where there definitely is someone else.

I don't think there's anything wrong with posters pointing out the possibility, usually when the op posts and is utterly bewildered and going out of her mind blaming herself for her partner walking out on her.

It's a complete mindfuck and abusive on the ex partners part. The possibility of an ow offers posters some insight to why their partners seen now suddenly re-writing history and stops OP's blaming themselves for something that is not in their control.

I've also never met anyone without mental health problems who has walked out on a happy marriage without their being someone else.

Fuzzywuzzy - the person who is left thinking it was a happy relationship does not mean that it was experienced as that by the person who walked out. I suspect also that that is the case with many affairs - that one person thinks things are OK, but the other is unhappy and thats why they form another relationship.

That's fine purple, but the person being left deserves to know the truth instead of having history re-written. Their partners found someone else and usually the leaving partner doesn't tell them that just piles on a lot of crap which causes a lot of harm to the partner being left.

Being given a perspective that the leaving partner isn't behaving well and possible reasons does help the person being left come to terms with it better than being left by what they thought was a loving partner who has had a complete personality transplant.

I'm sure people who have affairs have a myriad of justifications/reasons for it.

I possibly confused what I was trying to say by bringing affairs into the second sentence - even without an affair its possible for one person to think that they are in a great relationship and the other to be miserable - so while the person who is left may think that a perfectly good relationship was abandoned, the one doing the leaving may have a totally different perspective.