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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To think there's nothing wrong with leaving your wife and kids

305 replies

Fuzzybuzzybeebee · 27/04/2017 13:54

As long as you support your children and continue to be an active part of their lives.

I'm not talking about men or women who have affairs and leave their partners after cheating on them.

What I mean is a man or woman, who has fallen out of love with their partner or spouse and leaves them. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I actually think it's more cruel to stay with someone you don't love anymore.

My cousin's husband has left her and they have a 1 year and 3 year old. Everyone is saying he's the devil incarnate. I just don't feel that way. He obviously stopped loving her, so had to leave her.

He is still a good Dad to his children and supports both of them and she has said this.

I left my Sons Dad when my son was a toddler. I tried very very hard to stay together but I didn't love him and couldn't stay. I don't think that makes me evil.

You should try and make a relationship work. You should try everything. But when you truly stop loving someone, the right thing to do is leave. And that doesn't make you a bad person as long as you support your children.

AIBU?

OP posts:
ElisavetaFartsonira · 28/04/2017 08:03

Motherinferior the thing is, that's the reality for some of us. DH and I are a few years short of 20 yet, but as we got together quite young we've clocked in more years than many parents of small children. But actually, I do feel the way you describe most of the time and generally did even when we had babies, the few weeks postpartum aside. We do look forward to seeing each other all day, we are still very much in love, and that's the way it's been for us as parents. Just more knackered, haggard and flabby versions of our pre-child relationship!

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go on a thread where people were struggling or whatever and be like, well we still love each other loads so I dunno what your problem is. But equally, I don't think people are doing something wrong or unhelpful by not concealing our reality. You seem to be implying that it would be better to stay silent, or maybe I have misunderstood.

motherinferior · 28/04/2017 08:20

My point is that there is a weird split between the 'stick it out whatever happens' feeling on this thread and the 'oh we are so blissful' feeling on a lot of others.

I suspect the reality for most of us is somewhere in between.

JacquesHammer · 28/04/2017 08:27

Running two households and not sharing domestic tasks means parents who separate usually have less time for their children

I don't think it has to. I work for myself from home. As does ex-H. Our contact split is around 60/40. How I work it is that I work massively long days on the days she is with ex-H meaning I can work a condensed day on days when I collect her from school.

I ensure that all household chores and all my work is done so that from 3.30 every day and all the weekend she is with me (we work on an alternate basis) every moment of my time is available to her. we are both at every school play/match/production/event/parent's evening (bar the odd one where ExH is travelling with work).

It was massively important to me that DD and I were financially stable and that I was able to spend 100% of my non-work time as free time with her.

JacquesHammer · 28/04/2017 08:28

I don't have too much sympathy for the 'not in love' position, to be honest. My love for my child comes first

As did ours. Which is why we ended our relationship before there was any chance of it being toxic or resentful or bitter.

Laiste · 28/04/2017 08:35

I agree mother. I also notice that a lot of 'you've made your bed you should lie in it' people are either bitter because they're unhappy themselves or the total opposite - lucky enough to have continued to have very happy marriages as the years have gone on and have no clue what it's like to feel your life just ticking away trapped in a mess of a place (but not necessarily dangerous place) - stay and rot or leave and all hell breaks loose and be public enemy no.1.

I've been on both sides - had the shite marriage (15 years of it) and how i've had the blissful relationship. DH and i do still hold hands in public, crave each other's company, gaze into each others eyes ect after 12 years together. Meeting a life partner who makes you feel like that is pure luck, not an achievement to be smug about at all. Yes, a good relationship takes work - but you can't polish a turd.

nooka · 28/04/2017 08:35

We worked things like that too JacquesHammer. Half the week single, half the week single parent. I was at my most productive at work too, as I hated the nights when my children were with dh so worked long hours then and then did short days when I had them, and we had a lot of fun then. I've wondered a bit subsequently whether as they got older whether they would have got some odd ideas from never seeing/doing any housework as we did all that on our non child weekend days.

ExtraPineappleExtraHam · 28/04/2017 08:55

Going back to an earlier point, the problem with 'Jack and Olivia' is that no parent ever imagine that they will end up treating their children that way. Someone in my dp's family doesn't even put his dd from a previous marriage on his Christmas card. I wonder if he ever imagined that he would do that when he first looked at her in hospital the day she was born. Also his wife says 'it will be the three of us' not mentioning his daughter.

motherinferior · 28/04/2017 09:02

I have a decent relationship. Sometimes I am very fed up. Sometimes I'm pretty happy. If I start being fed up all the time, I shall reconsider my options. And that would also depend on whether or not I still had kids at home.

befuddledgardener · 28/04/2017 09:06

He's probably left her at the hardest life stage. A time where partners need to pull together. Having baby and a toddler isn't easy.

befuddledgardener · 28/04/2017 09:07

If he's taking on a good amount of the care, that's positive

Jellymuffin · 28/04/2017 09:29

I always think it's funny you don't fall out of 'friendship' with friends but can fall out of love and that's that. My husband and I are bloody good friends and sometimes, just sometimes, when things are really tough that's all we are. I do agree that romantic love ebbs and flows depending on external factors (time, work, money, stress, kids) we've been together nearly 20 years and it does always come back. I think it is very rare someone leaves for no reason, it's usually another person or the idea of another life different to the one they have. People need to stick at it and play the long game.

BertrandRussell · 28/04/2017 09:31

And from long observation, I would always be sceptical of any man who said he did 40% of the domestic work/childcare. Even within a functioning relationship. Prepared to be convinced, of course, and I know it does happen. But just not as often as the men involved claim..........

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 28/04/2017 09:31

I always think it's funny you don't fall out of 'friendship' with friends

Of course people do. Friendships drift apart all the time.

floraeasy · 28/04/2017 09:59

Well, as I've already said, I think a lot depends on how the parents will stick it out. When two people aren't really in love or a team anymore, will they be able to play happy families well enough to fool the children? My parents certainly weren't fooling us.

My mum initiated divorce proceedings the minute the youngest of us hit sixteen.

I used to hear my mum saying during rows that she couldn't wait until the youngest was old enough and could leave Shock. Made us all feel pretty shit, TBH - like we ruined her life by making her do this.

If only my parents had been more emotionally honest with each other. They also set us a terrible example, I think. I've always found it difficult to get out of bad relationships. I feel I have to "earn" the right to leave. I can't just leave because I am unhappy and have the wrong guy.

floraeasy · 28/04/2017 09:59

and SHE (Mum) could leave, I meant to say.

histinyhandsarefrozen · 28/04/2017 10:00

I always think it's funny you don't fall out of 'friendship' with friends but can fall out of love

Really?

scaryteacher · 28/04/2017 10:19

This is happening in my family atm. The dh called time on an almost thirty year old marriage out of the blue, leaving his dw in shock, and having to start from scratch at 52. The kids are both adults, but even so, it will become bitter when it comes to finances.

C0RAL · 28/04/2017 11:06

If walking out on your partner and young children is such a reasonable thing to do, why do we judge women who do it ?

If its ok for a father to leave his wife to do 95% of the parenting, why isn't it ok for a mother to do the same ?

Headofthehive55 · 28/04/2017 11:10

Not everyone can work a condensed day though. In my case I'd have to leave work altogether (because if the way our jobs mesh in terms of childcare.)
I think jaques is unusual, I've certainly not seen it work like that. (I have seen it claimed to work like that but on the quiet the children were unhappy.)

Haliez13 · 28/04/2017 11:17

My PiLs decided to "make it work for the kids".

Their marriage has always been a horror show of epic proportions and both their kids have suffered MH problems and said they wished their parents would just split up, instead of FiL drunkenly confiding in teenage DH how MiL getting pregnant had ruined his life, and MiL gobbling antidepressants in secret. It's also absolutely fucked up both kids notions of relationships and marriage, and DH has had to spend years in therapy unpicking it all.

I really don't think miserable marriages are good for anyone.

Underthemoonlight · 28/04/2017 11:23

If walking out on your partner and young children is such a reasonable thing to do, why do we judge women who do it ?

If its ok for a father to leave his wife to do 95% of the parenting, why isn't it ok for a mother to do the same ?

^ this with bells on.

Personally I would not had a child with ex had I known after year he would leave for someone else. Im a believer that when you have children your in it for the long haul through ups and down unless there's abuse within the relationship

AmeliaLion · 28/04/2017 12:10

I personally don't agree with the "stay together for the sake of the children" argument, nor do I agree that nrps should do nothing(or very little) for their DC. But I do worry about children who have their lives split between two houses. Not so much for young children, but for teenagers who often really need stability and consistency to thrive. Again, for young children the parents do most of the organisational stuff, but by the teenage years they are expected to be more independent. I would never want to live part week at one house then part at another - the extra amount or organisation that would require would make my life significantly harder. Yet this is expected of many teenagers.

JacquesHammer · 28/04/2017 12:18

Head I basically had to set up on my own to work with the way our careers worked together.

Obviously you've never seen it. You'll have to take my word for it though that all 3 of us are far, far happier and my daughter most of all. Pretty much the aim of parenting I think

floraeasy · 28/04/2017 12:54

for teenagers who often really need stability and consistency to thrive

Our parents stayed together and we had neither of those things Sad. It's affected us all very badly. There was no outright abuse. Just two people (I think my mum has a lot of narc traits) who didn't get on and didn't love each other enough. We were witnesses to their battleground.

TheLuminaries · 28/04/2017 12:55

Jacquea it will be interesting what your child thinks when she is a teenager. I hear mums telling me how their kids are happier post divorce, but the kids sure don't look it to someone who isn't invested in believing it is all ok.

I know the crap my mum would have spouted about it being better for the kids, and we were quite happy, everything was wonderful. I don't believe it unless the child says it when they are old enough to have a real voice of their own. Little ones have very strong survival instincts and need to please their all powerful providers.

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