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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:
Pinkheart5915 · 27/04/2017 15:32

I think if a couple are no longer happy together then they are better splitting. If 1 member of the couple has fallen out of love of course they are better splitting.
Nobody male or female should have to stay in a relationship they do not want to be in.

Its perfectly possible to be apart and both still be good parents

GoatsFeet · 27/04/2017 15:34

because if they are totally honest, they are NOT simply leaving their partner - they are leaving the whole-of-life-situation

This is what I've observed in these sorts of situations.

Laiste · 27/04/2017 15:35

I hesitate to say i fell out of love with XH and left him because i was never in it in the first place. Anyway to cut a 15 year story short i left him and 'took the kids along with me'. They were 8, 10 and 13.

The idea was that we'd split time with the DCs 50/50. I only moved round the corner and he stayed in the family home, the idea being that the DCs would have 2 homes - their old one with dad and a new one with me. It didn't work out that way. He couldn't be arsed do what's needed to look after the DCs on his own so within less than 2 weeks the 50/50 thing had vanished and they were with me full time. I was happy, they were happy. 10 years on he barely knows them any more as he continued to not be arsed for more than one visit every few weeks.

So in my case the woman left the marriage so the man drifted away from his kids.

Widehorizen · 27/04/2017 15:38

Nobody male or female should have to stay in a relationship they do not want to be in

That is one way of looking at it, but another way would be to see it as having made one's bed and therefore having to lie in it.

As a parent, I'd willingly sacrifice my own happiness for the benefit of my DCs.

Having DCs is (well, IMO should be) a lifelong commitment to living as a family unit.

Valentine2 · 27/04/2017 15:40

Are you planning to set it up with him op? Read all of the warnings in this thread. It's rarely as simple as falling out of love. It's nearly always about the boring stuff that we generally don't think about until marriage and kids.

Iamastonished · 27/04/2017 15:53

“He obviously stopped loving her, so had to leave her.”

No, he didn’t have to leave her. He chose to leave her. I’m glad you aren’t my cousin. A little bit more empathy wouldn’t go amiss.

“But simply because someone is feeling "Meh" it's not working for me is not admirable.

I agree skerrywind

ShotsFired · 27/04/2017 15:56

@Widehorizen As a parent, I'd willingly sacrifice my own happiness for the benefit of my DCs.

You know that is just going to make your kids feel like crap [most likely like it is their fault] for making you stay somewhere you are patently unhappy? With the best will in the world you won't be able to hide it.

Wouldn't your kids (and you!) rather you were happy instead of a miserable martyr?

RoboticSealpup · 27/04/2017 15:58

I have absolutely no romantic attraction to my sons dad and never could.

That's fair enough of you didn't plan to have children with him, or you really wanted a child so you 'made do' with a man who was not really right. But I don't understand how someone can go from wanting to be legally, economically and socially tied to someone "forever" by getting married and having a family together - to suddenly, terminally just "falling out of love" with them. It seems to be like they must have chosen badly or never been in love in the first place. Love doesn't just disappear, not unless something horrible happens or someone behaves very badly. At least not if people communicate with each other. Or so I'd like to think...

Widehorizen · 27/04/2017 15:59

Nice Strawman there shots Smile

MyBeautifulSquid · 27/04/2017 16:00

yanbu

KayTee87 · 27/04/2017 16:00

Personally I think if the only factor is falling out of love, no abuse, still respect and like each other etc. Then I think it is unreasonable to split up a family over that.
Children from parents who are together do better in life. However if there was shouting, abuse, disrespect then it's better to leave of course.

RomanticWalksToTheFridge · 27/04/2017 16:03

I also think the idea of 'falling out of love' naturally means the destruction of a family unit to be an odd one.

I think in LTR you fall in and out of love all the time. But if the basis of the LTR is a friendship and respect then it makes no sense to put a nuclear bomb into the middle of the relationship just because you have 'fallen out of' sexual/romantic love. I have been with DH for 15 years. We were insanely in love, then DS was born and I suffered shocking PND and DH was quite frankly a useless waste of space for about 4 years. I guess it might have been his version of PND- he was hopeless as a father and as a husband. I won't go int details. DS is 7 now and we are back in love, and are stupidly soppy and romantic and pathetic just as we were in the beginning. So I guess what I am trying to say badly and clumsily is that being 'in love' in the romantic sexual sense, for us ebbs and flows. Our society prioritises romantic and sexual love, when actually a family unit - and a marriage- is bound together by all sorts of love.

RomanticWalksToTheFridge · 27/04/2017 16:04

....but obviously- if a couple are not happy, if there is abuse, if the act of trying to stay together is destructive in some way, then better- always better- to split.

HeadsDownThumbsUpEveryone · 27/04/2017 16:06

KayTee87 - You say it's not a great reason alone but actually if it was your child can you honestly say you would be happy at them staying in a loveless marriage? All it does is show the children involved that there is nothing else to aspire to, that settling and making do is the best your parents think they can do. It might not appear as bad as shouting but trust me it can and does affect a child just as badly.

RyanStartedTheFire · 27/04/2017 16:07

What about the men that have their children taken by the women that leave? Some men are devastated to have their children taken away.

MyBeautifulSquid · 27/04/2017 16:08

also if my dh fell out of love with me I would not want him to stay (as hard as it would be)...who would want to be with someone who didn't love them? Confused

Widehorizen · 27/04/2017 16:09

Heads I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of what marriage is.

Its not all hearts and flowers, I hope to raise my DCs to be aware of this.

I17neednumbers · 27/04/2017 16:11

"Wouldn't your kids (and you!) rather you were happy instead of a miserable martyr?"

That is sometimes not the true dichotomy though. Sometimes one spouse leaving makes the 'left' spouse extremely miserable, depressed even. So the short/medium term outcome for dc may not be two happy parents living apart - they may be living with one unhappy dparent, and missing the other one terribly. And it may well feel to the dc as though that dparent has indeed left them - however much the dparent says s/he hasn't, and sees them eow, as a matter of physical fact s/he has left their home.

Oblomov17 · 27/04/2017 16:11

Why were you having kids with someone that you had no romantic interest in?

Headofthehive55 · 27/04/2017 16:15

I think of my children's happiness too before mine.
I really don't understand the ability to leave your children. And if you aren't living day to day in the same house you have left your children.

I had my children with the full knowledge that I will be there for them- it's a commitment - ditto husband.

Batgirlspants · 27/04/2017 16:15

Your cousins husband sounds a cunt to be honest op and fancies a single life with part time responsibilities as small kids are too hard for him to cope with. Man child bastard.

I would be ashamed if my lads acted like this.

I17neednumbers · 27/04/2017 16:16

"also if my dh fell out of love with me I would not want him to stay (as hard as it would be)...who would want to be with someone who didn't love them?"

Yes I think that would be very difficult. Though depending on the relationship I could see that in some cases I would prefer that than splitting up the dcs' family. But I think it totally depends on circumstances - in some circs (other man/woman etc) it could be unbearable. On the other hand some dc find it unbearable when their dparents split up - but they can't stop it happening.

RomanticWalksToTheFridge · 27/04/2017 16:17

That's a good question Oblomov8 and is the Op looking at it through a simplistic prism of where she is emotionally now?

I am DH's second wife. He always says he 'never loved' his first wife (they were married not quite 9 months, she ran off with a family member, it was quite the scandal). Of course he loved her- he wanted to marry her. He was destroyed when she cheated on him.

RainbowPastel · 27/04/2017 16:18

Yabu.I have two close family members going through this currently. They have two children. One chose to leave the other person still loves them. It has ripped the whole family apart. The partner who was left is suicidal. Their parents are petrified they will take their own life. The children don't know if they are coming or going staying here there and everywhere. It's not as simple as your OP and is a very selfish thing to do.

HopelesslydevotedtoGu · 27/04/2017 16:24

My marriage is about loyalty, respect, friendship, commitment, understanding and, yes, love for each other and for our children.

If my husband didn't respect me anymore, or was disloyal to me, or showed lack of commitment to our family, then yes I'd think about our marriage and what our children will learn from it.

But if I wasn't "in love" anymore.... We made children together, he helped me through pregnancy and labour and the baby years, we have so much shared together, our lives are intertwined, frankly it's irrelevant whether or not I get butterflies in my tummy or want to shag him or gaze into his eyes or whatever people interpret love as.