to ask my fellow mumsnetters to stop saying 'I would have left'. **trigger warning - domestic violence. Warning added by MNHQ**

[myoriginal3]

or 'Id have left after the first slap'.

Domestic violence is insipid. You don't fucking know what you would do until it happens to you.

Every time I read it and I consider myself quite strong, I feel like I'm a weaker female.

You WOULDN'T fucking leave at the first slap. Statistics state that you wouldn't. So stop talking about something that you can't imagine.

" If your abuse wasn't horrific and you left immediately, yet you are banging on about how hard it was, what the fuck are you on about?"

And again more dismissive attitudes. I never said that my abuse wasn't horrific, nor did I say other people's abuse wasn't horrific. It is you saying this.

"We have to stick together and we have to have 100% respect for each others experiences, everyone experiences domestic violence differently."

Exactly. So the dismissive attitudes need to be dropped - whether they are aimed at women who've suffered abuse and left after the first physical incident or women who haven't suffered a physical incident yet.

Soyamilkisniceintea:

How mature.

I rarely report threads or posts. I think the OP has been walking a fine line throughout and for me she just went over it.

I think most women are scared to be alone, especially with children.

I think many women are putting up with a lot more than they should because of this fear. A long time before the first slap many women put up with a whole heap of emotional abuse and should leave at the first signs of their partner being unkind. I don't think you can change a man, but you can change living with him.

I would never put up with any of the rubbish my friends accept in their relationships. None of them are physically abused but none of them are treated well.

I think women in general need to get over their fear of being alone.

YANBU some of the strongest women I know have been affected by DV and they didn't leave at the first slap and like you say the statistics show that it isn't as simple as just leaving at the first instance. Same with the cries of LTB which are often hysterical.

Equally the comments on what a poster would have done in the OPs position at a time far in the past is unhelpful at best and superiority and contempt at worst.

Just report it then Trifle. I did. You don't need to SAY 'reported.'

What's the Julius Caesar reference OP?

Please can someone explain the link between Julius Ceasar and Domestic violence?

Beware the ides of March?

Soyamilkisniceintea

I don't NEED to say anything. I will say what I want, provided I am sticking to posting guidelines (and I am). You have a real issue with that idea, don't you?

I think women in general need to get over their fear of being alone.

That really isn't why women stay in abusive relationships.

I notice society always places the onus on the woman to do something, not on the abusive fuckwits to sort themselves out. I have seen abusive men be such good actors that they manage to turn the woman's own family members against her and believe his side of things.

'It is you who say it'

Julius Caeser.

User415 'It is you saying this'

So am I. You have a real issue with that idea too, don't you? :)

So it's okay for YOU to hector and pester and be unpleasant but when someone does it back, apparently it's not that they think you're goading and bullying, it's that they have 'issues.'

Yeah. Course.

Carry on announcing 'reported' sure. But it is the annoying kid who shouts 'telling!' Mature ones just quietly let a teacher know there might be a problem.

Don't remember Julius Caesar being quoted as saying that OP.

homity I am unsure if others have found this, but I don't think abusive fuckwits sort themselves out most of the time - I think they are likely to keep returning to those patterns of behaviour. I would love to know if there were statistics that showed how succesful the courses were for men who went on them were.

Read yer bible Soya

Soyamilkisniceintea

I think you can say what you like however self-satisfied

Ah, I was thinking the Shakespeare play.

There are many posters who bestride the threads like a Colossus, mind

user absolutely, they don't. But my point is society keeps churning out more and more of them - clearly we are never going to solve the issue if we don't look at the root cause. Part of which involves not having short sighted and dismissive attitudes to women in abusive relationships.