AIBU to wonder why the response of "LTB" so often?

[LTBorBLT]

This is a genuine question, sorry if it comes off as goady. I've NCed as well in case this gets taken the wrong way!

In most threads I see relating to relationships, a lot of problems are met with a general "LTB" response. I'm not talking about abuse or the relationship being completely dead in the water thing as obviously that's reasonable to consider leaving, I mean more along the lines of someone's husband being overweight or having a different sex drive for example (using husband as a generalisation though of course could be wife / partner etc etc).

I just wonder if people would actually leave their partners over this or advocate for other people to do it, or is it just an easy response to fire out? Legitimately curious, because unless there's abuse or serious issues I'm rarely keen to recommend "LTB" personally.

I think this is a great thread and a really useful read for anyone wondering why there is so much 'LTB-ing' in MN.

Clearly there are a lot of posters who just write it on a thread to feel clever as someone else has already put it; but over the many years I've seen some incredible insightful posters with spideysenses reading situations and as threads progress, it becomes clear that this small thing the OP is posting is actually the only thing she can 'allow' herself to legitimately 'complain' about because she is being gaslighted in the entire rest of her life.

Or when it's the beginning of a relationship and the first red flags arise - I've seen amazing posters on here enlightening women about their boyfriend's behaviour and stopping those awful relationship s before they are in too deep.

We just don't say/ask these things in real life. I've only said LTB in real life to one person: appallingly abusive relationship where he got my friend (his wife) to lie to the police about his whereabouts because his mistress had accused him of harassment!! She wasn't able to leave and I was only able to speak frankly because I live 200 miles away and I'm not part of her circle locally. I didn't know anything about how abuse goes and how many times a woman tries to leave , and how to support someone then. Eventually she got out but still believes nobody could love her.

Mumsnet has shown me how often it happens, but also how we women can help each other; doggedly and relentlessly and with honesty from experience

I've also seen a lot of threads on here by women in fairly recent relationships who are agonising over whether their reason for considering breaking up with their partner is 'an acceptable reason'. As though they need some kind of cast-iron reason which they couldn't be criticised for.

Any reason is an acceptable reason. Even the most trivial reason. Or no reason at all! These women don't owe a man a relationship. I can't imagine men agonising about that so much.

And that's the same mindset as the one that appears in the LTB threads about marriages. Yes, a marriage is more difficult to consider leaving, and will have an impact on children etc. But you only have one life. Don't resign yourself to spending it with someone who's even 'mostly ok I guess'.

[quote lazylinguist]**@lazylinguist Do you consider me to have these things based on what I've said?

I honestly have no idea. I expect we have different levels of bar/tolerance/boundaries, given what we've both said on the thread, but it's not absolutely clear how wide that difference is from the examples you've given.

I admit that my attitude is probably quite far towards the other extreme, in that even as a very young woman, almost anything was enough to put me off dating someone. I'm 49 and I only ever had 2 boyfriends (including dh), and not for lack of being asked. Plenty of sexual partners, but only 2 relationships. If I found myself single now, I would not seek another relationship - the odds of finding a man I would be totally happy with are too small!

The music thread linked above is a good example of what appears to be a minor issue. But the OP says they argue day-in day-out about it. The dh blares music out all the time and clearly has no intention of taking any notice of his wife's distress about it. That says a lot about his attitude as a partner.[/quote]
exactly. In the music thread, there is somethign 'off' in that relationship, obvious from the OP.
There is something not right in the dh attitude.

So I am not surprised at all at the LTB.

I think some people are much more tuned in the that 'off' scent than others

I guess I just wonder why it kind of seems like the default position. I don't think I'd leave my DH for getting fat or having sex problems or being a bit rude / grumpy once in a while

So this is a shit ton of space away from what women are told to LTB for....

Sex issues - he could be pressuring her for sex - coercion is abusive.

Rude - name calling, criticism, constant sarcasm, put downs = again, all abusive behaviours.

Grumpy - well aren't we all sometimes? But it's the regularity of this. No one should stay with someone who constantly finds fault in every days things, and doesn't have a good thing to say about anyone/thing!

I am in Australia, and when I was at my local police office, the police officer told me that women experience around 26 separate events of abuse/unreasonable behaviour before telling someone about it.

Consider that. Women are not coming on here for advice after 1 single event of problematic behaviour. Once you get to the point that you realise something isn't right, and you have to have to ask about it on a platform such as this, it probably is time to at least seriously consider LTB.

@MootingMirror

In my experience of life, women treat men worse than men treat women. Women get away with more because we're physically weaker and so are the assumed victims. Men are shamed if they're the victims of abuse and men are taught to obey their wife's wishes or they're abusive. Manipulation, cheating and coercion are very common amongst women.

Well, pretty much the entirety of human recorded history disagrees with your 'experience of life'.

[quote LTBorBLT]@aneleanor I think divorce is often a costly option particularly when kids are involved, and so it should be genuinely felt by at least one party in a marriage rather than "this action was a bit shit, MN says it's divorce worthy so now I'm confused about if you're a bit shit too."

@ThistleWitch Oh my bad, never saw those threads before! Still, always fun having a bit of a whinge ;)[/quote]
The thing is, you are "having fun, having a bit of a whinge" about something that is very delicate & serious and your general tone on this thread is rather dismissive.

I have rarely seen a LTB that is unwarranted.

I do see people telling OPs who are clearly being abused to "be more stern/communicate with him/lay back and think of England/you made your bed/it's not that bad" which I will argue against.

No one is going to leave on the say so of an internet forum. If they leave after the replies here it is because they KNOW it isn't right, and posters on here have made them see it's possible, and that they can leave if they need/want to.

I'd rather say LTB and be laughed at for getting it wrong, than be passive and another woman ends up seriously hurt/dead.

I think it's too easy to look at the imperfections in other people's relationships and think 'well I wouldn't put up with THAT!'

But when people post on MumsNet, they tend to post only a snapshot of a current situation. So, partner has been lazy round the house over lockdown despite being at home, so keyworker wife has to come home and cook the dinner.. put on it's own, it sounds awful, and of course the wife has posted because she feels like she's at the end of her tether coming home after a hard day working with covid patients only to find she has to cook the dinner.

But what she hasn't put is how amazing he is with the kids, how he's taken on the school runs, how he holds her at night and says everything will be okay, how he keeps up with the gardening and the DIY in the house .. and how he's struggling with low mood after losing his job at the start of the lockdown.

Okay, that's not a real situation, but what I mean is that on the face of what people post, it's all too easy to say LTB, but that's not the full picture. My partner is an absolute pain in the arse sometimes. We argue. I end up doing more than what I think is my fair share round the house. But at other times - what I think constitutes the vast majority - we're laughing, joking, shopping together, watching films together, making plans for our business together, and it's all good. But if I was posting on here, I'd just post about how he does nothing round the house, none of the good stuff.

You can't understand a relationship that you're not in, ever. Of course there are some cut and dry cases like in abusive relationships, but on the whole there are two sides to every story, and most of the time the bad parts of a relationship are actually outweighed by the good - or we wouldn't be in them!

@MootingMirror

In my experience of life, women treat men worse than men treat women. Women get away with more because we're physically weaker and so are the assumed victims. Men are shamed if they're the victims of abuse and men are taught to obey their wife's wishes or they're abusive. Manipulation, cheating and coercion are very common amongst women.

There is always one.