Do happy relationships actually exist???

[Pinkorchid23]

Long term user here. Just overwhelmed and really swamped down with the vast amount of
"Dh cheating on me with ow"
"Dh messaging work colleague"
"Dh hit me/choked me"
"Dh does nothing around the house"
"Dh says he is unattracted to me"
"Dh doesnt love me/isnt happy anymore"

And to be honest it isnt even the mens appalling horrific behaviour that is the most depressing shocking of it all. Its how many women are out there living these real miserable lives and who are constantly lacking any self worth or allowing it to be belittled by these by men.

Its not just online, in real life all hetero relationships I know are like this including my own parents (now seperated). I try to stay optimistic as I want to prove to myself good love does exist and I have my own relationship. However when ever I go ons mns (alot) sometimes I think whats the point of getting married? That my relationship is doomed to end in an affair/betrayal or abuse. Reading about so many women that swore blind they could trust their "dps" whole heartedly to then ne crushed, homeless and jobless after the man ruins the relationship is so scary to me.

What is the point of it all then? I know no relationship is perfect but some of the things I read on here are criminal and my heart breaks for the user on the other side of the screen.

Yes i know people dont generally tend to post happy things which is why im making this thread. Its gotten so bad I have alot of nightmares on my partner cheating/leaving me.

Please enlighten me as to whether real love and happy endings arent just fairy tales

Yabu - of course happy healthy love/relationship exists

Yanbu - i dont believe in them either

Of course it does!
People don't post on here when everything is good as they tend to be posting for advice.

I'm in a very happy relationship. We've been together 10 years and we're still madly in love.

There are a lot of happy relationships! 14 years with my DH and whilst he does drive me a bit mad sometimes I adore him and he adores me.

It's just people don't tend to start a post with "DH is a wonderful man and I'm so happy" that's all.

You are seeing an unbalanced representation.

Mine is very happy.

Happy people don’t generally start threads on MN.

Many of the unhappy threads are made up.

Have you heard the phrase 'good news doesn't sell newspapers'. Well, I think it's a bit like that. If you're in a good relationship it's not something you'd post about on here. Would you be genuinely interested in others' good fortune? But to read that others have the same shitty issues with feckless/abusive men helps because it feels like 'we're all in this together' Does that make sense?

OP - like you said, no-one posts about happy relationships and when people do on the relationship thread especially, they are often castigated for being 'insensitive'.

All relationships will have the odd problem here and there but that's not to say it's not a happy relationship. I've been with DH for 32 years now and we're still very happy, though of course life sends its challenges.

And as a PP says, people are only going to post on here about their problems and look for advice; no one posts just to say "DP/DH/DW is a great person and we're very happy"

No relationship is going to be perfect but there are plenty where it is nowhere near what you described. But as others have said you wouldn’t be coming on MN to ask for advice for a relationship that doesn’t have issues.

Yes they definitely do. You just don’t hear as much from women who are in healthy, happy relationships with good, decent, hardworking and respectful men (as you’ve already acknowledged).

We’ve been together 15+ years and we’re very happy and still in love and very much enjoying all aspects of a great relationship. Sure we disagree sometimes and have arguments too, and we take turns being quite exasperated with each other at times, but fundamentally we are both absolutely certain that we adore each other. We have had some very difficult circumstances to work through over the time we’ve been together and we know we are lucky to have such a strong marriage.

Don’t let the darkness overwhelm you - look for the light!

30 years together and very happy, why would I post that? Be the shortest thread ever

I left an abusive relationship as a direct result of reading those sorts of threads and absorbing the advice. Then I ended up starting my own thread and got support in leaving him. Fast forward a few years, and I'm in a loving, mutually respectful, kind and wonderful relationship (with a woman, if that makes any difference).

I don't post about my current relationship because there's nothing to say (or it sounds smug!), but without mumsnet I wouldn't be happy now. These threads are powerful learning opportunities for women who have been abused, coerced and gaslit onto believing poor treatment is all they deserve.

I didn’t know what to vote because I feel yabu because like others say, good news doesn’t sell. Imagine if I put a post on here ‘AIBU my fiancé loves me loads and is always nice and kind and does the housework’ I’d be ripped to bits Hahaha.
But also YANBU because I’ve noticed a lot recently that people seem to just sort of put up with each other. At work everyone just moans about their husbands ‘eurgh husband is off again this weekend, that’s him getting in my way’ and everyone will be like ‘aw never I hate it when husband comes home from work’ like I dunno about you but I love it when mines off, we do fun things or even just chill together! And the Facebook posts ‘happy birthday to my darling wife, you piss me off and we hate each other most of the time and you’re the most stubborn cunt ever but we love you’ hmmm

I've been with mine for nearly 10 years and we're still ridiculously, madly in love.

It's like you've said in your post, people don't really post about the happy parts of life on here

Of course they exist. I entirely agree that it is horrifying how many women suffer at the hands of awful partners, but the Relationships board is largely a 'problems page'. People don't post on a problems page about their nice or lovely partners, largely because they don't need to, but also because it sounds like boasting my dh is ace.

I felt the same way when I was a counsellor working with young people. At one point I began to wonder if every child in the world had been sexually abused, then I remembered that I was only seeing a very troubled cross section of the community. It was closer to the truth to think that every child who has been sexually abused will need counselling.

It's the same with MN. We only post when we need help. I might come pn here to say that my husband has been inconsiderate or annoying . I'm not going to post on the 99% days of our 35 years of marriage that he has been lovely. .

My dp and I are very happy, we went on our first date and just knew. We were engaged with in 6 months, we have a dd, he's taken on my ds as his own. Lockdown made us stronger. We are getting married this year and I can't wait!!

When I go out with my friends, they all bitch about their husbands and I sit there quietly, I've nothing to complain about.

It's sad to read/see how unhappy some people, both women and men, are in relationships.

Yes of course they exist! I am living proof, having been happy for 99% of the time in my 25 yr relationship. I figure I deserve it having survived an abusive marriage previously. That fact does mean I overlook silly, irritating things as I know they aren't worth complaining about in the grand scheme of things. No doubt he feels the same. DP worked from home for 2 years following the lockdown, and we got through that happier than ever. We don't have kids to add stress, though!

I do think @CrunchyCarrot has a point about kids. We're really happy 30+ years in, but we don't have children and haven't had to navigate the stress that that can place on even the strongest relationship

We had one big wobble when DD died. But no one was unkind It was just the most unbelievably shocking, unexpected and crushing experience imaginable and we both retreated like wounded animals. I also became disabled a couple of years later and had to give up work. He was wonderful and very supportive.

Apart from that 25 years of being happy. I just waved him off to work and blew him a kiss from the front window he did his usual joke of catching it. DS says we are like a pair of old slippers, Dad is the left and Mum is the right.

We like to do things together and also apart.

Like others have said noone bothers to post the good relationships because generally you don't need advice on them. I also think you get two ends of the scale where you hear people claiming they are perfect and madly in love and want to rip each others clothes off after 30 years. Sometimes that's true but mostly that's a bit fake.

Children did lead to the end of my first marriage but not because of them but because I saw exdh for who he was in all of his passivity, incompetence and spinelessness , it wasn't the dc they just opened my eyes.

Dp and I are happy. No cheating no abuse, no weaponised incompetence. We are two sides of the same coin. Saying that are we after 7 years ripping each others clothes off every 2 seconds like at the beginning?, no of course not. I grumble about him leaving teaspoons on top of the dishwasher and not in it (but given he will happily get the dc up and dressed without being asked because it needs doing it's not a big issue). He moans that I am so clumsy at this point he won't walk past me if I have a knife in my hand in the kitchen because he's afraid I'll drop it on his toe.

Issues come up so we talk and deal with them. I don't need advice because we act like adults. I'm secure in the reality of my relationship and that it's likely to last so I also feel no need to shout to others how happy we are without context.

In all honesty as well, if dp cheated I don't need advice on what to do because he would be gone. So you only hear when people are in desperate times without support networks. And I'm glad there is an online support network for people in that situation but people navigate relationships without drama all of the time , they just have no need to post about it unless they need a support network (no shame in that at all) or its a situation they need help with. So you will only ever see the worst.

Real life as well. When exdh and I split up , we handled it ourselves as adults. Half the people around us didn't know until the ink was dry on the divorce so to speak. No need to talk to others because it was handled.

Find some of the threads where people have shared what they love about their partner or similar, there's a few knocking around - here is a short one but there's been some that ran for pages and pages.

Like you say, nobody comes on here to say "AIBU to still be delighted to see my DH after the work day even though we've been married 10 years?". People post when they want help with something usually, and people in happy relationships don't need that.

I think if you go back further than that, to my great-grandparents' generation, people were (largely, although not always) likely to put up with bad behaviour in relationships - divorce wasn't as frequent. My grandparents' generation maybe more so, but I'd say a good 40% of my friends' grandmothers never worked, so there was still an economic driver for women to stay in shit relationships. My parents' generation, LOTS of people I know are divorced.

And then the last 30 years, the expectation around relationships has changed a bit. Not many women my age (early 30s) would turn a blind eye to a repeatedly philandering husband, not many are unaware of the concepts of emotional abuse or control or gaslighting. Most people now have the means for catching out infidelity via social media or technology more generally where they might not have been aware. Most people get married later than people tended to 50 years ago and therefore it's less "You get married at 20 and that's you for life" and "You marry when you find the right person and if they turn out not to be right, that's okay, you can leave". The idea of relationships has shifted from "You find one person, you go all in, put up with the shit" to "Relationships do not have to be for your entire life and you (in theory) have the agency and economic capacity and sociocultural approval to leave one that is bad".

I think that's a good thing - I'd rather MN be full of women realising they've been treated badly and leaving than thinking it was normal and staying. It means that the relationships that do stay the course are (and I'm not a statistician so please don't quote me) more likely on balance to be happier than they perhaps would have been for my great-grandparents' generation.

And those relationships are the ones you won't see much of, but they do exist, I promise.

They do exist! I don't know of many but they do the happiest couple I can think of are childfree and it's obvious why that would be. Many relationships are trundling along happily until children come along and the pressures that bring highlight problems that would have otherwise gone under the radar.

However I can think of two other couples with three and four DC respectively who are very happy, solid and in love after many years together.

You're right in thinking it's rare though. In my experience it really is unusual!

I’ve been with DP 17 years and we are very happy and deeply in love.

I would say our secret is that he is genuinely my best friend.

I went to a wedding today.

I’m surrounded by lovely men in my life. But I can’t even tell you how much this wedding reinforced my belief that most men are good.

I’m not going to go into the details, but it was so nice.

All the men in my life are dedicated Dads. Great husbands, amazing friends. Good men.

I’m more convinced of it than ever.

Sorry - not at the men in my life.

My DB and his husband aren’t Dads. But they’re both amazing, lovely men. Role models for my kids.

Been with my husband for 22 years, he's my best friend. My brother and his wife been together 30 years, my mum and dad 50 years together when my mum passed.

Don't give up hope lots of happy relationships out there.