When people say LTB...

[Cheeeeislifenow]

I feel like sometimes on mumsnet people say this as if it's the easiest thing in the world forget the emotional side of it including co dependendence, abusive behaviour or "love".
The practicalities are the hard bit, especially when you have children, even more if you have children with additional needs even more if you have no family of your own to support you, if I were to "LTB" I would be homeless, not just me but my kids too, benefits take ages to come through and the rental market is a non existent, crippling expensive shambles.
AIBU to think there are lots of couple living together who cannot separate due to financial and practical reasons....
Or am I kidding myself and other people do it

I'm not remotely worried about loving, healthy, happy marriages being broken up by Mumsnet. It simply doesn't happen. But some women have found it gives them the strength to leave when they need to

Absolutely this!

Absolutely. While a lot of threads have a LTB. It dies seem there's an undertone of it being as easy as taking the bins out.

It really is not easy (from experience!) Will he actually leave if you ask him? If not, how can you force him? If he won't, where will you go? Will you take the children? Is there room there? Can you afford the rent/mortgage alone? Do you have money for a divorce? Solicitors fees? What if you cant agree? Who gets the house? Can you afford to buy him out? Will the kids hate you? Can you afford to start over? Is it really THAT bad? Do you want to do this? Etc etc etc. It's awful 😖

Totally agree.

From what little I know, the people who regularly say ltb havent actually done it themselves.

People say it too easily on here but this is the U.K. and of course there’s a way

@EarringsandLipstick and @vipersnest1 right there with you!

It's always possible to do if it's necessary as you can always make it work, but it's more difficult with children not least because it can devastate them and that's hard to do.

I think there are far more women staying in shit relationships with shit fathers for fear of breaking up the family than there are wonderful husbands and fathers being dumped and lives uprooted because women are just really unreasonable and insensitive.

Yes sometimes LTB is said in a hyperbolic way and sometimes its inappropriate.

But you have to remember the default position is always to stay, tough it out, "work on it" (which I think is largely code for "put up with even more shit"). Society and economics are always screaming at women to stay put. Everything we learn from a young age tells us we're better off in a relationship. That we should move heaven and earth to paper over the cracks, put up and shut up, however bad it is.

LTB is powerful because it often comes from women who have been in abusive or dysfunctional relationships themselves and can spot the signs and read between the lines.

Quite often posters come on here and post something based on an apparently trivial incident and then when questioned a whole narrative unspools which makes it clear that the poster has been tolerating an unsatisfactory relationship for years but has closed her mind off to the potential for leaving. Posters like this sometimes just need permission to allow themselves to consider the possibility of LTB when the whole of society is telling them its off-limits.

No one thinks it will be easy to LTB when you are married with children and particularly if you are not working. It's always difficult. It quite often takes months or years of planning. But it's never impossible if its what you really want to do.

Most women won't actually act on advice to LTB for the reasons you've cited. No one will leave an otherwise happy relationship because a stranger on the internet has told her to do so. But if it helps a few who have struggled for years to clear their minds and focus on what's really important, so much the better.