To think LTB is not as simple...

[JustAnotherHappyFatty]

as it is often made out to be on here?
Just reading yet another thread with a completely useless husband and predictably most of the comments are along the lines of 'just LTB' and 'he will have to pay maintenance and have the kids 50/50 so you will get a rest'.
Firstly, how does anyone on here know how much maintenance the OP would be entitled to? In my case, taking into account my husbands earnings I would receive about £10pw....I couldn't feed the dogs with that amount! Other predictable comments include things like 'don't worry, you are entitled to half the equity in the house and his pension '. Great, we have about 20K in the house if we are lucky and he has less than 10K in a pension, I couldn't buy another property on my own and would soon burn through the equity trying to keep up with the extortionate rent on the three bed properties I would require to house my kids.
Secondly, why do people assume 'he will have to have the kids'. Plenty of Ex husbands don't have their kids overnight, never mind genuinely 50/50! As far as I am aware there is no way to force them to parent their children in the event of a separation from their mother, a lot of posters assume these men want to parent their children but if they are not doing it in the relative comfort of the marital home they are certainly not going to suddenly step up and do it alone.
AIBU to think that whilst posters mean well that their opinions come from a place of huge privilege (large amounts of equity in their property, high earning husbands with traceable funds from which they can take CM and reasonable husbands that would actually want to see their children in the event of separation)?
I don't want to leave my DH but I am acutely aware that I would be fucked if I did!

Personally I think people on here are far to quick to suggest leaving their husbands or DP... Relationships aren't supposed to be easy, they're not always a walk in the pack, but they are worth trying to save wherever possible. I feel like the sanctity/special-ness of marriage is lost these days.

I agree I think there’s often a lot of advice given on here that could be really damaging if a poster did just decide to go for it and then realises down the line that they may walk away with 20-30k plus a pitiful CMS payment and will be much worse off financially. That said though I do think there are some times when even being financially worse off isn’t a reason to stay and so in those cases although leaving isn’t “simple” or financially better off, it is necessary

There's only so much any one can do via a text reply on a forum though.

I think you're underestimating how damaging to your sense of self worth being in a rubbish relationship can be. I think it can also affect your ability to problem solve. You won't be fucked if you leave your DH. You can claim UC on an income of upto £50,000.

I agree. I'm single for about 10 years thank bloody god. But I see how nightmarish it is when people have kids, lose financial independence and are usually so much more vulnerable emotionally because on the whole ( and yes this is true in most cases I believe), women are more emotionally invested in the kids than the husbands and this can then be their weakness. I see how ruthless many men will be in order to have their needs met - at the expense of their children. Then there's the worry the ex won't help after split and then you're doing the child rearing alone. Or they're a narcissist piece of shit and then you live in fear as to how they will emotionally abuse the kids in your absence.

If I could go back in time or give any daughter (if I had one ) advice, it would be financial independence forever, at all costs. Take a very long time to get to know someone and decide whether they're suitable to have kids with. Always have a back up plan.

The advice always fails to take into account the circumstances. For example, what if the OP is the one with the pension who works to support the family, and her useless H is basically an unemployed cocklodger who barely does anything to help? So he could try to take more than half the money, her pension, the house etc by claiming he supported her career advancement (when he was just too lazy to work), and thinks she should pay spousal maintenance (I would say child support too, but hed have no intentions of having the kids any more than he had to) because she's supported him for years already. Add to that the stress of the emotional and practical upheaval for the whole family and it is often a seemingly impossible thing to do.

Nothing is ever as simple as the often correct, but far too readily handed out advice on here makes out.

I agree.
I left my ex dh (for reasons that would have had everyone chorusing ltb on here) and it was a nightmare.

He never paid a penny in maintenance and they reached 18 with him owing close to 40k in unpaid cm.
Within 6 weeks of us separating he moved 300 miles away and I had literally no support EVER with childcare, school holidays etc

I nearly lost our home, endured years of financial hardship and even now haven't really recovered mentally or financially from it all.

The only bonus is that I have raised 2 children, basically single handed who now as adults think I'm an absolute hero! We're very close and they are amazing beings.
But f**k me it was hard!

I’m not sure anyone would say it is simple or easy but like op said, there’s only so much you can advise online.

and OP’s of course don’t have to pay a bit of attention to any of it.

They also never factor in some women feel thier children are unsafe with unsupervised contact so stay as their would rather be there when dad is with the children.

If you'd only get £10 maintenance off your dh if you split he can't be earning much now. With UC as you have no savings you'd probably be no worse off. Hth if the unthinkable ever happens.

I think if the situation is bad enough then you'll leave and start a fresh. It might not be simple, practical or even financially beneficial in the long run but it is a sacrifice that is worth making for some people in dire situations.

I can't even imagine how we'd start trying to untangle our lives. We earn a similar amount and need it all to manage our outgoings. I don't know where paying for another place to live would come from. Childcare is carefully juggled between us and just wouldn't work if we weren't living in the same house.

But if I needed to do it I would, I'd figure it out. I wouldn't for a minute think it was easy for anyone.

I agree. There was one where the OP disagreed with her DH’s soft parenting style and the fact he always sided with his preteen daughter. She wanted the child to be disciplined her way. People’s advice was to LTB. Presumably that would mean she had even less influence over his parenting style and I suspect the daughter would choose to spend most of her time at her dad’s.

Thanks everyone, I often feel like a lone voice (thought!) reading some of the threads on here!
Obviously, in cases of abuse etc we need to ltb no matter what but in other cases it just isn't so simple!

This.

Yabu. I'd go as far as to say it isn't considered as an option enough!

Daily on here you get an utterly exhausted mother, who'll come here with an entire list of horrible things her husband has/hasn't done, any one of which should have been divorce territory years ago to anyone with a normal/healthy sense of what a relationship should be; and they won't have even considered leaving them at all.

I absolutely agree that it's unfortunately often not financially or logistically possible, but that's often only discovered later in the thread.

In the absence of information in the op, people will just respond with their own experiences, from all the different backgrounds this site can offer, and the op can then dismiss or listen to them, based on what is feasible for her.

I am a quick ltber. The reason being is my own experience is that it's been wonderful and I should have done it sooner. As I get older, I get less and less enamoured by men, and more and more think women are amazing and I want to help them all see if they can live less miserable lives if it's possible.

It’s really simple tbh. But only if you don’t rely on your husband financially or otherwise.

I don’t need my husband. I can afford my life without him. I could leave at anytime. I pick him. But I don’t need him.

I left my first husband and had more money every month than I did when I was married.

but. If you stay home, chuck in all your independence and rely on someone else to fund your life then no, of course it isn’t easy to leave and I wish more people would consider this !

I think often LTB is meant as a bit of a wake up call. Very few people think it’s something to be done at the flick of a switch it’s just rhetorically communicating to the OP that yes it is bad enough that you are not going to be able to build a happy family life.

If anything I think it’s under-used but delivered wrongly. You don’t get to the point of posting about your partner on an anonymous forum until it’s quite bad, usually people know deep down that their marriage is over but need validation from others that they are not over reacting.

I have read hundreds of threads on here and I have never once seen a LTB that wasn’t deserved. There are millions of women in dreadful marriages who feel they can’t leave. If anything I think there should be more LTB.

Where I do have concerns is when people blithely say “you will get half the house,” on these threads. I wish people would give more concrete and specific advice rather than just telling women it is easy. It’s not easy at all.

because i've learned that all the members of MN are rich beyond their wildest dreams and cannot even imagine what life is like for us 'working class folk'

i left my hubby... i did not get half the house, i did not get a hefty maintenance payment, i did not get 50/50 child care. i had to do it all on my own!

sadly lots of MN users live in fairy tale worlds with rose coloured glassed and a picket fence round the garden

I feel for you. It's really hard disentangling yourself from merged lives with kids.

I only left when I knew that whatever came next it wouldn't be as shit as staying with him. I didn't get maintenance or co-parenting or respect or a rest. I escaped and crawled home, my tail between my legs, two children not married, no job, so yeh, I was embarrassed and broke and filling in forms for support. But it was still better than being with him. I got through the tough times and I'm glad I left. Life is secure now.

On the one hand it might be easier if you wait for the kids to grow up a bit (or a bit more) but then, if you wait too long you've got to ''sell'' it to them or convince them to come with you or abandon them. I do get all of the obstacles believe me. When I left my kids were really young so they wanted to be with me. But the downside of that was that I couldn't afford childcare for two and still have enough left over to run a household. There are pros and cons to leaving and staying and leaving now and leaving later. I did a hundred lists. But eventually I left when I couldn't endure it a moment longer. So it wasn't bravery or optimism or faith in myself. It felt like survival by the time I finally left.

I'm glad I left when i did as even though I didn't have a great job I was paying prsi contributions toward a state contributory pension (not sure how it's done in the uk but in Ireland you get a bit more if you've always worked) so if i'd stayed until the children were older I wouldn't have that, as well as obviously having subjected them to their dad putting me down, being irritated with me, blaming me all the time, being mean with money, not allowing me to wokr but also, criticising what I spent. Geez, good times, don't miss them.........

I agree. Managing a household on a single income would be very hard even with UC, some men wouldn't leave meaning the woman has to find another house during a housing crisis and uproot herself and her children. Even if he is pretty useless there are likely a few things he does to contribute which the woman would be left without as there is no guarantee the man would do anything when the relationship ends. There's the emotional side of it too, leaving someone they love and have become attached to. Worries the children will lose relationship with dad and paternal family.
I do think it's jumped to very quickly on here too. Relationships have tough times but can be worked on and improve. Everyone has their flaws some people seem to expect perfection when they're probably far from perfect themselves.

This is why women need to put career and financial independence first, every time.

There is always choice if you earn well. Time and again I see women on here getting royally shafted after being a SAHM and having no way of running a house now clean breaks are the norm in court.

EXACTLY. I was in denial. I was telling myself, what is happy anyway? Who is happy? I told myself that if I left, I'd be replacing one set of problems for another. Life is hard, relationships are hard. When I started a thread, many years ago now, I half expected the consensus to be ''no stay for a while, you're a family unit now, you've made your bed'' but even though I'd only detailed a tenth of the worst of it, there was a resounding consensus ''you must leave!'' and that was shocking. It pierced my denial. That was in April and I left in July. So just because posters don't leave the moment the thread sinks out of active, that doesn't mean that their denial hasn't been pierced. It's a process.

STRENGTH to anybody who knows they have this ahead of them.

When people come on to MN saying DH insults me, doesn't do anything round the house, demands sex, ignores the children etc etc what do you expect people to advise? A lot of women in this position ask for advice on how to deal with this situation as they can't afford to leave. I don't think it's that people think it's an easy option to leave, more that the DH is unlikely to change whatever the woman does, so what are we left with?

Every situation is different. We dont have a big house or swanky life. Iv always worked in case something happened to dh or we didn't work out - yes I'm horribly pessimistic and plan for the worse as seen too many women trapped by money in bad marriages or left in a mess if dh ups and disappeared.

YANBU
Though I think it’s harder to leave if you have a nice lifestyle? Lovely cars, holidays, homes, hobbies, fillers/botox/hair/clothes etc a close friend of mine, low paid job, health issues with eyesight but nothing major, no PIP just gets a free bus pass.
Mid priced house, nice area. Had lots of work done to it, partly down to her partner’s line of work. He’s got a good salary and gets cash in hand.
They split. He’s self employed. Pays £30 a week maintenance. She claims UC. She did get part of the equity but had to buy a two bed, in a run down area, out of town, has to bus it or walk everywhere. Makes it hard to walk the child to school and then walk to work (or catch two buses). Easier now child can get to school herself.

Friend two. He had a well paid job and said if you go for maintence or my pension I’ll go for custody. DV - but nothing reported to the police. So she takes no maintenance. She was lucky her DM gave her £100k, I also gave her £15k for a car and a holiday. So she’s same area, three bed small home, tiny garden, instead of five bed, 3 reception, same lifestyle give or take etc.

Both took a few years to get on their feet. The former regrets the split. Hasn’t met anyone. Wants her partner back- he’s now with someone else. (They split because he was tight with cash and he said they were more friends than lovers).

The latter is single, 50 and happy. But without that cash injection from her mum, her child wouldn’t be able to go to the school he wanted, she would be looking at renting, she couldn’t afford a car. She also claims UC but is looking for full time work.

Depends how bad things are imo. The key is not relying financially on a man and having a decent education - but in abuse cases and where there are children this is very hard to navigate. I work for the local authority so work with people from more impoverished areas than most on here I imagine. Of course some are lucky and fall on their feet, meet another man, work hard, study, have parents to help. Each case is unique.