Why do so many women put up with crap?

[lifeiscomplicated2025]

Is it just me or is anyone else sick of stories of DH is not doing this or that then wondering why people put up with it?

@Chowtime either you’ve never been around an angry, volatile man or you are one. Your post is depraved and you just posted to upset people. The faux naivety when called out about it is very poor behaviour.

I think it is because women don’t realise how awful their men are.

Women genuinely believe that someone who lives them = someone who respects them as equals. It doesn’t. Men in love still see women as less, as a support human to the man. The man is still the head of the household. The woman should serve the family more.

I think it takes a long time for that penny to drop in most women.

Many reasons and everyone is an individual obviously with specific circumstances but some general reasons probably:

Lack of financial independence.
Societal pressure to be coupled up rather than single.
Stigma about being a single mum.
Continuing what you saw in your parents marriage growing up and being unaware or unable to break the cycle of intergenerational trauma.

It’s because some women don’t want to be single and leaving a relationship is no guarantee you’ll find a “better” partner.

I’m not going to judge them for it. Most relationships aren’t all bad and when you leave, you lose the good as well as the bad. If you have kids and a house together, then that’s even more reasons why it would be difficult to split.

Just because I’ve reached a point where I’m ok being single, I’m not going to demand that others should feel the same way. I like my life but yes there are downsides to it. So if someone else would rather have the downsides of their relationship, then that’s their choice. (Abuse aside as no one should stay in an abusive relationship).

Having a bit of a moan on MN can be an outlet. Doesn’t mean they want to leave. They just want a bit of validation and that’s ok. If you don’t like it, don’t read the threads.

People hate change, especially if it will make life harder. Society has pushed the expectation\role model of family life out there and almost made it responsible for women to make it happen. Mothers will prioritise their children and try to 'keep the family together' whilst men are no where near as bothered and can just walk away, they have much more entitlement to what they want.

Also people hate change and the unknown and would rather bury their heads in the sand. Men hate it as much as women but believe they can get away with it as tend to hold the power in relationships. the more power they have the more 💩 they pull.

Economics. Childcare is most expensive in Europe, housing costs are insane, insecure and poorly paid work is plentiful and the social security system is excessively complex and minimal, people are quickly reduced to charity.

So it's easy to be trapped (by the sexist happy ever after narrative usually) and almost impossible to free yourself.

Because biologically we have to bear kids if we want them, which means that it’s more difficult to sustain a career, difficult to earn a lot of money, challenging to go back to work after mat leave and also challenging to find a job if you are out of the job market for a significant time when you have young kids.

Of course there are some women without children whose partners are just plain abusive psychos. But there are a lot of women who have given up financial independence and where their partner is not evil, just lazy/ incompetent/ slobbish/ a bit rude where the balance of leaving vs staying us quite finely balanced (especially if you then have to turn your precious kids over to said lazy incompetent for half the time).

Why do so many women put up with crap?

Surely the more pertinent question is:

Why do so many men dish out crap?

Why not ask why are so many men treat women so badly

I always find these threads to be condescending and often smug

and the blame once again lies at the feet of women

I’ve noticed that quite a few women don’t have a group of female friends for support and socialising. That’s a huge factor in leaving an unhealthy relationship with a horrible man. My DH died 7 years ago. I’ve remained single through choice because I have a fantastic group of friends to go away with, talk to and have fun with. I don’t need a man.

I can only talk for myself.

Because I’m over empathic and my tolerrance to shit has always been too high. I’ve found excuses to his behaviour again and again.
Because like anyone else, I’ve learnt shit stuff from my parents - like putting everyone else before me.
Because I had (and still have tbh) no idea what a good relationship is. I’ve never seen it modelled in front of me. I’ve never experienced it either so it was ‘normal’

So even though I have, in my head, very standards in what should be happening, I live with much less and try to deal with the cognitive dissonance. It’s ok, it’s been there since I was born really….

< fist bumps @HRTQueen >

exactly true

long past time to hand managing men’s behaviour back to them along with their arses

I get the impression a lot of them think it’s normal. It’s what they saw growing up I guess.

For me it was trying to emulate my parents and GPs marriage. Thinking I should just accept my fate to stay married. To work through our issues and learn from them. To not give up when exDH was being a pig. To stick together no matter what. Well, that didn't work. Financially, I was screwed if I left him. I was also critically short of self-esteem.

Although my parents have been married over 50 years, for ny mum, on being told I was divorcing, was mostly concerned over the welfare of my daughter and me. She and my dad acknowledge the world has moved on since they got married and, when I saw the light, that I had to do what was right for me and their granddaughter. I thought they'd be ashamed of me, but that's not the case. The so-called idea of sticking together no matter what in order to get my 50th anniversary chip wasn't achievable and it was ok.

I think women don't think they can manage alone, until they have to, and most do, and can, with amazing results. We are too often stuck in situations that we think we can't get out of, but it's possible. Nothing is 100% impossible. Self-esteem and loneliness plays a huge part. Financial reasons are huge. Even when we complain to our partners and say, you need to step up, I need more support, we're told we're nagging and needy...no, we are telling you we need help and you aren't delivering! Gaslighting and placing blame back on us also has huge consequences to our sense of the truth of things... second-guessing yourself all the time. It's hard to know if you are doing the right thing by standing up for yourself or if what you know to he true is actually a fantasy in your head. I battled with these feelings for years.

What a load of tripe.
Some women want everything done their way and to their schedule.
Then moan when it isn't.
Mumsnet is full of these complaints.
I don't have brothers I just like a clean home and an organised lifestyle. However I do not over fill my schedule like some do.

If they were shit all the time it would be a lot harder to stay. The cycle of abuse includes times where the abusive partner is everything you could dream of, affectionate, loving, attentive, makes promises of change, apologises and (sometimes) takes responsibility for the crap in the relationship (well mine certainly did), promising to get therapy and declaring undying love. Saying that yours is the best relationship of anyone he knows, telling you all the shit things his friends/brothers do that their wives don’t even know about, better the devil you know and all that.

Women in shitty/abusive relationships are masters of optimism and hope. You live for the hope of the good times coming back, chasing the high like an addict. In fact I usually say on threads where someone claims to love a shitty man, that’s not love it’s addiction.

Do you also go onto the alcohol support board and ask why people keep drinking? People don’t always make rational and sensible decisions, but even when they have used their head and not their heart they will be up against rising cost of living, the practicalities of childcare, having to negotiate with an angry arsehole re the above, watching someone they care about move on and start new relationships, having to consider dating (which btw is fucking awful in this day and age!) themselves.

There is actually evidence that male and female socialisation is very different. Just because your life runs the way you want it doesn’t mean that that idea is “tripe”. What a ridiculous comment!

Parents of these women are to blame in many cases.
"Societal expectations". They could always go to fuck, as far as I was concerned.
Never had children, married to make my life better.
Not gloating, where I come from, expectations for women were extremely low. (Former Communist country, abusive parents).
I found my anger as a 13 yo kid.

I ‘put up with it’ because it was the only choice I had . Now I’m questioning whether I should have just carried on putting up with it . I was somebody before I met my ex . Was with him 15 years . Most stupid thing I did was confide in him about stuff like my family , my body insecurities and my mental health . For many years those were used against me . I put up with it because I lost my job and I also had 3 children and I had nowhere to go . I put up with it because this year I got cancer and had 7 hospital admissions . But now Im no longer putting up with it . I’m sat in a hotel homeless without my children and it’s worse than I ever imagined . I should have carried on putting up with it and being a better person because if hell on earth existed then I’m in it right now

Societal conditioning, economic viability, desperation for children.

Because if you leave where the fuck do you go? Not everyone has family that can help them. I'm not making my children homeless because I am unhappy.
I hate these threads. Bully for you op. You don't know other people's stories. You don't know what kind of life they have had.

I was fairly naive to it until I joined MN.
There is multiple stories a day about women who have given men their absolute everything for decades only to be discarded and left with nothing.
It is unbelievable but it made me very quickly realise how important it is as a woman to make sure you have your own life and independence.

I know exactly why my friends with shit husbands don't leave.

They didn't anticipate how much having kids would create inequalities. They earn less, because they've had to deprioritise work because he doesn't do shit and they aren't willing to let the children suffer. They can split and get significantly poorer and still be doing it all and see their kids part-time and put them through the trauma of divorce, or they can suck it up and stay. Not a difficult choice.

Societal conditioning.
If you don't want to be in a relationship any more, that is enough. That's reason to leave.
But society teaches us all that you need a 'reason' that you need to have something 'bad enough' to leave.
You see threads on here about people giving up on relationships 'too easy these days' and blaming social media and it makes me furious. If you no longer wish to consent to an intimate relationship, for any reason or no reason at all, then that's enough. You don't owe anyone your continued consent to a relationship. But people get told 'you need to try for the kids sake' it helps no child for their parent to be embroiled in an intimate relationship they no longer want to be in.
Plus, people think people give up relationships 'at a drop of a hat' - maybe they just haven't advertised to you how unhappy they were? Maybe they havnt divulged the innermost secrets of their relationship to bystanders, friends or family? Some people see it as between them and their partner and noone else, and it's incredibly fucking hurtful to be so unhappy you'll tear your world apart and have people go 'are you sure?' No, I just woke up one day and decided I fancied the turmoil for the sake of it.

Kids, money, fear, unsupportive family.