To feel something like satisfaction that DH finally gets it (NAMALT)

[Playingvideogames]

DH has always been a bit frustrating during our conversations about male behaviour. He accepts men commit the most crime, are more likely to walk out on their children etc but I got the impression he thought he and his (middle class) circle of friends were a bit above this. And that I was exaggerating when I said far more men were capable of shitty behaviour than he thinks.

Well tonight his friend of 30 years, who walked out on his wife and 2 primary aged boys last year (1 of whom has significant SEN), has announced his new girlfriend (who he has been seeing for 8 months) is 3 months pregnant and he’s ’ready for the best year ever’. This is when he is currently living in a house share, is unlikely to be paying maintenance (constantly talking about being skint), and it’s widely known his contact with his existing children is patchy. The friend is in his early 50s, and of course new woman is much younger at 38.

I told DH he would get the new girlfriend pregnant and see even less of his kids, DH said I was ‘thinking the worst of him’ and he would ‘get it together soon’. Tonight he’s admitted he’s shocked, and that he ‘never thought one of his friends could be like this’.

Of course I don’t like that somebody else’s misfortune has constituted this learning lesson for DH but there’s some relief he’s finally realised why I’m generally so pessimistic about men. Just needed to let that out somewhere!

Too true 😂

I haven’t even mentioned affairs. They didn’t have an affair.

This. Miserable marriages, even with no abuse, help no one.

Who mentioned affairs. Ask yourself this though how many women start new relationships and walk away and barely bother with their DC again?

My exh who I would have considered an exceptional Father even when we split, a year later he meets a new woman (which he is perfectly entitled to do) and the DC are treated like second class citizens who he barely can muster the energy to see. 9 years on and the DC are young adults barely see their Dad and have very strong opinions on the way he treated them - he of course is indignant. Shame, he was one of the good ones too.

Someone hasn’t RTFT (or even the first post).

I think it’s obvious men who leave marriages and children and then gravitate towards younger women find them much more compliant but I’m not entirely sure what whole friendship groups are supposed to do when one individual turns out to be flawed. Should the whole group ostracise them and refuse to speak to them? Why are the rest of them seen as green lighting something they had no control over anyway and on which their disapproval will change absolutely nothing? He’s still going to be a shyster and it won’t change what happened.

Why has it been an issue in your marriage that your husband has to accept most men are shit. More men do leave their wife's kids etc and are shits! I just fail to see why this has been such a focal point for you. Hopefully your husband is one of the good ones. Perhaps if you both focus on each other. As for the other friend, are you particularly close to his ex and kids. Its really none of your business. Sorry to be blunt but it really does sound like you've given your husband a hard time over the years and are now gloating you've been provided right with this friend.

I agree about that. Their primary relationship is with their friend. You can be friends with flawed people. It’s where the line is drawn I guess which is subjective to each person.

A friend of my father’s left his wife and children for a girl in the lower 6th. Dad wrote to him to say how disgusted he was and the friendship was over.

I didn’t discuss it in an obsessive manner but whenever the topic strayed into male behaviour, he was very much ‘yes that’s an issue but there are lots of good men around who would never do that’ then reel off his friends as examples.

If there was more public shaming about being a failure as a father, less men would abandon their children.

If the financial burden, particularly of childcare, was equally shared between resident and non resident parents, we’d all be better off. And fathers forced by law, if not by basic morality, to support their children would be less inclined to father additional children and burden the state.

My own dh saw this play out in real time last year with our mid teens daughter. He’d gone to meet her from the train. She was FaceTiming him as she felt unsafe. In the ten mins she was on that phone two cars slowed down and the driver tried to talk to her, one man walking past told her she was “fit”. This was at 9pm and she was in school uniform. She had been helping out with a school open day. Dh was shocked and angry.

Having worked in drug intervention and addiction treatment programmes I can tell you that most female crack addicts will have children they don’t see or who are raised by their families.

But you’re talking about a very niche group of people, what about non crack addict women that make up 99% of the sex?

Its not the affair ! It's not seeing the children and so not meeting their emotional needs. It's not paying for them and so not meeting their practical needs. You can have an affair/leave your wife and still do these things. He's choosing not to

I agree with this…..

And I think it’s pretty crap
behaviour to ostracise people and cut them off for doing things you don’t agree with…. smacks of puritanical hypocrisy - who are you to demand that everyone must follow your particular rules or be punished.

People absolutely should be allowed to leave relationships/marriages. How is forcing people to stay together better ?

Weird responses on this thread.

Op, I get it. Dh actually 100% gets in and is actually sometimes quicker to spot and attribute this male entitlement. A family we know through school - sp friendly but not friends - the husbands behaviour was annoying but dh was even more annoyed than us as he felt it was typical male shittiness. He was proved right when the man then subsequently left his wife and family, and, by sheer coincidence, met a woman 2 weeks later he connected with....

I think that so much of the minor male entitled behaviours are so entrenched that it can be hard to spot, but once you (and he) does, the bigger things become more predictable too. I recently started a new job and even dh, one of the good ones, has been surprised at how hard he has found it to adjust his own thinking and behaviours to accept that HE needs to be available and responsive to the school or kids' calls... hes just happily outsourced that to me for years and years, even though I have asked him not to and wr have fought about it. Its a small thing, but one of the 1000s.

There are lots of things me and my friends disagree on. That's fine. But i have no interest in being friends with someone who is fundamentally flawed at a moral or ethical level. And abandoning your children, taking little.or no financial, emotional or practical responsibility for them is, in my opinion, a fatal moral flaw.

Because whilst men swan around saying NAMALT nothing will change. Men who behave badly will dismiss women challenging their behaviour, but might listen if men start saying it too. It's all of our responsibility to challenge misogyny, which is at the root of this behaviour.

But that wasn't what the post was about. And "the rest" that you want forgotten, is the whole point of it.

And on that note, I imagine the new baby is unplanned and that his post is male bravado. His lack of support for his existing children stinks.

Who said anything about forcing people together? This thread isn’t even about how he shouldn’t have left. You’re responding to an OP that isn’t even real.

The baby was actually planned, he’s been open about it. They must’ve started trying when he had known her a maximum of 5 months. It’s outrageous.

I have also worked in this field and it is a small proportion of women with an all encompassing disease, which is not the same as the reasons why men leave. Additionally those who had children were usually looked after by their mothers, so the child's grandmother not the child's dad.

My own DH hates that kind of crap and is the first to call it out. But then, he’d rather shit in his hands and clap than start over with another baby.

What a vile man. His poor kids.

And he’s right. There are plenty of good men out there who wouldn’t do that and I also could reel off lots of examples but then I suppose that doesn’t suit the narrative that all men are the same. Especially when it’s only one of his large circle that has done so.