To ask why woman stay?

[doonnaKay]

My mother stayed in an unhappy marriage. It wasnt bad enough to leave I guess, but now that shes older I'm sad that she tolerated her unhappiness for so long.

I'm in my 40s and have settled into a life where I do not have a partner, but im very content. I'm trying to to understand why she stayed. She would have been financially okay if she had left. Her kids would have been better off not growing up in such an unhappy house.

I'm just wondering why do woman stay? They all have their own reasons, but there must be overlap.

I'm just trying to understand, sorry in advance is my wording or questions offend xx

If you discount finance then:
A belief its better for the DC
Fear of change
Fear of being alone
Life would be practically more difficult alone
Thinking they will be judged for leaving
Thinking their partner will fall apart without them
Worry about him having contact with DC
Feeling they've failed
Believing in marriage vows
Loss of social network
Fear he will harm her, DC or himself in some way
Generally being worn down and demotivated ...

My mother stayed with my father because she knew it would be safer and easier to live with his cheating, moodiness, bad temper and total self-obsession, than to have to deal with him as an embittered, vengeful, unreliable, non-child-support-paying, chaotic, hugely emotionally unstable co-parent she couldn’t trust to look after my brother and me safely on his own.

She’d have been on the bones of her arse on her salary with 2 DC, and she also knew he’d make all our lives a fucking misery any way he possibly could if she made any decision that forced a change in his life.

So she waited until we’d grown up to file for divorce - and true to form he absolutely screwed her over financially, refused to find anywhere else to live or move any of his stuff out of the family home (my brother and I had to do it for him), tried to sabotage the house sale, threatened (and very halfheartedly and histrionically attempted) to kill himself multiple times, spent all his time soliloquizing to my brother and me about what a poisonous bitch our mother was, etc.

My home life was unhappy as a child, but I am glad I didn’t have to spend 50% of my time in my formative years unprotected from my father’s instability, bitterness and rage.

Everyone else who knew him thought of him as a very charming and impressive Professor, a generous host, a brilliant mentor - he hadn’t been some sort of obvious wrongun from the start. And most people in the university community where he worked still believe my mother was an evil heartless witch and my brother and I are ungrateful shits for losing touch with him.

It’s not as easy as just leaving because you’re unhappy.

What generation is being referrednto here?

I'm 65, mother is 89, grannie would be 114. My mother told me, if a man lays a finger 9n you, you come home. Her mother taght her the same and so did grannie's.

My parents detested each other. No abuse. Just mother got pg in 1959 and had to wear an empire line dress on her wedding day. I always felt they shoukd have stuck it out for my sake. I adored my father and it nearly broke me, aged 12.

I married lateish, with no doubts. I adire my DH and it's been a huge success for 37 years . However, my parents divorce taught me that you never, ever, screw with yiur children's stability.

There will be so many reasons. It's not always clear that it is best for children for parents to separate, it often isn't what is best for them. Being 'ok' financially could be very scary if you're used to being well off. Knowing the partner wouldn't give up the home and the fear of uprooting. Having it in mind that the grass isn't always greener, even really bad relationships usually have really good times too. Fear of being solely responsible for children and/or bills. Worry about the upset you will cause to partner and/or children. Worry about losing relationships with the in laws and mutual friends.

Her marriage vows ? It’s an old fashioned thing to say but I think in the past they were more of a reason not to leave. Along with everything else that has been listed.
Also marriages go up and down. They can have really difficult phases (abuse excepted) and then get much better again. We are all fallible humans.

There are millions of reasons.

I remember listening to Amy Poehler being interviewed and she said "divorce is like laying every thing you care about most in the world out on a blanket and then throwing the blanket up in the air". She wasn't saying people shouldn't do it, just that you shouldn't underestimate the enormity of it.

Separation and divorce can turn nasty. You can end up in costly and protracted court proceedings for years. You can end up trying to co-parent with someone who hates you so much they can't see past their own hatred to put the kids first. I've known men who seemed honest and decent go to great lengths to avoid paying Child Maintenance once they divorced. I've known women get monumentally screwed over financially and in terms of custody.

That's not to say that anyone should stay in an unhappy marraige. I just think the "LTB and you'll be so much happier" responses you often see on here can be overly simplistic.

Or do what my next door neighbour seems to have done...get yourself pregnant by another man to end your marriage. Means you can leave and live with your new man and have lots of practical help without the stigma of being a 'single mum'. Do 50/50 custody of the children from the marriage. And lots of free time as the current partner does most of the care of the one child they share together. Great set up.

My Mum met my Dad when she was 15 - he was 27. This was in the 60s and as both sets of parents knew each other (lived in same village) it wasn't frowned on. They married when Mum was 18 - and my sister and I came along in quick succession. Mum said that he started cheating on her while she was pregnant, then again with my godmother, a neighbour, a babysitter ... they lived in this toxic cycle of being happy, Dad sniffing elsewhere, Mum finding out, then hysterical screaming, and back to being happy. I have never understood why Mum stayed, even when he finally left for OW Mum tried for 6 or 7 years to lure him back. I've asked her many time why she stayed, but she can't explain why - only that she was so blinded with love that being with him and him cheating was a better option that him not being there at all. As an adult with children myself, I've now started to look at her with sorrow rather than anger.

I could never ask her.
It was less about practicalities of leaving. It's like she was ashamed to admit her marriage failed.
I suppose I started this post after reading another post on hear about a woman who wants to make her toxic marriage work. I dont understand that want.

I wonder if its shame of failure, or just not having a man, or whatever it is what keep women still in toxic marriages. I have single friends that tolerate crap just to they'll finally get married. Is it all the same reasons?

No its not all the same reasons, I think there have been loads of different reasons shared here. It will depend on the particular woman and specific relationship. Also, we all hear 'marriage takes work, marriage isn't easy' and so for a lot of women they expect it to be a struggle and it seems normal to them.

Family pressure... because being a divorcee is shameful in some families and cultures.

Sometimes the good parent is so ground down by the other that they can't imagine life without them. Their confidence gets eroded over time, and sometimes, the partner gains some form of control over them.

Fear of what they don't know, e.g. if they can cope alone, if they can manage financially, where they will live, if the other parent will look after the children when it's their turn, etc.

We get told that it is important for children to have two parents. Actually, one decent one can do a better job than if shackled to an inadequate/violent one.

Society's judgement can be harsh. It used to amaze me how many people looked down on single parent families, when in my experience, it was so much better than what our unfortunate norm was before. I had a teacher who informed my class that single-parent families lived in rented accommodation, in terraced housing in a notoriously poor area, with sons who went to prison and daughters who got pregnant in their teens. Someone piped up, "TheeNotoriousPIG doesn't!" I was the only one from a single-parent family in my class, and I shot down all of the teacher's accusations in one go, because I lived in a detached house in an expensive area of a nice village, it was mortgage-free, my brother was at university (and had a clean criminal record), and as I'd hit 17 without a boyfriend, I was unlikely to have a baby any time soon. Also, I could read music. Apparently, children of single parents couldn't do that, because they can't afford music lessons...

We were lucky in that our so-called dad ("A wonderful man" in public, and abusive behind closed doors) died, because I think that my mother (a good parent, but ground down) would have stayed with him due to a lot of the above reasons. We were much happier without him. This was in the 2000's...

When I speak to colleagues in their 40s the housing crisis is a massive reason, they can't afford adequate housing and then the finances. Especially women who are starting from the bottom after being SAHMs

A lot of women hope there’s some sort of thing they can do to make their husband less of a shit and their marriage bearable again - not least because everyone on MN seems to believe that if your husband is an arse it’s your fault for (a) being stupid enough to pick him in the first place (b) ‘letting’ him be an arse, because ultimately women are responsible for how men behave (c) not training him.

Or they hope that therapy or communicating differently or helping him see the impact of his behaviour or being kinder and more understanding or whatever will turn things around.

It’s pretty normal to want to try to do what you can to improve or hold on to a relationship that has meant a lot to you (and your children). And most women - even in this day and age - have grown up in the belief that marriage is hard and full of compromise - so maybe they just need to compromise more.

(Plus of course men’s mental health is the most important crisis ever and it’s entirely women’s responsibility to fix it 🙄)

And women are still subjected to a lot of shame when relationships break up. Women are mocked or pitied when they are single into their 30s and 40s, in a way men aren’t. There’s still this awful misogynistic stigma around being ‘left on the shelf’. It’s women’s selfish refusal to condone abuse or cheating or general marital misery that ‘breaks up families’ and destroys children’s lives - why couldn’t you just suck it up and stick it out for the children? Was your happiness really more inportant than theirs?

Maybe social shame just rolls of you like water off a duck’s back. Lucky you!
But most people feel emotionally affected by other people’s bad opinions of them. Even more so if they grew up with a lot of shame. That doesn’t make them stupid.

A friend of mine is like this.

She shares a young child with her partner and frequently complains how unhappy she is because he doesn't do any housework, has a bad temper and she feels like she has to walk on eggshells around him. She says she's trapped.

At the same time she says, when pushed, she would never leave him, as he is a good provider. She only works as a teaching assistant, so couldn't afford living by herself. It's also important for her to go on holidays and she said that he loves her and her son and is trying very hard to get better.

Nailed it! Many women stay in unhappy, average, dead, or dull marriages even now. If they are rubbing along OK together, and there is no abuse of any kind, many women stay, and so do the men, because it's easier than leaving, and many people don't want their lifestyle to change. What is anyone going to achieve by leaving if it's just a bit of a dull marriage? They won't be any happier, they will be poorer, and they will probably end up more miserable than they were in the average/boring/dull marriage.

I see many women who are single or divorced in their middle age who are on the bones of their arse and have to work all the hours God sends just to pay the bills. They are miserable, and look like shit. They look a decade older than their age, because they're run ragged. They rarely see their children, because they're always bloody working.

Some women I know are more like flatmates with their husband, but they get on OK, and have a laugh sometimes, and they have company, so don't get lonely, and the double income gives them a nice life.

People are deluded if they think women stay in a dull marriage because they are ashamed of divorce. They stay because they are often better off financially, and it suits them! (Men do too!)

This is why many celebrities split up so often/have such short relationships, because when they get a bit fed up of each other/the relationship gets a bit 'drab' they are not forced to stay together because of finances. They can both afford to leave.

.

It’s so hard to leave when there are children.

I've heard posters on mn who say their mum leaving their dad ruined their life, their mum was selfish and split the family. You could have been writing that if she’d left

@Zov There are also those of us women who you may consider middle aged who are financially comfortable, not working all hours, raising happy healthy kids and still looking damn fine. The peace of living alone takes years off you.
I see my kids plenty and they both know I’m there for them. Being divorced or single doesn’t ruin your life or that of your kids. Staying married probably would have as they’d have a skewed perspective of what a relationship should be.

I have friends who stay.

its a lot of things - mainly they don’t want their children to experience the breakdown. Dont want to navigate dad’s new girlfriend and new wife. Money is also a big factor. The house has to be sold, kids experience a big drop in lifestyle. They say the will stay till after Christmas, then there is a birthday, then a summer holiday. It’s hard when you carry the burden of everyone’s happiness.

Men stay because it’s comfortable - they treat their partner badly hoping she will eventually be the one to break it off - then it’s her fault not his.

Money, pretty much.

I have a couple of friends that are with not so great men. My tolerance for not so great men is very low and I can’t understand how these strong and successful women stay with these men. One of my friends told me she doesn’t want to be alone. I have a feeling it’s the same for my other friend. I find it sad but I’ve been single (and a single parent) most of my life so maybe I couldn’t understand.

Reasons people stay in bad marriages are because

1. They are not financially independent.
2. Sometimes they stay because this means they get to see their children daily rather than only half the time.
3. Sometimes they stay because they can’t imagine what life would be outside the marriage.
4. Lifestyle usually changes, friends may change, they might even have to move etc. I think most people don’t enjoy change, so try to avoid it.
5. They don’t believe there is anything better out there and accept this is what marriage is.

There are so many reasons why people stay, even if they are being abused. A person has invested everything in this life. This is your home, you have all your possessions here, you’ve built a life with this person, you may have children, pets. There will be financial consequences and It’s a massive decision to leave.

The others thing is, when you live with someone who treats you badly, you lose your confidence. You believe you are useless and worthless and wouldn’t cope on your own.

I would say most marriages/ relationships morph into a partnership and friendship . Dull but secure.