Why do women put up with so much shit.

[Gypsy2014]

Daily I see posts on mumsnet and think what the actual fuck, get a backbone is this just me.

The vulnerability seems to get worse when people have children and give up careers. The women I do know who have more equal partnerships with great involved dads sharing raising DC are ones who still earn equally.

I obviously realise women have the babies and breastfeed, but why don’t more couples both reduce hours and share earning and childcare, running home etc equally as with education today it’s possible. When thinking about making a permanent life together surely couples talk about what it would look like? (We did and strongly encouraged DDs to). I thought in 2025 we would have evolved so much more in equality.

Because they don't want their DC to be looked after by the dad without them bein there. If you're married to an abusive narcissist, the thought of them having 50% of sole custody to young kids is terrifying. You cannot just leave these men. If you have young DC they can continue to abuse you and your DC. Sometimes it feels safer to manage from within that relationship than angering them further by leaving

The idea these women are all sticking with it because they all just want husbands is absolute bullshit

Many women don't have a choice.

This

It's increasingly difficult to survive on a single income especially with the social housing shortage, and mortgage lenders and private landlords high multiple of income requirements. Benefit cuts have made things even worse.

I don't believe most women in bad relationships stay because of low self esteem or because of being 'desperate' to be with someone. Some might try to persuade themselves and their family and friends that's why but deep down they just feel trapped. Often that's because they really are pretty much trapped.

Often the common factor in a womans reluctantance to exit a crappy relationship is directly linked to her financial dependence on her partner. Pure and simple if she leaves she loses a lifestyle.

It seems the higher the earner, the lower the bar is for what she will accept (and therefore the children) and live with.

It's sad, but if you've given up work to become a SAHM your options are very limited if you still want the trappings that go with being a kept woman.

Please don't come at me with "I stay at home so he can progress his career". Literally millions of women with kids (in relationships and single mums) are also having careers in some shape or form.

None of the women I know who are SAHM actually gave up a decent career after maternity, they went back and made it work. The ones who didn't return were in really low level retail/admin positions and chose the SAHM option. More fool them. Now they have no out when the DH gets the wandering eye/drink habit.

I blame the parents. My best friend is intelligent and professionally successful, but her parents only measured her success in terms of marriage. This, along with romantic shite absorbed from popular culture led to her marrying a lazy man.

He is now a lazy father and she hates him but she moved to live in his town and her children have got roots there so now she is waiting til they leave home.

Every single part of it was entirely predictable but like so many women, she thought marriage was an end in itself and would turn her lazy partner into a grown up husband and father.

'aisle, altar, hymn' as they say.

if you look at most MN threads - it is NOT about money, or because they want the 'perfect family' - it's about trying desparately to do the right things for the kids. All we hear is stories of family courts allowing access of abusive/dangerous men to young kids, to women being blamed by social services - women are trying to keep their kids safe in a society where family courts and the police are not/may not make the right decisions about where the risk is.

I know exactly what you mean. I see posts and think …could you be any more of a doormat ?

Are you really so desperate you would put up with pretty much anything just to be in a relationship?

It’s not just about men either - I see on posts about at work or family relationships etc.

Perhaps having a backbone should be taught at school.

Because once you have kids it's really hard to leave. I don't mean leave the relationship, I'm sure a lot of women in crap relationships have checked out emotionally.

Financially separating can be challenging, if you are both on basic incomes of say 2k a month. You need to split that in order to rent 2 properties, both of which need to be big enough to have the kids, not necessarily 50/50 but at least for an overnight. Perhaps they worry what will happen without them there. Perhaps they worry that they will suddenly ditch whatever childcare arrangements they've been facilitating and then the woman has no choice but to quit work.

The ideal that everyone has thousands of pounds of savings and can afford to run two separate household from incomes that can only just support one is not a reality for a lot of families.

These threads always default to abuse victims. Many women have husbands who are piss poor, lazy, unable to cook or do their own laundry etc but they choose to marry them and have kids. This is endemic, based on many factors, and worth discussing at societal level or it won't change.

And before that ? What stops them before they get married and have kids ?

I know some men can keep it together long enough to hook a victim certainly not all. Plenty of the posts we see are from women who are not yet married or have children.

Plus what is with the number of women who know their DP won’t marry her but go on to have children with them anyway then end up in dire straits when he fucks off ? It’s hardly a new phenomenon.

@Msmoonpie A lot of those men do put on a Mr Nice Guy act until it's too late.

With the women posting who aren't yet married or no children, there's still the problem I mentioned upthread, of the difficulty surviving on a single income nowadays. More council housing would help to address that problem.

I suspect some people, men as well as women, subconsciously or out of desperation ignore crappy behaviour because they don't have much other option. Especially as apart from the unaffordability of being single nowadays, society still tends to treat single people and those without children badly.

With women who have children before marriage, it's not always planned and not everyone wants a termination and they shouldn't be forced to.

Plenty of married couples with children are unhappy and feel trapped in the relationship, whilst there's other couples with children but happily unmarried. Marriage also doesn't solve the issue others have mentioned of family court, child access arrangements, child maintenance, and surviving financially after a split

My own thoughts on this, is that there is a biological impulse to show we would make a good mate, and one of the ways female humans demonstrate this is by cooking and cleaning to show we are good home makers / potential mothers to our potential mate. A bit like some birds do with their best building. Of course, we no longer need to do this but our biological impulses are somewhat behind modern life. This behaviour sets the expectations very early in a relationship and become hard to change or challenge.

Then women get older, realise that we are being dragged down but it becomes too much effort to change the male behaviour so we either tolerate it, or those that can, leave.

I think the problem with this is how women are encouraged to be parasites instead of taking a stake in their own financial future.

Then rage about the life they lost, but they never had. It's not just women. If you are not able to function 8n the world without a male partner, there is something wrong with YOU; forget him.

When grown women repeatedly ask how they can get a house or afford to live, it sounds delusional; in England, we all go through a school system that explains how you make money by working.

I don't get it; it seems most negligent. I wonder what men their sons become or what women their daughters become.

They lack accountability, but their families, in many cases, did an absolute number on them; whilst external reference allows you to understand more, the family you know will shape you more than the neighbour you don't.

Also, I think people for a period began mar, trying across social classes and wealth. That's nearly entirely died out in the past 20 years; some of the relationship breakdowns and misunderstandings are that the low earner has, in some cases, no experience managing or having money. We are witnessing a surge in high earners d8vorcing low earners and sahm on mass, but marriage between two equals seems more resilient.

Marry for love, yes, but financial compatibility will make or break your relationship. Stand up for yourself. Only date a man if he will sit with you and go through the family finances unless you are numerically illiterate ( this is a real disorder); you as an adult should know and understand your finances and raise your daughters to know the same and your sons to understand the impact of childbearing and what that means they will need to do for the wives during the early years.

I'm quite disgusted with these posts, particularly yours and the first response.

We get it, you wouldn't put up with it, but let's try a little bit compassion for the women who have.

Daily I see posts on mumsnet and think what the actual fuck, why are you talking shit about things you clearly don’t understand and can’t empathize with

Why click and comment? You could have just not done that.... people are allowed to think differently from you.

You're disgusted by someone's perfectly reasonable reaction to non-abusive situations.

If the poster points were not an attack, then state your disagreements.

I don't entirely agree with the poster, but I like the debate.

Women like yourself are unhelpful to women who if they were better informed had more support could change their life.

Grow up.

This.

Sometimes I think that women's hormones don't help. The desire for some women to have a baby is so powerful for some women that they seem incapable of making sensible decisions. There are loads of Mumsnet threads that show this.

When I was a teenager in the 1990s you were a failure if you either were not at least having empowered sex on a regular basis or looking for a boyfriend. I was fed a lot of romcoms as a kid that reinforced the idea I was no-one if I didn't get married. I am not a very outgoing person, you'd not notice me in a crowd at all. So I settled on a man who said he loved me when I was 24. It was a mistake and I have since got divorced.

I tell my daughter to be cautious, and not to settle. It might take decades to find the right person. I think it's a bloody special thing if you find the right one. Many people I know are in relationships because they rub along ok, but I don't think they have any magic. Some are so mismatched it's unreal. Some of the women put up with a LOT.

I've decided that if I like a man in future, he's got to be bloody special and treat me in the right way (lesson learnt) before we consider going into partnership together. I am much, much more choosy, now. And yes, I'm still single!

I understand the trapped and the scared posters, and it must be horrific, but what about all the desperate chasing after useless, vile slobs?

Stories of online dating , being ignored and ghosted, but having sex with them when they do turn up, just for that.

I read a thread recently where new boyfriend had dv history and op was called in to police for Clare's Law history details.
She still carried on seeing him.

I agree.

Some of the posts I read on here I think oh my god woman, are you forgetting that you have agency? That you are in control of your own life and decisions?

Absolutely baffles me the shit that some women are willing to put up with to be able to say they have a husband and a nuclear family unit. Sounds absolutely miserable.

I used to think the same. Couldn’t for the life of me understand why she’d stay in an abusive relationship, let alone multiple occasions of violence.

I do now. I’d done everything ‘right’, together and married for years before the babies came, we were so in love, and then once I was pregnant, it changed. I blamed my hormones, my pnd, then struggling to adjust to newborns/toddlers/pre-school. It’s not bad all the time, and everyone argues, right? If I just do better, try to be what he wants, I can make him happy, I used to so it’s me that’s changed and I just need to try harder. I guess I’m pretty slow, because that took a few years. Doesn’t help that I’m an eternal optimist so I truly believed that if I just hung in there things really would get better. Plus it’s never been physical, and I’m incredibly sensitive, so maybe it’s not really that bad…

Then you move on to realising that it’s not ‘normal’. This takes a while. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, and give up on the fact that my kids won’t have a two parent household, and then comes the paralysis of what’s actually best for your children. There’s been threats you’ll lose your kids, you’re trauma bonded to the cunt, you’re in debt, you’re fucked basically. I can’t afford private rental as I don’t earn enough, the bloody government are banning 6 months up front to get ahead of the queue, there’s no social housing and I can’t afford to live. The kids would have such a massive drop in quality of life, and it’s not non stop fighting. There are still lots of good times.

And here we are. I’m still stuck, I know it’s not right, but I’m absolutely fucking terrified of life on the ‘other’ side, I’m scared I can’t afford it, and I’m worried about losing my kids half the time and ultimately full time once he poisons them.

Whilst I’m not the brightest button in the box, I’m not stupid. I’m reasonably well educated, I speak nicely, I’m a bit fat but can scrub up ok, I had a good upbringing and I have a naice life. I suspect despite my confident ways, I still have cripplingly low self confidence, no idea how to be single, and the fear I’m going to fuck my kids up is so strong that I’m paralysed.

It’s pretty easy to see why they stay once you’ve experienced it.

@MuchTooTired Notwithstanding some of the things you've mentioned (low self confidence, seeing kids less, broken home stigma), if you had the money to rent a place and live a decent life with your kids would you leave?

If someone said "here's £10,000" to get you on your feet would you go or would you carry on living this life?

A lot of this comes down to agency over your own life. You don't need to be in an abusive relationship to lose it. Many factors can rob you of it, such as no job or low pay, dependent children, lack of housing security, lack of familiar willing/able to help. Some women make a rational choice to stay because the alternative to putting up with a shit man they cohabit with is having to present as homeless to the local council and living temporarily in B&B which might mean having to change or lose jobs and/or kids' nurseries/schools.

Ideally they'd realise he's like this before finding themselves so vulnerable, but many don't until children come along. It's the children that expose it. And then they're trapped.

Also, don't underestimate the incredible talent some manipulative people have to convince others that they're wrong or that what the manipulative person wants is perfectly reasonable. It starts small and builds up - boiling frog syndrome.

And all of this is supported by wider society. Seen any rom coms lately? They send terrible messages! And we still live in a society where women's nurturing skills are praised so that so many find themselves wanting to cook a nice meal or 'help out' at their new P's place when they first get together, and so the parameters are set...