If you like to make a big deal of how happy your marriage is, does it not worry you that a lot of women are suffering within marriage?

[SolidGoldBrass]

Two women a week are murdered by partners or ex-partners and one in four women will experience domestic violence at some point in their lives.
If you yourself are in a wonderful marriage and like to talk about it and recommend the institution to other women, do you think you might have some responsibility towards those who naively think that love&marriage will solve all their problems and thereby end up in awful abusive relationships?

Yes this is a folow on from the sex work thread, I thought it deserved a thread of its own.

In my mind your relationship must be abusive prior to marriage on some level. Having a ring on your finger wont fix anything at all.

But I dont take any responsibility at all for anyone elses marriage or naivety as you put it. Why should I?

Actually I resent entirely the choice of words you have used in your original post. People who are happily married shouldnt feel any guilt or implied guilt.

Havent read the sex worker thread

I am in a happy marriage of 18 years - it's not perfect but nothing is - but I don't recommend it to other people or bang on about how happy I am etc, I don't know anyone else in the same situation that does this either...

Hi, not read the sex workers thread!

Could you clarify a little more what you would like to discuss regarding happy marriage and abusive marriage?

I think telling people that I thoroughly recommend marriage would make them think I was a nutter, actually. No one ever recommended it to me either. I think there is a lot to be said for following someone's example, ie if your parents worked on their marriage through tough times, etc but I would only follow someone'e recommendation if it involved wine.

do you really think women would blithely trot off and marry someone because another woman said her marriage was great?

the only people who bear responsibility for abusive relationships are the abusers

not other women who are happily married

i am sure plenty of women end up married to their abusers in the vain hope marriage/babies will change the man. don't really think blaming other women for the abuse of men is a good thing really, unless i have misunderstood you

but SGB, you have an aversion to mundanes/marriage/monogamy so you're hardly coming at this from an impartial viewpoint

So are you implying that if I told a friend that I really loved being married to my dh and was happy , and then she went off and married an abusive twat that I am the one who should feel guilty ?

No .

What does being married have to do with anything? People are abused by their partners in all kinds of relationships!

Why on earth would I, as a happily married person, be at all responsible for the abuse of others?

Agree with all lulumaam said. Also I don't think even the most happily married women would encourage anyone to marry an absive partners.

Surely you're not suggesting that all happily married people should pretend to be miserable to stop domestic abuse?

The only people responsible for the suffering of their partner in an abusive marriage is the abuser, although sometimes the wider family is responsible for being complicit by their silence/non-intervention, as in my own sister's case.
If someone is in that situation then they should get out, no ifs or buts.

People should not stay in a marriage if they are unhappy either.

I feel no guilt that I am happily married.

I do feel some women not all are naive and sometimes somewhat stupid in their choice of partner in the dimwitted belief that they 'can change him'

I have had this conversation with several female friends last night.One of which has repeatedly put herself in serious danger in her relationships. When challenged about why she does this time and time again her reply is that 'she doesn't do boring'.

So why should I feel guilty that I am happy, but have offered support, love, advice to a finacial independant female who has twice married men that have 1, nearly killed her and 2 have ruined her confidence. When she gets out of these relationships she has a cooling off period, gets a new home, has a good social life, and then gets in with 'the wrong sort' i.e drug dealers and men with violent criminal pasts.

She and my friend adore my DH and she nor the others feel resentment towards me.

No, I take no responsibility for someone entering into a bad marriage because they might have read that I am very happily married. I suspect that there are very very few people who marry because they have heard someone else say they are happily married.

I think that is a stupid thing to say.

no. I don't think people who are happy should not say so in case someone else does the same thing and is not happy.

That is making you responsible for the happiness of others and that's not fair.

If you are happy in a marriage with a good person and you say so, and someone marries a bastard - how were you even suggesting that in the first place?

People are and should remain, free to talk about their life- good or bad - and be happy about things that are good in their life and share those things and even be so happy about them that it makes others think that it might be nice to have that for themselves!

"I have a really good marriage with a wonderful man who worships me"

"That's nice. I want that. I'll marry an abusive bastard who beats me."

I have a very happy marriage and our lives work very well for us.
But I would not expect other people to do as we do in this regard any more than anything else in life
I am not responsible for other peoples choices I think

I like my car. It suits me and I drive safely. That does not make me responsible if someone else crashe

And how many of those violent incidents were inside marriages and how many inside other form of relationship? Why is marriage any more responsible that couples living together or dating partners?

I don't think projecting abused women as so stupid that they only got into a realtionship because someone once 'banged on' about their happy marriage helps much does it? Already abused by a partner we are now supposed to blame them for being dim and hyper suggestible.

I would prefer to blame the fuckers that absue them

I will absolutely feel no guilt for being very happy in my marriage and for being able to be strong minded enough to do something about it if I wasn't.

You're just having a go SGB, smugness isn't just a mundane married's condition I see.

My last sentance was meant to read
She and my other friends......

I don't go round shouting how brilliant my marriage is. I haven't got a crystal ball I don't know what will happen in the future and beside which it isn't really anyone's buisness.

However if asked if I would recommend marriage I would for a few reasons. I wouldn't expect people to run off and do so because 'Upahill said it was good' that's just mad.

I've rarely heard anybody recommend marriage in a way that was meant to convince the unmarried that it is the thing to do. On the rare occasionas I have heard people (usually women) are waxing lyrical about how wonderful it all is, I tend to think them either very naive and drippy or that they are covering something up. Neither is a very convincing advert for marriage anyway. How would anybody be convinced by another person's experience that their relationship would be miraclously fixed by a few wedding vows?

Why should the happily married take responsibility for somebody else's abusive marriage anyway. That is like blaming exam failures on the person who told you to go to university because it was a wonderful experience or blaming mothers for convincing childless women to have children when the childless woman then feels trapped.

Surely, if somebody enters into a marriage they don't do it on somebody elses say so? They do it as an adult who makes their own decisions and therefore takes the consequences of their own actions. They weren't press ganged into marriage by anybody. Why would you make them out to be a victim of anybody other than the abusive man they married? I don't think it does them any favours and diverts the attention from the abusers as the cause of their misery.

HAha Pagwatch! I so nearly used the example of a car on my first post!!

What's your POV SGB? You have put the queston 'out there' but not backed it up with your ideas.

Are you married?
if so do you feel guilty that you are?

I just imagined asking my nan this question,she has been married for 72years last January and loves my grandad to bits!

I knew someone who was in a relationship with someone who made alarm bells ring loud and clear. i did my utmost to try to tell her it might not be a good thing to marry him, but as a grown adult , she made her own decision and married him anyway. it's not gone well. so IME, your point is moot

I would probably recommend being married to DH as being a great idea but self interest prevents me

SGB, are you serious?

You are attacking women in happy, functional marriages who have the audacity to say thet they are in good marriages and this somehow is letting down the sisterhood?

I have read many of your salient, valuable, thought-provoking posts but this is really a crock of SHIT.

It's made me quite angry.

You shouldn't forget, either, that those of us in very happy marriages have often had to work extremely hard to make them work. It would have been easy to walk out in the early years, but we've both worked hard on ourselves to make each other happy.

My marriage was deeply unhappy, and we separated last year, the relationship was troubled before we married but sadly it was very much a case of marrying someone like my Father, who can be both immensely likeable and charming and also very much the other.

I have no issues with other people being happily married, actually can enjoy that someone else is happy, no bitterness, envy, jealousy or resentment or calls of 'smugness'.

For me hearing of others 'normal' marriages gave me a benchmark for what was actually acceptable in a relationship. As sadly my upbringing had given me a warped yardstick.

I normally agree with SGB on everything but this thread is a bit odd.

People have good/bad/indifferent experiences of everything. Marriages, funerals, childhoods, schools, gyms, childbirth. Everything.

If more people had higher expectations and put up with less crap then everything would be better.

I have a great marriage, I enjoy being married and my life is better for being married. Statistically my children will be happier for having happily married parents.

If people are so bloody naive that they think marriage will solve their problems then they will encounter more than just marital problems throughout their lives.

I think if you are in serious relationship with someone and plan to have kids then getting married is an important legal step to protect your interests.
Abusive men can beat up long term girlfriends as well as wives.
Other peoples miserable relationships married or not aren't my business unless they ask me for help.
I don't think about people in miserable relationships when mine is happy, and I don't contemplate the starving in Africa every time I eat.
Some people have crap lives for a variety of reasons.
I wouldn't recommend someone in a crap relationship gets married. I do think it's a sensible step prior to having kids with a bloke you are happy with or thinking about long term cohabiting.
I don't believe marriage has to be for life however.

A good marriage based on respect and love should be advertised. A common line peddled by abusers is that all marriages are difficult and many posters in relationships with abuse don't seem to know what is normal and acceptable. Those of us lucky enough to be in a good relationship need to point out what makes it good not hide away from some warped sense of guilt.