'Leave the bastard!'

[Abitwobblynow]

Is the MN common refrain. In fact, it is presented as THE ONLY option, and MN gets very shirty (and some people can resort to nasty labelling) if the OP declines from doing that - straight away.

But is it the only option? Is it always the right thing to do, straight away? Here is Lundy Bancroft:

'There can sometimes be advantages to giving your partner your time so he can change.

You might use the time to construct a plan of exiting as safely as possible, with as many sound emotional and financial resources a s possible - this is especially important if your partner is violent or threatening, or has indicated that he will get financial revenge if you leave him.

With a dangerous partner, you might use the time to hope that he loses interest in you, so that he is the one to leave you, which can be safer.

Giving him your time might give you the sapce to become very clear about what is happening; going through repeated patterns can give you the opportunity to identify them, prepare yourself emotionally for them, and see the range of his ability.

Giving him your time can allow you to manage major life transitions, such as caring for infants or very small children, or dealing with a relative's sickness and death, with fewer disruptions than leaving might ential.

Giving him your time can allow you to articulate for yourself what exactly your 'deal breakers' are so you are more prepared to insist upon change, and to reinstate for yourself your standards and your clarity.

.., when safety is not an issue, can allow you to detach yourself from the intense care and responsibility for him, and reestablish yourself as a priority, even while in the relationship.
Giving him your time can assuage the voices in you that say 'what if', or 'I have to'... These voices can't be heard and these expectation met until you can meet them squarely and feel confident in your conclusions.

Giving him your time, if things are noticeably improving, can connect you to the love, hope and expansive feelings you felt when you first met.
... if things are noticeably imporiving, can afford you some of the acknowledgement and healing that you desire and deserve.

Giving him your time can help you feel certain of yourself as a person who has treid everything, who is committed to relationships, who believes in giving people a chance.
Giving him your time can give your children a chance to be in an intact family. (Of course, the costs can quickly turn too high for you, and for your children also, so be alert to when the costs start to outweigh the benefits).
Giving your time can spare you the pressures of having to go through finding a new partner and building a new life.

THE DECISION OF WHEN TO STOP WAITING FOR YOUR PARTNER IS A DIFFERENT DECISION FROM THE ONE ABOUT WHEN TO LEAVE HIM.

It is possible to leave your partner but remain attached to waiting for him. ... And just as you can leave but keep waiting, you can do the opposite: stay and move forward...

So I think here at MN we should honour the inherent wisdom of women who come here with destructive partners. Bottom line, I do believe they weigh up their options and they are doing what is best for them (whilst they gather strength, money, education, jobs - whatever the resources needed to move on).

My feeling is that most people who end up pouring out their soul on an MN board about some violent/abusive/lazy/unfaithful shit of a partner have already given so much of their time and so many chances to redeem themselves that to suggest to them that they should 'give him your time' would be absolutely criminal.

I also think too many women are shackled to this self-sacrificial notion that they have to be the one to 'try everything' when it would often be a lot healthier to stop trying and start walking. And what is this crap about 'the pressure of finding a new partner'.... ? Women should be under no pressure to hook up with a man at any time, ever. Being single is not a sin.

I hear that book recommended often and have never read it. Won't be bothering now. Sounds very male-focused...

I'm concerned that someone should take time with a violent partner to 'lose interest in you'. Most often it's about power over the victim, so I can't see how they would lose interest, unless the abused capitulates completely.

Also, if violence is an issue, it can escalate quite rapidly so isn't waiting longer increasing the danger? What about children and the impact on them? You can't include children in plans to leave (they aren't the best secret keepers) so instead they see the victim taking it more.

I agree with cogito really. I think also when Ltb is said, the idea is not necassarily pack and go now but prepare for a future without this git.

I do wonder why people/women feel this pressure to stay in unhappy relationships. Why they work so hard when the man is doing nothing. There is for many a fabulous life after divorce.

Well, a lot of that makes sense.

The very first thing though, is to concentrate the mind on what does need to change. That isnt always easy, is it? It is hard to stay and at the same time keep focussed on monitoring change properly- I find it hard, anyway, and have to keep thinking about current issues. And sometimes too bloody often.

Also, if you decide not to LTB, it is still a process, when you stay, if there has been a big rupture eg disclosed or discovered infidelity. What I mean by a process, is that you (me, anyway) still find yourself weighing up the leave/stay or will it or wont it work out equation, sometimes even if you have committed to the relationship itself.

So I have decided to stay, ABW, and you have decided to leave, but neither of us are entirely certain of what long term picture.

In my case, it depends on how far he can keep up the gains we made in the early months, and how far he is prepared to move forward with seeing me as a true equal with regard to the rest.

I think a lot of very weak people hang on to self-help bollocks in order to give themselves an excuse for staying in relationships that make their children miserable.

Beth... riiigghhttt [hhm]. Judgemental, much?

A lot of the people posting on MN are in abusive relationships or relationships where there has been some major infidelity/betrayal. With one or two notable exceptions, in RL, I find that when my friends complain about their partners/husbands it is not anywhere near LTB territory and it's rare that I'm even thinking, let alone, saying, they should LTB.

I'm only speaking from personal experience here...and no offence to anyone on the board....but things were pretty damned tough for me before I started thinking about sharing my personal problems with strangers on the internet...and by that stage LTB was the appropriate advice.

Agree with other posters that LTB is about preparing for life without the partner....timescale for leaving/kicking them out/moving on/whatever can vary. I'd rarely suggest someone to just leave....in fact advice frequently includes:

• see a solicitor/CAB/WA etc and find out what you're entitled to
• find somewhere to live on temp basis...or...
• try to stay in the house yourself, get partner to leave if possible
• work out a plan for leaving
• get valuations etc

One of the most valuable pieces of advice I had, and have passed on, is once you're considering ending the relationship, to stop telling your partner everything. You need to start to make up your own mind and they have a vested interest, usually, in you staying together so telling them your thoughts, plans etc is not helpful and, if they are controlling, gives them ammunition to manipulate you/the situation. This goes against the common advice you get to 'keep talking; keep communicating...etc'.

The debate is already generalised.

Because lots of people are living with people who are not "abusers" but who are just selfish etc. The board is full of them....those married to lazy men, workaholics, know-alls, you name it.

If those people decide to change, it is a process not an event. Certainly, a lot of time is wasted on trying to change them yourself, because you cant, and enabling them too.

Yes and I make no apology for that.

Being judgemental's just fine and completely appropriate when it means putting children's right to live in a safe, peaceful environment first.

Children get no choice other than to live with their parents' bad decisions. Their choices come later- and they tend to make very strong and negative judgements towards both parents who provided them with horrible childhoods suffered in toxic environments.

Now, my feeling is that just to hear the phrase 'leave the bastard' is actually really really helpful. I think there is so much societal/cultural and emotional pressure to make a marriage or relationship work, that women forget that it is not ok for their partner to treat them badly. It is healthy to hear that it is also ok to choose to end the relationship if it is making the woman unhappy.

Although Lundy's book is good, I think that it doesn't matter how much time a woman in an emotionally abusive/controlling/manipulative relationship has, the move to leave will never be seamless. Precisely because of the emotional battering she has had. I wish someone had managed to get through to me earlier that it was ok to leave a lot sooner, because I gave myself time to prepare to leave, but I think I would have recovered faster just simply by going earlier.

Still a prevailing view that it's better to stay in a relationship than come out of it and that relationships 'should' be hard work. At the same time we celebrate wedding anniversaries as if they are big achievements and compare marriage to prison sentences.

Really... kids can be fine whether they grow up with both parents in the same house...or if their parents live apart as long as the parents take their responsibilities to the children seriously and look after them properly.

Why do so many people need to prove that their marriage/relationship is bad enough to leave? In future I'm going to try to have relationships where both parties keep showing behaviour worth staying for. Am I a hopeless optimist? Perhaps I am...But also happy to be single if the relationship isn't enough fun.

Good advice LF.

Only a fool wouldnt keep their mind open to working out alternatives if they are in an uncertain relationship, regardless of the deal on the table.

I think it takes some people more time than others to see the wood for the trees. Personally, I have found my last year completely invaluable, and perceived a heap of new stuff about myself from reading mn and 'self help bollocks'. We dont all spring from the womb fully rounded.

I think an awful lot of men would benefit from the advice "Leave the female bastard" too, allowing both partners to move on to a hopefully more happy relationship.

Yes, yes - Ltb is an important counterbalance to the prevailing culture of 'oh men can't help it- you'll never find anyone else - you'll destroy your children etc etc' that is everywhere.

Cogito, it is an absolutely fantastic book. He deviates from 'therapists' (doesn't seem to have too much time for some of them) in that he calls complete BS on destructive men. What is wrong with destructive (that is: immature, addicted, personality disordered, traumatised [soldiers], and abusive) men is not their terrible childhoods, their awful parenting, their substance of choice, what is wrong with destructive men IS THE WAY THEY THINK. And this is how you can tell the way they think, how they are running away from themselves by abusing you, and whether they are really changing.
He doesn't give them any slack at all.

The other thing he does, is firmly tell women to STOP focussing on them, and to put their effort and their creativity and their nurturing back on themselves, to develop their own growth instead of hoping he will, move forward and create a new life.

It is a seriously kick-ass book! There is also a very sobering chapter on abusive men and the legal system, how they use the divorce process and custody to continue to manipulate and control, and how unwitting court officials/lawyers assist them (because they don't recognise it). He says that courts need to wise up on this...

So I thoroughly recommend.

fiventhree you and me both....self-help-bollocks is the bollocks.
I'll never forget how much you helped me almost a year ago to date! I've thanked you in private before ....THANK YOU...in public too. Here's to MN and S-H-B!!

OMC, there are female bastards too... just don't seem to come across so many of them They do say that a man never leaves a warm bed for a cold bed... I'm not sure they say that about women...but I know there are a few shockers out there.... not denying that.

Lundy is definitely pro-woman and hearing her voice, and not making any excuses for these men.

I liked the book, but a little bit of me does wonder whether all men mightn't be described there somewhere within the various behaviours, or am I too unfamiliar with what a good relationship/man should look like?

Beth, the problem is that very often they are tremendous Dads, just terrible partners, though. That makes it a hard dilemma.

5/3 absolutely. Those self-help books are useless because they assume reciprocity (ie a healthy relationship). Lundy Bancroft makes it absolutely clear that destructive men don't DO healthy because it requires the hard work of facing themselves and admitting they are the problem, and often will only change when they are going to lose everything ie you are out the door and mean it. And, often they will not change even then because they can switch of what they feel like a light.

So I am using these years after 20 years a SAHM lady wot lunches (what a mistake) to squirrel ££, collate docs, get qualifications, develop my fledgling career, learn to stand still in the face of provocation, get clarity and stop the old dynamics of threat and counter threat that don't change whether you are 1000 miles away, waving a divorce decree or in the next room.

There is only one person you can change, and that is yourself.

Lovingfreedom

I suspect a lot of men get the nudge they need when they have an affair; there are so many men who also fear losing access to their kids (rightly or wrongly) they stay in miserable relationships.

More of them should leave before they have affairs. I should have done.

If they realised they could keep access to their kids, and how bad it was for them (and their partners) to stay unhappy... they should go.

It's written by a man.... figures...

Children get no choice other than to live with their parents' bad decisions. Their choices come later- and they tend to make very strong and negative judgements towards both parents who provided them with horrible childhoods suffered in toxic environments.
Very true Beth.

...so why do so many of the guys who have affairs all come crawling back even when they've seen how much access they can have with their kids etc? Sorry but if you had the affair you're the 'bastard' not your wife.

I would argue that these men are not tremendous dads at all if they treat their female possession (this is what abusive men regard their woman as) with such contempt. A tremendous dad and a terrible husband is a contridiction in turn.

The children pick up on all the unspoken vibes and perhaps even blame themselves for the ongoing problems between their parents. We after all learn about relationships first and foremost from our parents.

Some women in abusive relationships do write, "well he's a good dad" comment even though they themselves can and more often than not do write NOTHING at all positive about their man.

Lovingfreedom don't look to me to disagree with you.

I shouldn't have had an affair. I should have left the bastard a couple of years before I did.

Do that many come "crawling back"? I'd never have done it.

'Give him your time' is really sticking in my throat actually. Why is it always the woman 'giving'? 'Don't give him a second more of your precious and valuable life. Keep it entirely for yourself' would be more accurate.