'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).

Somebody said their counsellor would never say LTB in real life. Mine did (in politer words) and said she would have to do a referral to social services if I didn't. It was actually wonderful to have the choice taken away from me.

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

Sheesh nothing. If this is a direct quote it is totally unambiguous. Means sticking around hoping for the best, waiting for the partner to change ..... which is precisely where a lot of women end up when they are in a bad relationship. At the mercy of someone else's decisions, living on vain hopes, a prisoner of optimism over experience.

Ask any woman who has actually 'given their partner their time so he can change' and I'm pretty sure that the vast majoirty will tell you that the time given was time wasted. The biggest regret you'll ever see from women post a bad relationship is that they didn't act sooner.

That's why I won't be reading this guy's book....

Cogito - if you haven't read the book, then I can see why you might find the above disconcerting. However 99.9% of LB book encourages women in abusive relationships to see what is happening to them and ultimately leave as abusers almost never 'change' (he really really stresses this part).
It is a good book.
If you are not in an abusive relationship, then you have no need to read it perhaps.
It is the one book that will open your eyes to the little drip drip of how abuse starts and escalates.
It gives clear examples of what emotional abuse is - this is probably the hardest abuse to recognise. So for that reason I consider it a 'great' book.
Even if it is written by a man.

providing he is not dangerous/violent

That's right.

And yet, some pps here seem angry at people who have advocated leaving the bastard when he is violent.

Personally, I don't care if people in bad marriages don't leave.
I do get upset (but wouldn't be angry at the person) when people's mental and physical health do get affected.

abusers almost never 'change' (he really really stresses this part).

Cog, if different people are telling you it is a good book, he really supports women, it is ground-breaking work, he cuts assholes no slack...

why don't you just go and read the book already!!

You CANNOT base an entire argument on the few quotes I have given you (to support a debate that I wanted to start).

I find the fact that it is written by a man even more powerful: he can't be accused of being a ball-breaker/man-hater/feminist, and he knows exactly how they think. Firstly, because he hears them and secondly, because he is a man.

He tells one harrowing story (of why there should NEVER be couples counselling with abusers):

the woman took the courage to speak about how he treated her.
he sat there with tears in his eyes facing up to himself, apologising and promising to change
on the ride home, he grabbed the hair on the back of her head and repeatedly slammed her head into the dashboard screaming 'don't you EVER, EVER talk like that again!'

Lundy Bancroft doesn't like gullible therapists too much, and says they are 'part of the problem'.

Read it, Cog, it's an eye-opener.

You started a thread using a quotation from this book which I personally find rather disturbing i.e to wait for your bad partner to change. I CAN start an entire argument based on that extract because that's all you've given me to work with and, as extracts go, it sucks. So I won't be giving in to your demands for me to read it thank you very much.

I've been in an emotionally abusive relationship, know exactly how they work, and would rather trust my own judgement than the judgement of this author who - however laudable the rest of their writings - includes this as part of the mix.

Wobbly, you can hardly blame Cog for not reading the whole book when you have posted a single extract to support your initial argument.

This seems to me to be another thread to justify your decision to stay with your partner while you finish your training. If that works for you, then great - but why the necessity for these threads?

Personally I have very little time for the opinion of someone who criticizes any book without even having read it...

Personally, I have very little time for people who cherry-pick contentious pages out of books and post them without clarification that 99% of the book says something else...

I criticised the passage presented as a sample of the author's opinions ... this isn't a book club.....

Fine, don't read it if you don't want to, cogito. It's not compulsory! But honestly, the book does not tell women to stay with abusive men.

Wobbly, I agree with Sunny that you seem really vested in getting others' approval of your decision to stay for now. Honestly, if you've got an endpoint in mind and you're working steadily towards it, that's fine by me. But sometimes you hold it up as if it's some kind of Jedi mind training that it admirable in its own right, and it really isn't. It's fine as a pragmatic decision (once there aren't children being hurt by it) but it's not inherently worthy as a demonstration of strength or whatever.

The only way to gain perspective is to get away from the person causing the harm, whether it be a separation or a permanent parting.

The old saying "Not being able to see the wood for the trees" is very very true.

Hence LEAVE THE BASTARD.

I have worked in domestic abuse service provision for five years. Mostly with Women's Aid. I've been a refuge, outreach, and floating support worker and consider myself fairly experienced in my field.

It is extremely rare for an incident of domestic violence to be a one off. Domestic abuse is progressive and almost always increases in severity and frequency over time. That doesn't mean one off incidents never ever occur, just that they are rare.

I think that what Lundy Bancroft is doing with his 'giving him time' section is a kind of cost/benefit analysis. He's asking women to look honestly at their decision to stay, or stay for now at least, and work out clearly what it is that they gain from that decision. In what way might it work for them? What are their options? In this way women can take more ownership of their choices and perhaps begin to move away from feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. It is about empowerment and the realisation that you have more control, and more say than you might think.

I think what is most important though, is for people to recognise that a decision to stay with a partner who is abusive does make any continuation of the abuse the victims fault. The perpetrator is always one hundred percent responsible for their behaviour, whether it is the first, tenth, or one hundredth assault. The victim cannot be expected always to know what is going to happen in the future and to somehow prevent it. She may have some control over her own choices - but she has none whatsoever over the perpetrators.

I would never advise anyone to stay with an abusive partner (and for what it's worth I believe serial unfaithfulness and the lying and gaslighting that often accompanies it to be emotional abuse). This is because I do not give advice on whether to stay or go at all - it is not my decision to make and I am not there to judge. Of course when a woman makes a positive decision to leave and to try to change her life for the better then I am delighted for her.

However I think 'leave the bastard' is a very throwaway comment to make. It is so very easy for those of us not in a situation to think, 'Well I wouldn't put up with that! Does this woman have no self respect? Does she not realise the damage she is doing to her children?! I have been in an abusive relationship and therefore I know what is best!' If we were to do our own cost/benefit analysis of choosing to react in this way, one of the benefits would certainly be how self righteous and superior we all got to feel.

What I would ask every single person reading this thread to imagine is this:

You have been in a mostly very happy marriage with a man you love for ten years. The chemistry between you has always been great, you still fancy the pants off him, and you cannot imagine ever loving anyone else. You have a nice house together, a comfortable life, and three wonderful kids who are doing well at school, enjoy lots of extra curricular activities, and seem very content. You are well respected members of your community. One evening when the kids are in bed you are having a disagreement with your husband. Both of you have had a few glasses of wine and are standing in the living room. Your husband is jabbing at the air with his finger in order to make a point, and on the last most salient point, jabs his finger into your shoulder pushing you backwards slightly. You are standing slightly off balance and fall into a hard piece of furniture, bruising your arm. Your husband has never before been violent and is horrified by what has happened.

Can all of us honestly say we would leave immediately? Would we all uproot our children, take them away from their school and friends and music lessons? To live in a refuge, or a b+b, or temporary housing on an estate known for its drug problems? Would we all call the police and see the man we love arrested and go through the court process? What about if we had no access to money of our own and honestly didn't know how we would survive? What about if our friends and family all told us they thought we were being absolutely unreasonable? Honestly, what would you do in that situation?

Just think about it.

I like your post, Fuck, but I think a rather critical "not" got left out in the fourth para!

" You are standing slightly off balance and fall into a hard piece of furniture, bruising your arm. Your husband has never before been violent and is horrified by what has happened.

Can all of us honestly say we would leave immediately?"

Don't be silly. No-one would say that.

Indeed nickname!

I think in abusive relationships, LTB is the most sensible thing to do. I suspect that I'm at cross purposes with most as I'm talking at the less dangerous end of the spectrum. I agree with Fuck that serial philandering (or a long term affair) is emotionally abusive but sometimes think that, with a midlife crisis or a one off one night stand/ short affair, LTB may not work for all.

Offred, you state that that I stay with a man who makes me unhappy. That is not the case. I have posted that I WAS unhappy and now that I am happy because I stayed and worked at our marriage (years ago). My sex life is pretty pants but everything else is great and that's what we are focused on and we are a loving, happy family. People who read my posts can see that's where I come from with my advice as I'm honest about it. My beef is with posters who would walk out on marriages/ "never accept x/y" with no background on why they say such things. I suspect that some have had terrible experiences but that many are just using bravado and I'd hate for someone to be egged on to make a decision as they felt that's what internet strangers expected of her. It's a simple lack of trust in the messenger.

My own mother divorced on advice of friends, who then tolerated similar behaviours in their own husbands and is still bitter.

It also is so saddening that there are so many people out there who are subjected to abusive relationships. It's so hard to fathom and I sometimes look around my circle of friends and wonder if any of them are suffering behind closed doors.

I'm getting the impression from others who've read it that the passage quoted in the OP has done this author a disservice and that it's been taken out of context from the rest of the book and has distorted the author's main message.

Which is unethical reporting.

Despite what I've said about the sexual politics of the self-help book market, I do think this is part of the problem.

Readers who are desperate to convince themselves and others that their choices are wise tend to 'cherry-pick' only those books or passages that support their position, conveniently overlooking the millions of other words that point out their decisions are harmful to them and their children.

It's the same with threads on forums. There might be 99 posts all advising a woman that her husband sounds abusive to her and the children, but the OP who is co-dependent and doesn't want to leave, homes in on the one post that suggests her husband might just be a bit depressed and can't be blamed too much because after all, he's just a man.

So I'm not going to write off Lundy Bancroft's work based on this thread. I've also seen lots of posts and threads from posters who appear to have understood what he's saying rather better.

Better I think to question the motives behind the unethical reporting.

I have been deeply saddened by some of the experiences women relate here, often ending with the question "Is this normal?" Well the answer is usually no it's not, and the sad fact is that the experience of most women (not just those who post here) is that men who abuse are incapable of change. They are however capable of escalating their abuse and control if given the chance.

Keir Starmer QC, DPP, pointed out in a speech last year:

"Nearly 1 million women experience at least one incident of domestic abuse each year (2009/10 British Crime Survey)

At least 750,000 children a year witness domestic violence (DoH, 2002)

Two women are killed each week by their partner or ex-partner (Womens Aid (March 2011)

54 per cent of women victims of serious sexual assault were assaulted by their partner or ex-partner (Stern, (2010)

Victims of domestic violence are more likely to experience repeat victimisation than victims of any other types of crime(British Crime Survey Reports)

76 per cent of all DV incidents are repeat (Flatley, Kershaw, Smith, Chaplin and Moon (July 2010) BCS

Women experience an average of 35 incidents of domestic violence before reporting an incident to the police (Yearnshaw 1997)

19 per cent of women have experienced stalking since the age of 16 (Smith (Ed.), Coleman, Eder and Hall (January 2011)

These statistics are shocking and demonstrate that women are still more at risk of violent crime at home than anywhere else."

Is it any wonder there are so many women on here who urge LTB? Many women who post have direct experience of what it's like to be one or more of the above statistics.

While two women a week are murdered by their abusive partners, and women usually suffer so much abuse before they seek help, who can assume that the abusive situation a woman comes here to discuss can be improved? Most people who post here know full well that abuse can escalate in an instant with dramatic, painful and life-changing consequences for all those involved - including children.

On the subject of self-help books, I happen to think that if every woman read "A Woman in Your Own Right" by Anne Dickson (updated October 2012 - available on Amazon) they would be far better equipped to identify abusers before they embark on a relationship with them.

It's a brilliant book, and in my view it's required reading for every woman. I only wish I had read it when it first came out in 1982, and I'll definitely be getting my daughter a copy - I think 14 or 15 would be a good age to present her with it!

Fuckit I wouldn't, no - but if my DH ever started behaving aggressively and jabbing his finger at me in an argument, I would not find that acceptable!

Oh FFS.

Can we just clarify?

My original point:

1. MN advocates LTB - like, NOW - and gets shirty when that doesn't happen as though LTB is the ONLY option.
2. What constitutes LTB - is it THE ONLY option?
3. Is instant 'Hollywood' change, possible, or does changing (when poss) only come about by sustained, continued, hard work of self-examination THAT TAKES TIME (both sides)?
4. The debate I tried to present was: sometimes time is required. To clarify, bring children up a bit more, re-train, consolidate £££££, and see - considering a family is a valuable unit that shouldn't be thrown away lightly if no violence is present - if he is prepared to look at himself, and meet you half way or lose his family.
5. I produced quotes from probably THE foremost expert on destructive relationships (because those are the ones that are posted about) to support my stance in the debate, which I hoped would take a reasonable considered path. firstly, quotes that support time for his sake, and then support for time for YOUR sake.

And then I asked what everyone else thought (hoping that people would focus on the points 3., and 4..

Why do people have to be 1. abusive, 2. take extreme positions, and 3. personalise everything?

Abitwobbly I agree with you but then, that's because that's what i did.

just want to personalise that for you.. ;-)

In all my family support training I was told that 'leave the bastard' was a very dangerous thing to say to anyone in an abusive relationship. 90% of domestic murders arise because leaving is not carefully planned beforehand so that the victim is safe.

I think what Bancroft is saying here is that leaving as a strong person, with dignity and clarity, can sometimes be better for the whole family than leaving with anger, bitterness and fear.

I find it astounding that so many relationships end in separation and misery, as astounded about the fact that they start in the first place as the separation.

There is NO unethical reporting Beth take that assumption back, or I will report you. How DARE you call me unethical, who do you think you are?

Can't people fucking read and hold two concepts in their heads at the same time. Time for HIS sake (because you know even abusive men are human beings), and time for YOUR sake. Quotes of his Bancroft's suggestions, NOT prescriptions. NOT DIRECTIVES, FOOD FOR THOUGHT. A TOPIC FOR DEBATE.

And, in NO PLACE do I or Lundy Bancroft advocate 'giving more to working on the relationship' or whatever wild accusation that is "Means sticking around hoping for the best, waiting ..." - NO.

Thank you, Fuck. Someone who gets this is a debate. That the cost/benefit analysis might be a better option than straight up LTB.. that is what I was trying to convey.

Sunny, in a debate, that is what you do. You provide quotes and information in order to support your point. It's not sinister, or twisted, it is what one does, to try and start a discussion. What do you want me to do, write out the whole book?

Beth, you have 10 minutes before I report you for that unbelievably insulting comment. Who, seriously, do you think you are, to high-handedly make assertions like that?

I've seen a few of your threads on this subject, and you never get the answers you're looking for. Based on my personal experience, I don't feel able to validate the decision to stay as some kind of self-development strategy. A postponed departure, when the leaving point is clear and imminent and temporarily delayed for sound reasons, that I can get behind.

You can do all the self-development you want when you're out and safe - and your emotional safety counts as much as your physical safety.

I really don't want to hurl abuse at anyone and kick a woman when she's down. I freely admit to projecting from my own experience, which was a marriage where there was a little physical violence but far more emotional abuse. Anyone who told me it was good to stay would have been doing me a disservice. I owe the same obligation to others. Your marriage may be different. But living with abuse is living a horrible half-life, and it's never, ever a good thing.