Should strangers really be advising women to leave their husbands?

[mamabrownbear]

On many threads on MN the general default response seems to always be LTB. I find this really sad and potentially dangerous.

Yes obviously there are situations when it would be best for everyone involved to end the relationship.

However, sometimes I think it's tired exhausted women needing someone to understand them, sympathise and help. Not judge on what little facts a stranger gives you and tell them to make life altering decisions.
Personally I don't think I could advise anyone to leave their partner unless their well being or children's is in danger. I wouldn't want to influence a friends decision on that, let alone a stranger.

I get the impression there are a lot of strong women out there and MN is a safe place to discuss problems. But the solutions on offer seem very black and white sometimes.

I expect to get flamed but it does upset me when a woman is told to leave her partner by people who don't know the full story. We used to be able to talk to our partners and figure things out. Yes life is short but its also hard work sometimes but hopefully worth it...

Few who think it's normal to work 'hugely hard' at a relationship realise it's plain wrong. You even see appallingly sad posts where someone has been assaulted, insulted, ignored, or mistreated in some other way and then they ask .... 'But it would be my fault if I broke the family up. How can I try harder to make this relationship work?'

Plain wrong.

No, not everyone is. However it is often abusive and a well known fact that abuse victims don't think they are being abused. If they did they would leave.

Sometimes we even get "you are a bastard, leave the poor soul".

I am not sure that the OP needs to justify, as this isn't AIBU, but do think that the follow up posts tell a lot more about the viewpoint than perhaps intended?

OP, you say that your marriage is happy with hugely hard parts. I wonder if reading through threads here has made you question whether - on balance - you should LTB. That's not wrong - just about every marriage will have rough patches. You have obviously balanced out the equation and concluded that having lots more very hard parts to come, is OK for you.
Thats fine. Thats what MN is about. Hold something up for inspection if you want to, to see if your thinking is straight.

The thing is, women don't hold those things up for question unless, somewhere deep down, they are fairly sure that things are badly out of kilter. For some, your very hard parts might equal 'totally out of kilter' because marriages aren't supposed to have repeated very hard parts, which can be identified as recurring ad nauseum in the future.

Others might be content, as you say you are - and those people don't tend to post.

Do you worry that, if you posted, the reaction would be LTB.
That's what I read between the lines.

Offred Absolutely. My financial abuse also included making me feel like I was shit with money. I came on to ask how to be less shit. I thought he was controlling with money because I was so rubbish. I'd got the horse and cart the wrong way around.

Not everyone who posts is abused, of course not. But in general most of those who say LTB are aware of abuse, the script of abuse and the blinkers that abused women have over their eyes.

I really don't think many people just say LTB because communication is poor or a couple are too tired to value each other or anything like that.

umlungen
can we add a third....
Relationships - just wasting webspace!!

Editededition - OP has already had that advice, and very recently.

I'm sorry, mambrownbear, but your relationship does not sound as if it's hugely happy, (on the basis of your own posts,) and I suspect that you - like very many posters on the relationship boards - are somewhat in denial about this.

If people are telling you to leave the bastard, I think that you have to ask yourself why they are saying that

I obviously missed that.
Was it on this thread, as thought I had read right through?

Makes a whole heap more sense now, though.

"Do you worry that, if you posted, the reaction would be LTB.
That's what I read between the lines."

well I cant speak for OP, but I felt that way myself, still do

THE TRUTH HURTS

mamabrownbear

Just read a recent thread of yours.

Yours is not a hugely happy relationship.

You are having to put up with a lot.

fromparistoberlin

One thing I think this forum is great at is patience with victims who aren't ready to leave, yet. I think most posters know that it takes a while to be really ready to leave. Sometimes I see people getting frustrated that their advice isn't being acted upon, but not as much as on other forums. I try to avoid expressing that frustration myself, because I want the op to feel welcome to come back when her attempts to work it out fail.

No, Editededition, on another thread that OP started in Relationships.

I have always thought that the amount of advice given to women to bin unsatisfactory men is the best and most useful thing about MN. I can see it actually contributing to a massive and very positive social change - women refusing to accept shit treatment from men and refusing to accept the idea that it is their responsibility to please and placate abusive men and manage a man's behaviour by submitting to him so he won't beat or rape them, or spend all the family money on himself, or refuse to do any domestic work at all.
Because the more women realise that relationships are not compulsory and certainly shouldn't be 'hard work' that is done by them alone, the more men will have to either up their game and treat their female partners as human beings and not just 'women' - or men will become less and less relevant and the really useless ones pretty much extinct.

I agree with solid

Mamabrownbear, your husband is an emotionally abusive alcoholic fuckwit. That's what I posted on your thread in August and that's still true. I'm sorry you don't feel ready to ltb or accept that yet, I understand 100% what it's like to have a tiny baby and the dawning realisation that your supposed life partner is actually a selfish booze hound who is actually quite horrible to you.
I doubt you will LTB for many months or even years (I didn't, no judgement here) but that doesn't mean it's the wrong advice for you, and many many other women.

Totally agree solid. MN is one of the only places I've seen where the prevailing attitude is that relationships are about two equals taking equal responsibility for the home the children money and the relationship itself. Far far too often women are told that men behave a certain way (carelessly, selfishly, abusively) and oh but isn't it annoying but there you go that's life. BOLLOCKS. It is not normal it is not acceptable and it is ok to leave.

What Solid said!

What Solid and Erich said. You are in an abusive relationship with an addict.

I fought and fought for my marriage

I worked hard, tried to talk... When I had reached suicidal feelings, when he had drained us dry financially, when abuse had been physical, verbal and emotional I left

Wish so much that I had been given LTB advice before I wasted all those years trying

I possibly would have been resistant to that advice because facing up to marital failure is hard

I'm confused. What exactly would the problem be if 100% of the posters advised to LTB actually did?

Are you concerned from a social perspective? Or that they might later regret it?

I doubt very much many people get to the point of filing divorce papers without being pretty certain it is the right decision for them.

At which point the poster will be taking RL advice from various agencies / legal professionals anyway.

CAN I ORDER EVERYONE ON THIS THREAD TO GO HAVE A CUP OF TEA AND SAY "OMEGA" FIVE TIMES?

Hands up those who did it....

Society engineered it so marriage was essential for women and leaving a marriage had huge consequences. An unmarried woman couldn't inherit, couldn't get decent pay for her work, couldn't have a child without being labelled a whore and the child a bastard,basically had no adult life without a man. So women had to "work at" marriage, meaning they had to put up with whatever they were given. That's not the case any more and yet people act as though leaving a husband is the end of the world. Of course separation and divorce are hard on children but I don't see how it is ever better for a child to grow up in a house where the parents just don't get on or worse still where abuse is happening. The idea that a "complete" family is better no matter what is just mad.