Is splitting the only advice people on here are ever capable of?

[MrsCs]

When someone is being abused, or someone is unfaithful, fine I get it, that's good advice.

On the other hand.....I've only been on this website a short time and every blinking thread about relationship problems gets 'why are you together?' 'what are you getting from this?'.

Relationships are hard work, they have good times and bad times, and it might help if people on here had a bit of creativity with their advice! Separations and divorces are very hard on everyone involved, and if it can be avoided it's most likely for the best, unless a couple are genuinely deeply unhappy.

I wonder if, at base, the differences of opinion we have here are about differences in terms of the ideas that we have of what the forum is for? If you think the role of posters should be to support the OP, then you might write in a different way, or adopt a different tone. If you think the role is to offer advice, which may not be what the OP wants to hear, you might write differently. Perhaps this comes to a head around posts about OW.

(I am not saying these differences are a bad thing - I think they actually are a really helpful thing. In a strange kind of unintended collective way, Mumsnet becomes helpful precisely because of this diversity of views, beyond any individual post).

I think it's possible to support a poster while advising and pointing out things that she/he may not want to hear.

I am not going to say to a woman in a relationship where she and the children are abused that she is abusing her children by not leaving, but I may point out that her children are being abused as much as she is but she can and should leave and protect them from the abuser.
I am not going to say that a woman is silly for not wanting to leave, but I may point out that if her partner is not willing to work at the relationship as much as she does, then there is nothing she can do to make it better, and unless she leaves it's not likely that she will be happy.

i also think an aspect of the essence of the disagreement is whether you believe that people are capable of being happy, secure and having a future without being in a partnered domestic unit such as marriage.

so the idea that someone could leave a situation in which they are deeply unhappy is met with BUT there are worse men, this could somehow be rescued, you might not find a better one than this one etc. because at heart it's as if someone is saying go drown yourself in the thames by suggesting someone could just leave someone who makes them miserable to someone who believes on some level that a woman cannot survive outside of marriage.

a as in any. be it good, bad, indifferent anything is better than none.