to wonder why so many women put up with so much shit...

[BoozeyTuesday]

...from men, post threads crying about how awful they're treated, discount the very good advice they're given to leave the bastard, disagree he is a bastard, make excuses and blame themselves, and stay with th. cunt anyway. What's the point in posting in the first place if you're just going to ignore what everyone says?!

Addiction = victim blaming

Financial security - is what gets taken away - scuppering job and/or prospects of a job; taking money; controlling money - gradually and inexorably:
Most of us set out confident and in employment.
In an abusive relationship there is no 'dynamic that a particular couple select.' abuse is manipulation - not choice discussed by a 'couple'.

You don't stop abuse by trying to work out what was wrong with the abused; in the same way as you don't stop rape by blaming the behaviour of the victim

• you deal with the abuser by recognizing what they are doing as unacceptable, not by interrogating their victims.

pps have said we should be asking why men abuse women, not why it is so hard for women to leave them. Some time ago, in a similar discussion but under a different name, I posted a number of positive and practical proposals as to what society could try to do to educate boys and men regarding their behaviour towards women and girls.

Not one poster responded.

I think the majority of posters on these threads have been victims of DA. It is understandable that they will have a certain viewpoint.

But any other viewpoint will lead to cries of goady fucker, and the final shut down to debate - playing the victim blaming card.

It is wrong to assume that we all know the same things about relationships. We don't.

My mum told me you don't leave. Often. To justify staying with my dad. So I didn't leave either. I didn't even know it was abuse. When was I meant to learn that OP, what chance did I have?

I know it now. No thanks to people with attitudes like yours.

Deja it's not 'playing a card', the OP was victim blaming.

Please, tell me your suggestions.

There is no victim "pay back. however I do understand that some posters feel very empathetic , & invested in the dilemma , & like reading a book, would like to know how it ended. It's not voyeuristic, it's not judgemental, it's knowing if the person "made it", got free, or was saved, its general human nature to hope that people in difficulty are "saved"
the happy ending or just improved

punctuation failure, sorry !

Op, I can only assume you are not familiar with the relationships board.

A few years ago I posted under another name, and began in my own time to tell what was so awful in my life. People were very kind. Even AF:)

However one poster posted much as you do . " if you dont like it, leave, you moaner" luckily for me, many other more sympathetic and experienced posters posted in support.

You fail to realise that sometimes posters really take ages to get to the stage of posting and admitting it's crap. It's a Big thing. Because they know what is coming and it's fucking scary. It takes time to process and accept your married life / relationship is a big fat lie to yourself. So fuck off with your smug shit and try to empathise with posters a bit.

To be honest, after a while I did feel as though a select few MNetters had become far too invested in my life and felt that I owed it them to leave. To the point where one or two of them where following me around the boards posting snarky comments on any thread I started, just for the sake of it.

It did feel as though as there was a quota of advise available to posters and I'd used mine up.

I don't think MN owed me advise and support and I don't think I had a right for people to post the same things over and over on my threads, which is what was happening.

Posters needed to understand that what they could clearly see was a bad situation, was normal to me. It was a shock when posters started telling me I was in abusive relationship. I thought all of that bullying and control was normal and it was up to me to some how manage it and fix it. I'd lived with abusive relationships all of my life and all of a sudden these strangers were telling me my normal was wrong. It felt to a certain extent as if they were telling me the sky was green and expecting me to just accept that.

And yes I'd been conditioned to believe that it was the woman's job to make a relationship work, not just via magazines and movies etc but by my own childhood experiences and my mother too.

I don't think that this happening made me stay any longer or leave any quicker than I would have done had the support I got initially from MN carried on, but I do think it was quite a dangerous thing to have happened. Not only was my belief in myself being attacked at home, but now my support network had turned on me too. I mostly let what is said on MN slide over me, I take on board the good and ignore the snarky bits, but I often wonder what would happen if the same thing happens to a more sensitive poster. I see many posters stating that MN has made them cry, not necessarily on the relationship boards, but in general. MN never had that power over me, but those threads did upset me. I felt more lost and alone than I ever had done since accepting that my ex was abusive. Had I been the kind of poster who would cry when posters unanimously told me I was twat for being a twat, how much worse would those threads have made me feel?

I left in the end because one of my attempts to leave (I'd made several and ultimately chickened out before seeing it through) worked. I got railroaded into leaving really by RL support I had sought out during my final leaving attempt.

There is so much wisdom on this thread from Fontella, WellWhoKnew and a dozen others, that it's worth having to read such a hurtful OP.

It took me years to leave my abusive H, in part because of attitudes like yours, OP: of course if it's so easy to leave, it's entirely my fault that I and my DC are in this awful situation, and unless I actually leave I should be too ashamed to tell anyone. Catch 22. Thinking like this makes it almost impossible to ask for help, and having been systematically isolated and disempowered by my abuser, I couldn't just leave without help.

dejarderoncar it may be worth posting those suggestions again i Relationships or Chat?

Somebody raised this earlier, but I do think that educating both girls and boys about spotting and avoiding perpetrating abuse as part of an education about healthy relationships is a huge gap which we are crying out, as a society, to have filled.

Its a tricky subject to approach and there would be a lot of political/cultural sensitivities which I can imagine would make it problematic for school curricula etc.

And yet with all the publicity that domestic abuse has had it has never been more necessary.

I remember my sex education lessons at secondary school with horror in retrospect. I went to a fee paying girls school which was very ambitious -- the girls were pushed hard academically and a very high proportion went to Oxbridge, almost all onto tertiary education of some kind. It was not the kind of school which either ignores girls or just assumes they are on a fast track to marriage.

And yet the sex education classes literally consisted of nothing more than the rudiments of biological reproduction with about an hour somewhere in the syllabus about "relationships" which consisted, more or less, of "one day you'll meet a boy, think he's handsome and get married." That was it....

I dare say things have advanced a little bit this was the late 80s/early 90s but the sheer number of threads on here alone tells you that there's a serious problem which isn't being addressed systematically.

We need to get to a point where DA is as taboo in our society as racism, and where the red flags are recognisable to teenagers. This is something that a concerted schools programme, accompanied by wider publicity, could achieve in a generation. Yes, people would poke fun at it for being PC or corrupting the moral fibre of marriage, various religious groups would object, etc. But like most of these campaigns, enough of it would seep through into the general consciousness to make boys wary of DA and its associated behaviours and make girls confident of spotting the signs before things had advanced to far.

Of course a lot of DA is underpinned by the obsessive stress placed on "romance" in our society (magazines, advertising media etc). And you can't legislate DA away.

But I do think we could make serious strides if this were taken up as a policy by a government and implemented in schools.

Well if only life waS that simple for these poor women/men to just walk AwAy. I guess you're a happily married women who's never sAw a relationship worry in your life.
Reasons why people may stay on an abusive relationship,
Financial reasons
Feeling that they have nowhere else to go
They become that down trodden that they become trapped and feel that they don't deserve any better.
This is probably the most important one. They get threatened if they do leave them.
Your life might be like bubble gum flavoured clouds and but please be mindful that not everyone is as fortunate.
I imagine this thread has/would upset a lot of abused women/ men

Oh sorry boozy just read about your past troubles. It's great that you found the strength to walk away but not everyone has that strength.
However is it not fair comment to say " you shoULd be more understanding that anyone.

I was stuck in that catch22 that somebody mentioned. Until I'd left I couldn't tell anybody and had to maintain appearances. As soon as I left though I wasn't ashamed of it (well I was a bit, but I could tell people because I'd taken action).

That's why I think now if I'd told people "I need to start planning my exit" it would have kept me from slipping back into the fog.

If somebody lacks the empathy or brain to work out why people put up with shit, they are missing a huge part of what makes us human.

I feel sorry for the OP.

D0oinMeCleanin I do hope I wasn't one of the posters who made you feel bullied. I remember saying something like I thought you were going to leave him already and here it is x months later and you're still there. I meant it as a jollying along thing rather than criticism. I'm so sorry.

I too am angry that women put up with shit. I did for 23 years. Unless you have been there it is difficult to understand. I have never had much confidence and my dear ex destroyed that which I did have. I could see no way of coping without him. When you have a mortgage and two children it is not so very easy to walk away if you believe you are fat ugly stupid and useless and that nobody else would give you the time of day.

No, it wasn't anyone on this thread Annie, but I don't think it would helpful to go naming names. I think at least some of those posters meant well and were genuinely concerned for me and frustrated with me, but a few others just jumped on the bandwagon for a bit of a kick.

It took me a long time to accept that it was abuse, then even longer to accept that he was doing this deliberately. He wasn't accidentally abusing me because he didn't know any better. He wasn't just insensitive and bit daft, he was nasty and calculating and knew exactly what he was doing.

He still does. He nicely helped me out with some food not so long ago, when I'd had some time off work and was struggling a bit. Not much longer after that he started telling me my perfectly healthy, well cared for, very well fed (as in quality of food, he's not overweight) terrier is getting old and sick and I need to accept that he will die soon. Needless to say any more offers of food for myself and my pets will be binned, in a bin far away from my dogs. My instincts tell me the giving of food and the belief that my terrier is ill is groundwork for something far more sinister but a big part of me still does not want to believe he would be so cruel. I won't be giving the dog any more food or treats from ex and won't be leaving them unsupervised for even a second, but I don't fully believe it and still have a long way to go as far as seeing ex for what he is fully.

I, as many abused women will tell you, have been conditioned all of my life to accept this as normal, as something that is my fault and something I need to fix.

When I walked into the housing office and told them why I wanted them to help me leave, I half expected them to tell me to get a grip, go home and clean my house and be a better wife. Even after years of MN telling me I was still shocked when the housing officer told me I was a priority situation because of domestic abuse.

Conditioning is a very powerful tool for an abuser and the longer they have with the victim, the more powerful that tool becomes. You often find that abusers attach themselves to vulnerable women who have grown up with abuse and know nothing better. These women aren't going to just up and leave as soon as someone tells them to. They don't know how. They don't believe it's abuse, they believe it's their fault. They don't believe they are worth any better.

Ime getting frustrated with posters for not leaving quickly enough won't help, it will just make them feel even more a failure and even more worthless.

Gently pushing posters towards outside help, one step at a time might be a better help to them. I left only when the housing officer made me and she did make me leave, if I had a house viewing or an appointment with the lettings agent she'd be on the phone threatening to march me there herself if I was having second thoughts.

I am sorry to see you guys fighting over this but Booze has a point. I have met so many women in my life that needed to get away from their husbands for this reason or the other but did not. I would always get angry thinking, what the heck. So the question does stand, WHY. However, it is the fact that many do not, and the reason why is probably deep in our psyche. I do not think that it is financial or material at all.

Deep inside a woman feels responsible to keep the family together. Also lack of self confidence, or God knows what.

It is hard. That is what it is. Very hard to leave.