Why do we have children with bad men?

[Thornhill58]

I got married very young in the early 80's and I had 2 kids very quickly by the age of 20 I was divorced. My marriage was difficult from the start. He was angry, controlling and difficult all round. My questions are why are we still finding ourselves with bad relationships? Why do we have children with bad men? Why are we still in many cases dependent financially on men? Why do we still do just about all domestic chores and child care?
I read in MN everyday about bad relationships. I don't necessarily regret the marriage it was an experience that made me learn what I wanted in a man for the future. What I regret is having children as they suffered so much because of our stupidity.
Why do we bring children to bad relationships?

Also meant to add, I think amongst intelligent educated women our expectations are far higher too . When I left my 1st husband I remember my gran saying, ‘well he doesn’t keep you short of cash or hit you’. Yep, that’s how low the bar was often set in the past

I think it is due to low self esteem. I spent the best part of my teenage years being told I was not pretty. I entertained any male that gave me attention from my late teens to early 20's. I tolerated a lot of shit and spent time chasing them when they did not call/turn up. I did not have the confidence to let them chase me. I thought if I did not make it easy they would walk away as I was not worth it anyway.

One of my relatives who I am rather close to has been through a serious of traumatic relationships. One day I asked her why she tolerated it and she said "I did not think I was worth more than the treatment I received".

I look back now and see the same delusions I suffered from that men were somehow to be deferred to. I suffered intensely at the treatment of 2 men. They did not for a minute I think see me as a feeling human being but an item that could be hurt and damaged. They genuinely did not see any fault in their behaviour. It weighed so lightly on them and they carried on in much the same way with other relationships.
Maybe I chose psychopaths. My now DH is the opposite but I was far more cagey by the time we met and was actively interested in me and my future.
It was only when I invested in myself in a real way that I was able to be who I was not trying to be desirable in a mangled form to an asshole who didnt even regard me as an equal.
We are encouraged to lavish all this love on male figures as girls, teens
..exploited even a bit and then expect the same sort of romance, magic desire to be present on an actual mortal. We r not made aware of the pitfalls inherent in all humans. All of us have the capacity to be utter shits but we forgive all in the name of love.

I think for younger women a lot of it is to do with generational poverty.
Like if you go in to the world with nothing except a load of student debt as a young person , you’re absolutely susceptible to being lovebombed to bits and falling into the trap of guy provides/ woman cares for children.

Disney.

We believe in fairytales and seek instant chemistry/ being swept away. What we should be doing is taking a much more hard-nosed approach to the marriage contract.

I think some women fall into a trap of having to be with someone/anyone— regardless of age and get carried away before common sense or reality sets in. I also think many women have a sense of not being able to articulate ‘get stuffed’ to a bloke.

This. I am often a bit baffled when MNers seem to be doubting their motives for splitting up with a complete arsehole. As though they need justification. When actually you can split up for any reason or no reason. You don't owe them a relationship.

I had plenty of meaningless, very brief flings when I was young but have only ever had 2 boyfriends, the second of whom I married. I would always always rather have been single than with someone who was not actually genuinely worth being with long-term.

I don't know why I'm like that though- good role models? Inbuilt arsehole radar? Luck? Maybe a bit of all of those. Half of the qualities people describe about their OHs are things I'd see as red flags, never mind the faults!

I think some women fall into a trap of having to be with someone/anyone— regardless of age and get carried away before common sense or reality sets in. I also think many women have a sense of not being able to articulate ‘get stuffed’ to a bloke.

^This^

Most women I know must have a man in their lives. Any man will do. I pity them.

I married young to a not great match because that's the only example I had.

My grandfather had left my mum's family. My mum married in search of stability and a family life.
My father did the same. I did the very same as my mother. No surprise there.

Add to that. My parents were boarded from an early age. They weren't raised in families and had really minimal emotional intelligence. Everything was a crisis for my mum, or a gung go project for my dad, feelings were shouted down and there was very little empathy for the children's experience.

We lurched from one stupid idea of my father's to the next. I learned that women and children were subordinate to men's desires. Literally no one in my life ever whispered to the contrary. It was simply how it was.

I was taken out of maths in senior school because "girls can't manage maths" and forced to do biology because "girls need to understand health because they'll be mothers".

When a man came along who'd marry me, my mother was visibly relieved that I was taken off her hands. She had zero advice for me, no support. When the marriage broke down she was resentful of me and couldn't understand why I would leave myself manless.

My entire upbringing was massively misogynist and revolved around awful, shit men, and if I questioned it I was treated like I was mad.

I put it to you that most of the reason that women marry and mate with shit men, is because shit men are mostly what's available, and the women arent trained to look for good men. In fact we are trained to sneer at good men who are in touch with their emotions, etc. Jealousy, possessive behaviour, etc is seen as "he really loves you" ffs...

Its misogyny that's put us here and it hurts us all. Men and women alike.

Having a misogynistic mother and father.

Meeting someone like my father.

It’s not our fault for meeting bad men. It’s their fault for being bad.

All of your stories and experiences resonate with me. You all sound amazing even after so much heartache.
Like some of you I grew up with an abusive father. DV was the norm but that was back in the seventies.
I'm just sad that women still experiencing the usual traps with these awful relationships.
I was the product of my upbringing. Watching my mother being abused set a dangerous precedent. Men were top of the food chain.
I don't feel bad for myself I feel bad for my children. I would have loved for them to have a great Dad not the asshole that I picked for them.

In my case the reasons were as follows: my parents had never 'seen' me either. I'd been encouraged to fit in around the other members of the family and have as few needs as possible. So when I met my x who treated me like that it felt familiar. However my parents were busy and a lot of their bad parenting was borne out of fear that I would use my free will to make a decision that would put me in harm's way. Whereas my x just wanted me to accommodate all of his needs. he didn't care about keeping me safe.

The other reason I think was that I felt a bit invaded by anybody who genuinely did 'see' me. It made me feel stifled and panicky.

And my crappy relationships went on like that until I panicked about missing out on motherhood altogether as well as missing out on a loving relationship.

When I saw my mother always serve men food first and bigger portions...it kind of tells you where you are, quite clearly, in the food chain.
My brothers physical abuse of me went unchallenged.
I went to school black eyed
..nothing happened. He beat me in front of adults...nothing happened. So when I enter the world and men hurt me...I expect nothing to happen it has been normalized.

Some of us don't. I looked for lovely qualities in a man and not passion. I didn't have my first child until 33.

I also think it is the sunk costs fallacy - women continue with a plainly shit relationship because they feel they have invested so much emotional resource they can't bear to give up.

So often women in relationships seem to be married to selfish fuckers, the post opens with a litany of all the ways he has failed them as a husband and a father. Then always the killer line 'I am currently pregnant with our second/third/fourth child' and I just want to wail 'whyyyyyyy?' You knew he was a waste of space after one child, why keep having more? I think some women can't bear to accept all their love and effort is truly wasted so keep going in hope.

This is so true. My brother who is ok to me now, and actually has far less misogynist views than the ones my mother has internalised, was very aggressive to me as a child. I would cry, after he had thumped me, and my mother would walk in to the room and be cross with me. I had to keep the smile stapled on no matter what.

Ah, because the true nature of the fucking bastard man doesn't show itself until we are pregnant or have children. I waited 2 years for a baby. It started when I was 3 months pregnant.

@yellowallpaper also veeeerry true

I often think that younger women go for the fun and excitement relationships and its the 'bad' boys who are fun and exciting. However at some stage the fun must end and we have to grow up and be adults, usually when being a parent, and the 'bad' boys often don't want that.

So women can have three stages,
1 to have babies (following the fun and excitement
2 to be a family
3 to grow old together
Your fortunate to have the same partner for all 3 stages.

I’ve no idea, I’m burdened with having a monster for a father, yeah sure blame the men for being trash, but if no one fucked them and kept breeding with them, they’d die out. People impregnating/being impregnated by people who have no business being a parent, just so they can indulge their desire to have a kid is reprehensible. If the scumminess only became apparent after getting pregnant, at least don’t force more kids into existence.

Well I had kids with a "nice guy" who was very sweet and caring in the early years. Then it all went tits up after we had kids (both wanted them) and it turned out he couldn't be bothered with the shitwork. Then he couldn't be bothered with work either.
People change. Or circumstances change and they can't cope or choose not to.
It's really victim-blaming to suggest that women are at fault for choosing "bad men".

Getting pregnant to an arsehole would be much easier to recover from if the family court system didn't both encourage and facilitate 18 years of control and abuse by feckless, useless arseholes.

Then the woman is blamed or even punished by the family court if she chooses to stay because she's done the maths on her situation and can see that leaving him will leave her worse off (broke, still abused and no longer with the little influence she had) and the kids with Abusive-Fella unsupervised 50% of the time.

I mean, really.

This isn't women's poor judgement or desperation. These men just have to pretend to be nice for 1 year or 3 and BAM they've got a woman for life. The entire system is set up for this to happen.

The system wants us right where we are.

As ever picsinred is right.

I grew up in an awful household with an alcoholic stepfather. All my sisters have had dreadful partners with the full range of violence, controlling behaviour, money issues and the list goes on.

I haven’t, I left home and went to University and have had an exceptionally different life to them. In 22 years DH and I fell out once, No violence or abuse. So after a few weeks of pleading with him to go to counselling I initiated a separation. We for back together after a few months.

The main difference between my sisters and I are I was career driven and I have never had to rely on a man for money. They have always had low paid jobs and long periods of no income as they stayed at home with dc. Having no money can make women extremely vulnerable if they are with a man who wants to take advantage.

Agree to some extent about money and economic vulnerability, perhaps more so now with UC but...women who have careers, professional women who I know, end up with knobbers. Friends of mine have married gibbering imbeciles not fit to clean their shoes...KNOWING it.
At 1 wedding, the groom turned up pissed such was his contempt for the whole thing. But off she trotted. Divorced later....then married ANOTHER fucking cunt.
Her family gave her shit after the divorce. She felt she had to recover lost ground or something daft.

She has turned from so.eone I loved, sincerely, to a bitter, angry woman in who's company I cant be in. Her aggression to her DH comes out sideways and she has alienated everyone. It's like she is punishing herself. I csnt imagine how fucking miserable everyday of her life is. But its damaged her

So easy to say don't have more children with an abusive man. Abusive husbands can turn charm on and off like a tap, making you doubt your instincts. They can leave months between periods of abuse so that you kid yourself into thinking it won't happen again. Having children often makes you financially and emotionally dependent on the man to the point you have selective amnesia to the bad times, and convince yourself it won't happen again. This is particularly true with less 'high level' abuse, so if you have a husband who intermittently rages, insults and frightens you, you can convince yourself it was something at work or something you did that triggered him.

And of course once you have a child or children you just don't want to subject those children to a life of poverty or you have nowhere to go, no support, no family, no job, no skills, don't want to uproot children. If my exH had physically assaulted me I would have left, end of, but because the abuse was more low level plus all the above, I stayed longer than I should, I know, but don't blame women who stay in bad relationships.