Does anyone think MN has negatively impacted their relationship ?

[KangarooKenny]

I wonder if reading MN, and all the ‘LTB’s’, can negatively affect relationships or if it just affirms that it’s over ?

Exactly.

My grandmothers and mother died when I was a child so my memories of them caretaking the family was indeed all about making the man, in this case my father, the center of the universe and the children a close second. There was no place for the woman to put herself first in any way.

MN has made me understand that despite having a good husband and nice children, I've given too much to them and it's time I work my life around myself now.

In the short term, possibly. Because sometimes behaviour that was so ingrained in DH as a man, and for me to accept as a woman, I'd come on here and realise it wasn't okay. And we'd argue a bit. But, on the plus side, because DH IS a good person and man, it's also allowed us to move forward and make changes an ongoing basis that perhaps would have been difficult to do otherwise. I suspect I'd just be a seething, angry mess - rather than learning to be constructive, make changes and be more realistic about what I should be doing AND expecting.

So ultimately, it's made my relationship better. But there's been some work to do to get here.

Me too. I'm gender critical but I've had to hide the feminism boards as they just aren't good for my mental health. If I kept reading them I would find myself absolutely despising men, and I have a son and a husband so I can't live like that. I know it's putting my head in the sand but I was finding myself constantly angry with men as a whole and I just can't go through life like that. They aren't all bad.

I think it shines a light on problems the OP maybe never realised. Whether it's relationships, health, children, pets. I've seen lives saved both men and women which is humbling.

I wish I had been on it when I was younger but it has definitely improved my marriage. My DH came from a household where everything was to be done by the woman and the man was to be served on hand and foot and took the bins out once a week.

Even though I felt like this was wrong, when my DH expected that of me, it was MN that gave me the confidence to voice it and to change the way things were set up. We still aren't 50/50 and I don't think we ever will be because he has executive disfunction, but we are at a level where I don't feel taken advantage of and he doesn't feel like his wants and needs are significantly more important than mine.

It has also helped us both see that our parents relationships are not normal. We both come from parents who absolutely should have divorced. My mother is narcissistic his father is abusive. We both thought yelling and screaming couples were normal as kids and whilst we were not particularly inclined that way ourselves MN has still helped with kinder ways of communicating.

It certainly made me realise that not every woman is going round 'doing it all' and it was ok to comment on the total lack of domestic action on Hs part.

I'm also far more suspicious than I ever used to be of behaviour that seems sneaky or hidden

Yes and no.

It's made me aware that I've a good man who's my equal in childrearing, house stuff, our money is pooled, he's generous, kind, and easy going. And sexy as fuck plus great in the sack.

But it's also made me aware that there's many other women who had exactly what I have, who would have swore blind hers was a good one too.

And reading about the shitheads that so many women put on a pedestal for apparently merely existing, makes me despair - but I hope that the advice they get here makes them see they deserve better.

Yes, I waste way too much time on here getting involved in other people's drama.

I do wonder if mumsnet has been better for womens boundaries, and me are finding it harder to manipulate women who come on these boards.

I think Mumsnet has helped many women. Abusers tend to isolate their victims so it is good that there is an online community that can support women. It is so nice to see posters realize that they are worth more and deserve more than a nasty partner who abuses them.
I also think that Mumsnet has been better at getting rid off troll posters lately which has helped raising the level of the debates.

Previous relationship it was a mumsnet get who said, with my very small issue, my ex probably had a separate family.

she was right. I should go back and thank her for that. She was so so right.

I always knew my dh was a good man and I had good boundaries (thanks mum and dad). I find some of the stories on here truly shocking - how men treat their partners/wives.

Yes and no.

I think I was too quick to leave my exh. He did have issues and was unkind to me and MN helped me see the dynamics but he wasn't an unkind man as such. We became entrenched in our positions and I do wonder if I had gone about things differently would things have been different.

I thought so, at first...

I came off the site for a number of years as I went through a bad patch with my mental health. My ex would blame the site for my behaviour change, and I came off also to keep the peace. I also thought that the site was full of negative folk with the LTB attitude just for the sake of it....

Coming out the other side of that time, things would pop into my mind of things I had read, and I was living that life. I was in a poor state mentally because of how I was being treated, but I swept that under the carpet along with everything else.

Some years later when more had sunk in, I came back and got a lot off my chest, I didn't always agree with the replies that were being posted, and a lot of the time I didn't want to hear what was being said.

I did end the marriage, and now I am in a much better place.

This is why some of the comments of people wanting a blow by blow account of someone leaving really irritates me. I am one of those that took years to be able to make that change.

So to answer your question, yes I thought it negatively impacted me when it was easier to not see the truth.

i wasted 26 years of my life with the most narcissistic abusive bully you could imagine. We lived in a nice neighbourhood in a big house, kids at private school etc. To the outside world we were the ideal family, BUT, He was a womaniser, kept me penniless, controlled every aspect of my life, raped me throughout our relationship because it was my duty to give him sex on demand whether I wanted to or not. The list goes on. I had no other frame of reference as to what a healthy relationship should look like. I was only 19 when we met. He was a total charmer to everyone around us including my own family. NO ONE believed me and I was told to stop moaning, I had it all and was being ungrateful.

I cannot stress enough how different my life would have been if sites like Mumsnet had existed then! I’d never heard the term narcissist. I’ve read hundreds of posts on here mirroring what I went through. It validated what happened me was real. I’ve cried reading many of the posts as they were/are so triggering but I’m so grateful that I now have somewhere I can share this and help women to get out now so they don’t have to endure what I did for so long. It’s nothing but a positive in my opinion. The bonkers posts can be ignored. Forums like this may be the ONLY safe and accessible place abused women can go to make sense of what’s happening to them. With a few exceptions, the support abused women get here is amazing.

I actually wish I had MN back when I was much younger. I actually think it would've saved that relationship, which I regretfully didn't handle correctly.

No. If anything MN makes me appreciate DH more than I might otherwise. It highlights what awful men there are out there.

If I'd had MN when I was young I wouldnt have had DC's with who I did!

Quite mind boggling really...

I wish there had been IRL people to call out abuse.

Even when (ex) friends saw injuries from being physically assaulted they never suggested leaving a relationship (90s).

Not at all. I read / post as a distraction and light entertainment. To be honest i take a lot of it with a pinch of salt as anyone can post anything on here. I imagine a lot threads aren't about real life situations but are thought experiments/ wind up merchants.

However I've seen a few threads where it seems like mumsnet has helped women escape abusive situations which is obviously amazing.

Same... some of the men the women on here put up with sound awful. It's made me count my blessings.

Absolutely 100% agree

Not really, but it does make me feel poor and like my reality is another world to so many. But then I just find the funny and TV threads and have a word withmyself.

My ex would blame the site for my behaviour change

@isthismylifenow My coercive ex kept saying this site was bad and should be called Manhating-net. He kept trying to undermine it. He probably felt (rightly) threatened because people helped me see what he was really like.

Near the end he said 'I feel like I've lost you to Mumsnet.'

I should've got him lost years before.

It hasn't negatively impacted my marriage - in fact I often talk about posts with my husband and we end up having productive chats about our relationship!

But I do see lots of extremes on MN. Lots of women putting up with BS my husband wouldn't pull in a million years and ignoring hundreds of replies telling her to LTB. But I also see women describing perfectly normal misunderstandings, communication issues or mistakes their otherwise good partners have made and being told by choruses of MN users telling her he is clearly being abusive and she must dump him immediately.

I have no idea how it impacts peoples' relationships by posting and reading MN threads, I only know how it affects mine and I can only say what I've seen since joining the site a few months ago.

It's been very helpful in bringing discussion points up with my DH and the kids. I was doing the Freedom Program (as advised here) when we met. It's helped my raise 2 excellent strong feminist daughters.

If I'd known about MN when I was with ExH I doubt he'd have got a look in. But we did have 2 amazing DDs so some good came out of an awful marriage.