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 ?

It's made me appreciate my DH more - he's wonderful!

I think it just like in life.
You need to identify those who are genuinely giving advice on your situation or just extreme because of their history.

Its always good to get others opinions and advice, on certain threads things can get really horrible and people are vile, which doesnt help anyone situation, but its knowing which bits to ignore and which bits to really think about and take on board.

A bit of both. Reading some of threads on here has made me realise that DH is a pretty good un, some of the behaviour that women put up with is shocking.

However he is not perfect, but will pull him up when I feel his behaviour has had a negative impact on me or DCs, and he takes that on board; vice versa we discuss my own response to situations and how I can improve that.
But I wouldn’t post about all of this on MN because I do feel sometimes that only perfect relationships are allowed!

However MN does feel like a ‘safety net’ in that you know there is always a lot of support and information on here.

I'm single and admittedly extremely fussy and guarded anyway. MN really has made me despise men and want to keep them at arms length even more. The amount of shit women put up with on here is absolutely exasperating.

Domestic abuse
Cheating
Control
Selfishness
Assaulting you whilst asleep
Pestering for sex
Man babies
Can't cook
Won't cook
Can't drive
Bad hygiene
Dirty nails
Shit fathers
Sulking
Silent treatment
In debt
Shit with money
Gamers
Mummies boys
Tightwads
Freeloaders
Overbearing inlaws
Mind games

Fuck that shit. On your fucking bike lads. I'm getting a cat 🐈

But you aren’t talking about your own relationship. You’re just waffling in a general way about your opinions of other people’s, which is not what was asked.

Excellent news! substandard, entitled men who think they DESERVE a woman will have to work harder fo that privilege. You know, treat us as actual human beings rather than a service. Unfortunately the tide of readily available porn set us back decades on this point.

I think it helped me see a lot of things more clearly over the years, even if not at the time.

Exellent list!

Personally, I’d add:

Porn watchers
Smokers
Drug users
Heavy drinkers
And how many women are with men who are misogynistic! This is a crazy one!

But MN has shown me how different women are, thing that are obvious deal-breakers to me, other women are fine with.

Also following this, MN has also taught me not to blindly trust women either.
Some of them automatically side with men, or try and lower other women’s standards as liw as theirs are.

My STBXH would say that MN ruined our relationship (that and reading a book about stepfamilies!).

But he’s ignoring the not in the least bit small details where he, for example:

• Started an argument with me, assassinated my character and threatened to leave me because I he didn’t like my tone when I was in early labour and dealing with contractions at 42 weeks pregnant
• Mocked me for how I laboured in hospital (in the hour he was actually there before the EMCS I ended up with)
• was difficult and antagonistic towards me when I was just home from the hospital with a newborn, recovering from abdominal surgery and trying to establish breastfeeding. Apparently I had to drag myself and the tiny baby around local parks because it was his paternity leave (and he wanted to take his older children to the park). Similarly, he was angry at me for not dragging myself out of bed after a sleepless night with a week old baby who wouldn’t be put down to talk him through how to cook pancakes because he didn’t know how to and clearly cereal wasn’t good enough for his other children. Those are just examples of his general attitude towards me.
• Coerced me into sex starting at less that a week PP. Insisted I should just lie on my side and feed the baby (who would not be put down alone) while he had sex with me etc.
• insisted on having sex with me knowing that I couldn’t get an appointment for a coil (during the sodding pandemic). Then I got pregnant. He kept asking me if I was pregnant and making it clear that he already had too many children (and he didn’t like his older very much) so I couldn’t even tell him I was pregnant because he’d coerce me into an abortion (he has mocked my views on abortion - which are that it’s up to an individual woman but I wouldn’t choose if for myself). Then I had a miscarriage and had to deal with it with no support. When I finally told him, he accused me of having an abortion and said that it was a good thing.
• financially abused me. In fact, he waited til I went into the unpaid bit of mat leave and: opened a new bank account, lied about why, had his salary (which is over £100k so I wasn’t claiming CB) paid into this new account and drip fed just enough into the account to ensure the bills that affected him were paid from the joint account. I had PND (what a surprise!) and he was telling me that I was overspending etc. so I spent the whole time scrabbling about trying to find £3 to buy eggs to feed everyone. Meanwhile, he had accumulated enough savings that he was planning to buy a Porsche! When I finally looked into it and realised what was happening (including that he’d transfer £50 in, realise he only needed to put £30 in and transfer the other £20 out again so I wouldn’t have access to money) he maintained that he had to do it because he needed to make sure his savings weren’t wasted because we had to spend £3k on the house in the summer (he had about £60k in savings as far as I have gleaned at that point).
• subverted the relate counselling he insisted we should go on to enlist the (useless and dangerous) counsellor to his team and better abuse me. And to present himself as the victim.
• threatened to prevent me leaving him with the breastfed baby (under a year) so I had to get the police to help me leave
• was happy to prevent me having anywhere to live, with the baby, so we ended up in emergency homeless accommodation (with no income or access to money) because he didn’t want to be inconvenienced at all

and so on… those are just some of the low lights. There is loads more.

But, apparently it was MN and a book that ruined the relationship!

This!

I agree that, if women supporting each other to raise their standards and expectations in a relationship is ruining relationships, it’s a glowing endorsement of the site. I would imagine MNHQ would be delighted if MN is helping women to recognise that they don’t need to put up with all the shit generations of women before them felt they had to.

It’s made me appreciate DH more tbh.

I think generally mumsnet is fantastic at helping women. Wifework, discovering there was a word for it was helpful in articulating a lot of what I found really uncomfortable about expectations around women.

Yes, I agree with this. I seem to have somehow avoided the horror men out there but am appalled and sad when I read some relationship threads on MN.

I suppose there’s an element of people only posting when there’s something wrong in their relationship. Nobody starts a thread about how amazing their DH is, how he does more than half the housework, does the school run, is kind, funny, generous and great in bed. So maybe MN offers a one-sided picture - only the bad stuff.

I'd be interested in reading these. I shall Google 😀

No. It has made me realise that actually my DP is one of the good ones. Not perfect by any stretch, but he always puts me and DD first.

I think MN reinforced my conviction that any relationship I had had to be emotionally healthy.

In the 10 years I've been on MN, I have walked away from a relationship with my parents, auntie and two of my three siblings.

I used to read accounts from women who had gone no contact with their parents and think how brave but unachievable it would be for me.

Turns out I was brave enough.

@sudocremoneverything

So sorry you went through all that

It made me appreciate my husband so much more. The relationships posted about on here are often just so awful. These men are horrible and the women just seem to have normalised/accepted it. Everytime I read one of those I want to message my partner and tell him I love him.

You have to take everything posted on this site with a big pinch of salt. Commenters only ever have one side of any story and there have been many, many threads where;

Responses don't go the way the OP hoped so the story then changes or other details come out until OP get's what the validation they came for.
Certain points are always believed and other certain points are always challenged.
There is a real lack of balance in many posters responses, very little reasoning as to why a situation may have occurred.

That said the advice, assuming the OP is aware of the whole story and can reason when to apply it, is often golden. There have been some harrowing tales on here and if this forum is the help that helped then it's been invaluable.

Just accept that many situations don't happen in the silo of an OP but that's what the advice given will be based on.

Those who benefit from keeping a woman in a bad relationship and by keeping her unaware that she has any options would probably prefer this site not to tell her otherwise.

The amazing women on the relationships board helped me leave an abusive relationship and not get sucked into yet another one. My life's been a lot better for that and I'm happier. Not sure my abuser is however.

Likewise, yes, does make me appreciate people who have good boundaries, good self respect and good relationships a whole lot more.

So am I. If only I’d had more support to recognise what was happening (and space to talk about it) earlier.

if reading stuff on MN helps women to realise they need to get out and they can (because it is hard to see that you can leave even once you’ve got to the point of realising that the situation is not OK and it isn’t because you are doing it wrong), then that’s a very good thing.

Some of the stuff that my STBXH has done I’ve really struggled to talk about. I haven’t told anyone in real life about the coercive sex stuff, for example, because I really struggle to not blame myself for it (which is ridiculous; of course I wasn’t in a position to take a stand against it at the time). Even when the police were doing their DV stuff when I was trying to leave him, I couldn’t tell them about that. I managed to cover other things. But I just couldn’t actually say ‘yes. He coerces me into sex’ for a whole range of reasons.

I think there’s some value in saying it on MN because it might help someone in a similar position to realise that they are right that this is not ok (despite what he is telling her) to recognise they shouldn’t have to put up with it much earlier than I did. Or to speak up and tell the people around them who could support them.

Even now, my STBXH seems to plausible. He presents as a tiny (he’s 5’5), quiet, reasonable man - one who is totally confused about why I’m so horrible to him. 🙄 Often the things he does are subtle or well hidden and he is very good at playing a hapless but well meaning guy. So it’s important that I remember what he’s actually done to me. And that he thinks he’s done nothing wrong. He’ll apologise about some things, but he won’t even admit he’s done anything wrong in the really key areas.

It is hard to look at him and properly recognise him for what he is. But I have to. And I hope that other women are able to see it in him. Because I don’t think he’s capable of a healthy relationship.

I agree with all of this really.

I do appreciate him more when I read some of the awful behaviour other women experience from partners.

And at times it’s helped me to be clearer about my own boundaries and expectations - e.g. I used to feel vaguely guilty about not doing the present buying etc for his side of the family, now I’m quite confident in leaving him to it and if it’s a last minute panic for him, or they end up with a less thoughtful and lovingly wrapped gift than if I’d have organised it, well that’s on him.

But I do find I’m quite easily swayed and if I’ve been scrolling too much mumsnet I start to get a bit negative and nitpicky with him - it’s a me problem rather than a mumsnet problem definitely. But I have to remind myself ‘is this something I’m actually not happy with or just something that I think mumsnet would frown upon’ sometimes - my DH is great but there’s definitely things about our relationship that wouldn’t work for others, just like others in perfectly happy relationships do things differently to us. I forget that sometimes when I’ve been mumsnetting too much (even though I don’t post about our relationship particularly, I just mean from reading other threads).

This!!!

No, it actually strengthened my confidence in my relationship.

Also, it made me realised how many people live through literal HELL every day, so you should never judge a book by its cover.