Can we just be honest and say many women are trapped

[workiskillingme]

In unhappy relationships /marriages for years due to housing /income

I read so many threads on here advising people to leave their marriage if they are unhappy and live the life they deserve but in reality
A) women are often part time lower earners and wouldn't be able to afford to rent a property by themselves
B) couldn't afford to buy their husband /partner out
C) even if they sold their property and had equity would struggle massively to get a mortgage on one income
D) their other half/husband may more than likely refuse to leave the family home and continue to pay the mortgage so the wife and kids can remain there

Can we please just talk about this very real scenario and how women are meant to try and make it work?

I agree this is the reality, especially if kids are involved, if I didn't have kids I would just have moved back with my mum when I split up! Then I would have just started again from scratch. Not so easy with young children!

I completely agree.

Of course this is the reality. Another related reality is that many women use marriage to achieve financial security in the first place. This will continue to be the case as long as men earn more.

Men are not always the winners either. The marriages I have seen fall apart, the wives have been able to stay in the family home with the children even when there is enough equity to buy both parties a new home. Mothers very much seem to be given custody of children especially if they have been SAHMs. I know some very unhappy and bitter men too.
My advice to my sons (and daughter) is to find a life partner who want to work and share both childcare and financial responsibility. From what I have seen in my life, I am more worried about my sons than daughter.

In complete agreement.

I agree - once someone is trapped it can be very, very difficult.

One thing MN is quite good at is warning people not to sleepwalk into vulnerable situations

I completely agree. An even worse situation is where the woman has children without getting married, gives up any chance of a career, pays nothing towards a pension, stays at home with the kids for years and years or goes part-time, and then finds their partner is awful. They then realise that they're not entitled to anything at all.

The thing is they are often as keen as mustard in the beginning and fully onboard with being a doting parent doing 50:50 and making sure finances are all equal
However then as time goes on this can all change and you are screwed

No one is affording mortgages alone now, it’s stay trapped or live in poverty hell for most women

It is true although before long someone will come along to say they did it so everyone will be able to.

Absolutely right OP.

@Hattie72 I’m a woman getting divorced now, two young kids and not able to stay in family home. I think it’s happening less often nowadays that women can stay in the home.

This is my current life OP. I want to leave but I have nowhere to go, I can't afford it. Add to that in cultural pressures to stay in an unhappy marriage, for the sake of the kids and I'm pretty much destined to die miserable in this situation.

Also agree, mostly if kids are involved. You can rent, but that brings financial insecurity in your old age, and the likelihood that your children won’t inherit a property, increasing the chance that they will have to rent too. Can also impact your ability to send your child to a good school, afford tutoring etc - all of which seems to be increasingly important.

Hard decision, especially if the relationship isn’t physically abusive.

This is the truth.

@workiskillingme totally agree.

I have unfortunately had to look at CMS applications due to a horrible situation I am in and apparently it begins once they’ve sorted the paperwork… not the day you make the application. A minor thing really, but if they have a backlog who suffers… the woman (typically going via cms). Why does the man get a grace period of non payment, was the child not his before the paperwork was sorted?

Also, women take on average 12 years longer to pay off student loads because 1 they are out of work more and 2 interest STILL accrues while they are on maternity or out of work looking after children.

There’s plenty more examples sadly, too.

@workiskillingme , in the marriages I am talking about, the women have not wanted to go back to work and this has become one of the main reasons for the breakdowns of the marriages. I agree it can be the other way around too.

Of course it is the reality.

it’s why so many of us drone on and on about getting an education and establishing a career before having children. It’s why we beg women to make sure that when they step out of the workforce or scale back, they have a re-entry plan. No woman expects her partner to turn into a nightmare. Every woman needs to assume it could happen. Those pleas get us accused of classism and sahm shaming, despite many of us having been sahm and coming from a variety of backgrounds. I can’t be sure, but I suspect the unifying factor in women who understand this concept best may be daughters who saw their mothers trapped and were therefore trapped in those households ourselves.

once the woman is trapped though, there is little recourse. The prevention has to happen years earlier. (Even then, children with special needs can throw the best laid plans out the window. )

Which is why many will point out how vulnerable you can be if you work part time, or not at all, or don't get married. But lots of people don't want to hear that.

Everything ponder said

Well there are benefits, and plenty of single mums who increase their hours etc.

At least three of my friends are in this situation. I’ve been a lone parent longer than I was married and honestly, I’d rather be me than them.

But there’s also the element of - the thought of claiming UC/renting not owning/paying for childcare not using their MIL/working full time that horrifies them more than it should.

Well there is always a way of leaving, it's just that for some women it will be a harder road than for others.
In the end it comes down to the woman's own perception as to which is the least worst, which will vary based in her own cost/benefit analysis of her relationship and of the alternative.
But yes, I agree many of us percieve ourselves as trapped, because we don't want our freedom enough to move to a rented flat/bedsit and claim benefits or work a low paid job.

There, as promised.

Yep yep yep.

and Tbf it’s been known fir years that the losers in a divorce are women and the dcs Ho end up in poverty.
Just lol at the proportion of children living in poverty.
Plus many decisions taken by the government have been known to disadvantage single mothers. But still the Tories kept going….