Why do people stay in unhappy relationships?

[Cluelessat33]

I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who ended their marriage a few years ago, and I'm aware there are other factors such as abuse.

But where there is no control and abuse, why do people stay in relationships that are clearly unhappy and make them unhappy. I was reflecting on this the other day when a friend asked me if I'd consider marrying again.

I thought about it and reflected that very few of my close friends in established relationships, whether married or not, seemed to be happy. And not jyst run of the mill unhappy, but deeply unhappy with their spouse, their married situation, who feel lonely, unloved etc. Why would you stay?

I'm not saying the alternative is perfect. It's hard. finances are hard, single parenting is hard. But surely it has to be better than being lonely in a relationship with someone. I've been there so I understand this.

This is such a dumb-as-a-brick question. Aren't you ashamed to ask such a stupid question??

Do you really think whatever comes after a breakup is inevitably 'better than being lonely in a relationship with someone'?

How about the aching pain of handing your kids off on Sunday knowing you won't see them again until Wednesday, EVERY WEEK? How about knowing that when they're not with you, your kids are living in a house with their other parent's new partner, who resents and dislikes them just for existing, and your ex's new kids, who get favoured? How about not being able to afford basic necessities for your like shoes and coats? But hey, better than you, an adult, feeling a bit lonely and misunderstood in your relationship, right? Happy parents, happy kids?

FFS. I do not believe people should stay in relationships if they would be happier out of them. But no decent parent's happiness exists outwith the wellbeing of their kids. So the second there are children in the picture, this immature, bambi-eyed faux-confused "but why would you stay in an unhappy relationship???" nonsense is just bloody stupid.

Reproducing with the wrong person is a terrible mistake, it's a terrible thing to have done to the children you love more than anything in the world. And everyone knows its a bad idea to expose children to an unhappy relationship. But once you've made that mistake, the bell can't be unrung. And at that point, you're making choices for your kids that come from a range of options under the heading of 'not good enough', and you have to choose the least crappy option. For THEM. It's not all hearts and flowers and 'you deserve to be happy, you go girl'. That shit is for kids, not for grown-ups with responsibilities to others than themselves.

See look, this is what makes your question stupid (although well done for leaving your abusive relationship). You left because the alternative was worse for EVERYONE - you and your kids. Your husband was abusive, and this would have impacted very negatively on your kids. There's no way to effectively co-parent around abuse.

But simple incompatibility, lack of spark, 'grown apart' - those are very much grown ups problems which don't need to make the kids' lives miserable in the way that separation, two homes, missing out on one of their parents all the time, potential future half-siblings can. You really can't imagine how a relationship can be bad, but not bad enough to throw your kids under the bus to be free from? Just because yours was bad enough that leaving was the better option?

Been looking at Right Move this morning, to see what I could afford alone. There is nothing decent, just nothing I would even consider moving me and the DC into. Plus we have a £20k penalty if we leave our fixed mortgage before the term ends in 5 years time. So I am stuck. I have this image of my own home with clean white sheets, clean/neat lines, a fresh smell throughout, beautifully decorated and I would never have to listen to H sh*tting loudly in the loo again. I'd have a new wardrobe of clothes, a new lease for life. But, it would mean me working a 50-60 hour week to sustain. For now, I have the large house which is kind of decorated how I like but certainly not finished (the edges need doing, type of thing) and never will be due to constraints from H. I have nice holidays - Thailand, USA & maybe a cruise around the Med this year. who knows what the future will hold though

@herewegoroundthebastardbush I think that rather is the point of my question though. Because I've done it. And it's was bloody hard, even though abuse was involved, don't mistake that it wasn't the single hardest thing I have done.

But life isn't the turd this side of marriage or whatever 2 parent set up you have that many like to portray. It isn't the shitty end of the stick for kids. Genuinely my daughter has two happy parents, who give her as much love as she needs. She is happy, healthy and confident. She's not living in the least worst option. She's thriving in a happy environment. I'm sure finances are a huge factor. Once again I've been there and I've fought that fight, and continue to do that every single day. But all these people who genuinely think they hide their unhappy, sad, pretty unhealthy relationships from their children are living on another planet. Kids are not stupid and pick up on these things. I think a lot of your pretty strongly worded posts come from the perspective that being a single parent, or living in that environment is something awful for all concerned. I'm coming from the perspective that it isn't. I mean it's not all unicorns and rainbows. And money is tight. But I honestly don't believe my daughter wants for anything, certainly not emotionally.

Mm
Kind of feeling sorry for your husband.
Most of your post seems to be about property/lifestyle.

You are right that your peace is worth fighting for. Absolutely. Nevertheless, an abusive person does not stop being abusive when u divorce. They are most likely abusive in their relationship with children etc when you are not there to oversee. It’s not like once you divorce you solve all their controlling issues, aggression, stalker tendencies. No way should anyone be any ones punchbag but coercive characters can continue to be quite a dickhead presence especially when it comes to kids and arrangements. It’s a very complicated situation and a different outcome for everyone divorced or not.

But if you are fighting minor problems or things like indifference that can’t even be classed as problems then it’s not worth the hassle. That’s what the vast majority here is saying - marriage is what it is…not a fairytale and we know that greener grass is not waiting for any of us, it’s just a lot harder fighting through the bills on half or quarter of the income, so much do majority of us prioritise comfort over soulmate hunting.

Were your parents divorced? Did you have step parents, half siblings? If not, you, I'm afraid, have not the faintest idea what you are talking about. Get back to your daughter when she isn't a sweet, accepting child and talk to her about this part of her life when she's 30. This is not a successfully executed mission you've accomplished, it's an experiment in progress and the subject of the experiment is your daughter. And I'm not saying you haven't done the right thing. As you say, there was abuse, children shouldn't have to grow up with abuse. But I am 'the other side' of a childhood that included family breakdown, and no-one would have believed when I was a sweet, apparently jolly, high achieving child the pain I was in, or the mess it would make of my psychology.

err that is the key theme to this thread - why are you staying in an unhappy marriage. It's unhappy (for me) because my useless lazy H does nothing in the house in terms of cleaning, tidying, sorting etc. he has never once made a bed, hoovered, cleaned the bathroom, washed the DC clothes, swept/mopped the floors. And that is just naming a few cleaning things he doesn't do. The list is huge. He is happy to live in squalor, given the chance. He never shows any interest in me or what I am doing, never asks about my nights out or weekends away with friends. He doesn't even know if I work PT or FT, which he admitted the other day.
BUT, I dont want to give up the nice house, holidays & general lifestyle. I work FT, I contribute to the pot financially on top of running the house/life admin/DC school admin and everything else in doors/DC related that all falls to me. I am also pretty sure that H wouldn't want to give up the nice house, holidays & general lifestyle either. Neither of us can afford these things alone, we need the joint income. So maybe H is also unhappy but stays for the same reason as me.

Well @herewegoroundthebastardbush, I'm so very glad you have an exceptionally detailed insight into my personal history, and my daughters mental state. I'm 34. I come from a deeply traumatic upbringing, in an environment with 2 incompatible parents who created a damaging and toxic environment. And I am still living with the repercussions of this to this day. So yes you come from your perspective. But mine is equally valid. How dare you make such damaging statements about their choices. Or not choices as they actually really are. I merely asked for people's thoughts. Baring in mine my background, it is understandable that I perhaps struggle to understand why staying for the kids doesn't always seem to be the magnanimous thing it's portrayed as, mainly because in my experience, it doesn't always actually benefit the child. I think your comments, which have been deeply and highly critical of those who have had to make perhaps one of the hardest decisions you can make, are pretty unnecessary and certainly do not make any attempt to understand the other perspective. Which afterall is the point of my original post.

@herewegoroundthebastardbush and actually I do have half sisters from my mums previous marriage. Who I love and consider as much of my sister as my fulls sister. It's never crossed my mind they are any different. We all have unconventional upbringings. Most of us do not come from a conventional 2.4 suburban upbring. We have half siblings, Step siblings, step parents, adoptive parents parents we'd rather not know. Nobody has a conventional family. So most people do have the faintest idea of what you are talking about. To make an assumption otherwise suggests you don't realise how normal it actually is for parents to separate and remarry, and for families to be complicated.

So you've had a traumatic upbringing with parents together, that makes you think divorcing is better. I have a traumatic upbringing from parents divorcing - the flip side of the same coin.

The difference is, I don't bat my eyes and wonder "why do people not stay together for their children, surely their stability is the most important thing??" because I appreciate that it is COMPLICATED, and that people are by and large trying to do the best thing for their kids, which will be different in each situation.

Lacking that capacity to imagine different people in the same situation as you having good reasons to make different choices, or even different people in a different situation to you making different choices, to act like that is just INCOMPREHENSIBLE enough to be worth asking the question on Mumsnet, frankly makes you sound a bit simple. which was all I was saying.

And yes, I'm well aware that dysfunction is common. This is why I was actually able to get through school, all the way through secondary school, without losing the plot too much, because all my close friends' families, the ones whose homes I was in and out of, were fucked up in their own ways too (either divorced, or horrible marriages, or just generally immature people failing to adult properly) so I just thought all families were like that. We must have all been drawn to each other by sonar or something.

But then I went to uni and met a wider range of people, and my first uni boyfriend's family were like the fucking Waltons, and everyone in my year went home for the holidays like that was completely normal, and I realised how fucked up everything was and had a total breakdown.

I love my step sister, I love my half brother. I consider them my family. But that doesn't change the fact I grew up with my stepmother (who I also love, and who loves me in her own way now we're all adults) favouring my little brother enormously, still does, because he's her blood child and of COURSE she loves him more. It doesn't mean I wasn't enormously jealous of him as a child because he never had to be without his mum or his dad, he never had to choose. It doesn't mean I wasn't devastated when my mum remarried, because that meant she would never get back together with my dad (even though I didn't ever remember them together and knew fine well they were enormously unsuited and had no intention of ever being in a room together again, much less getting back together - I was a little child, and I wanted my family, logic didn't have a thing to do with it).

As the child who didn't have to live through her parent's toxic relationship in real time, I clearly have a hard time recognising that as a privilege. As the child who got to live with both her parents, however imperfect, you don't recognise that privilege. Your older half sisters may have a different take, or they may not. We're all different after all. Which is, well, entirely my point and why "why don't people just do what I did?" is such a bloody stupid question.

And OK I am getting a bit feisty here, but there are some commonplaces used in these discussions which just drive me crazy, to whit:

a) "kids are very resilient!" Are they fuck. They are fragile, impressionable, deeply dependent beings who adapt to survive but that is not without significant effects. My parents' marriage (which I don't even remember) and my parents' divorce and its' aftereffects, have MADE ME WHO I AM - good bits and bad bits. Parents who try and duck responsibility for those choices by acting like kids are just rubber balls that bounce through trauma, rather than soft clay which is moulded by it, grind my fucking gears.

b) "happy parents, happy kids" - bolllllllocks. For two reasons.

One, if what makes a parent happy doesn't take into account what makes their child happy, that's a crappy parent right there.

Two, it presupposes that the consequence of leaving an unhappy marriage is always two happy parents, which is also bollocks. It's leaving a known for an unknown, and dividing it by two, so yes it may work out well with two happy homes, or it may lead to one happy home and one miserable, bitter parent, or it may lead to two miserable homes because maybe the problems in the marriage were the ones two dysfunctional people brought to it, not discretely created within said marriage like a chemical reaction. This was the case with my parents, and tbf I probably would have been fucked up either way, but the idea that by pleasing themselves they would be looking after their kids is balls really.

It's a GAMBLE. And sometimes the known is bad enough to risk the unknown, but that doesn't mean that leaving the unhappy marriage will make the parents happy, and it doesn't mean that even if it does make them happy their kid will also be happy.

The fact that there are so many blended families, broken families, single-parent families etc now doesn't make them a good thing, just a common thing. The stigma is gone, and that's a good thing, because families of all sorts can be happy and safe places for children to grow up. But that doesn't mean we ought to close our eyes to the fact that the very best environment for children to grow up is in a straightforward unit, with two or more stable, loving, involved parents modelling an affectionate, supportive relationship. This is borne out by research. And is what we should all be aiming at for our kids. And where we aren't able to deliver that, to do everything we can to fill the gaps and shore up the deficiencies of whatever alternative model we end up with, which we can't do if we refuse to even acknowledge they exist and that all situations are equal.

This is just the best thing I’ve read on MumsNet, so well articulated and honestly what we should all be striving for, if possible. The possible is only unless someone is abusive and harming you or the kids. Otherwise this is what is best for the kids and worth fighting for.

The fact that there are so many blended families, broken families, single-parent families etc now doesn't make them a good thing, just a common thing. The stigma is gone, and that's a good thing, because families of all sorts can be happy and safe places for children to grow up. But that doesn't mean we ought to close our eyes to the fact that the very best environment for children to grow up is in a straightforward unit, with two or more stable, loving, involved parents modelling an affectionate, supportive relationship.

Fear being alone could be worse than being with someone you don't want to be with

Yes @herewegoroundthebastardbush has made some excellent points.

I’m sorry but I don’t see what is great about this post at all ? If people are in an ‘affectionate, supportive’ relationship then they’re not going to get divorced are they? And these same people are not idiots, they know that is the best situation for children, of course they do. I don’t think anyone is pretending otherwise. It’s just not always possible.

@Bananasfor the excellent post of @herewegoroundthebastardbush is outstanding in many fronts but mostly because she was a child of divorced parents and tells from experience how very ukOK it was for her and how parents pursuing their own happiness does not equal happiness for the kids. Unhappy couples is a broad term and many create situations that could have been avoided instead of working in their relationship, resentment, issues, for the sake of family and kid’s security.

My relative's favourite phrase is 'kids are resilient' it just meant they could split with their partner and move house 3 times in less than 3 years without guilt.
Both children are medicated for anxiety.

Totally agree, it’s utter bullshit.

Kids are only better off if removed from an abusive situation. Other than that, moving about and stacking up with various parties can be abusive in itself.

Couldn’t agree more with @herewegoroundthebastardbush posts.

There are times when I am lonely and unhappy in my relationship, when I feel like I could run away and leave but then I pull myself together, put in the effort and work in to address the issues in my relationship and move on. This happens at least once a year. It would be so much easier for me to leave but I have a responsibility to my children and in my opinion lost the right to put myself and my happiness first when I chose to have them.

I have a step daughter who from the outside looks to have a lovely life and is thriving with two loving parents. This child is so beyond messed up by her parents split. She is not the child she would have been if they remained together.

Her mother left my partner because she was unhappy, bored and lonely after less than 4 years. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if his ex had attempted to change her unrealistic expectations and honestly, her self entitlement that their relationship could have been a good one. This child is seriously suffering still to this day 9 years later. We have a lovely relationship and she talks to me and comes to me for help and often tell me how much she loves me and how she’s very happy I’m in her life but ultimately I am not her mother.

Sometimes it is is the unhappy person that needs to realise your partner is not there to make you happy, fix you or entertain you, but to be your family and support you through life, have your back and weather the shit times.

If kids aren't on the scene yet, another reason can be the ticking biological clock.

They are weak or don't have money to separate.

Bored is not unhappy to me so I'm replying from this perspective.