Why do you come on MN Relationships and offer advice?

[InterplanetaryCraft]

I’ve wondered about this issue for ages, including in relation to myself. What are people’ personal motivations?

I will add my own motivations a little further down the thread - still thinking about this too – but don’t want to influence other people’s by starting first, if that makes sense.

I have commented a lot on abusive relationships because i was a confident happy person and it ruined me at the time. I thought if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone so i always try and offer advice on it here. My friends couldnt understand or i mainly kept it secret from them.

I've also gotten a lot of advice here on relationships which i couldnt/wouldnt share with friends. I have friends who judge everyone and cant empathise so for me its easier to come on here and get alternative advice.

I received much support and good advice when I posted on here shaking in 2009 when I was informed via FB by OW husband that his wife and my husband were having an affair. I can still remember that evening very vividly when complete lovely strangers on here helped me. The best of the Internet.

I read the boards cos they help me with my boundaries, I posted and got sooooo much help and I'll never forget the kindness of some posters as it was truly life changing so I try to pass that on.

I have had a truly awful experience in a relationship and if I could offer advice that could save someone going through what happened to me then I would want to speak up.

I think it’s helpful to offer an opinion in a situation that I have been in. Sometimes it’s just to show solidarity, other times to gently explain that the poster only has one life & shouldn’t be living it in fear etc.
As posters have offered their own scenarios it only seems kind to try & help.

@Endoftheroad12345

How did your ex react when you wanted a divorce and through the divorce process?

Mills and Boon have a lot to answer for in my mind, with 'strong Alpha males' as romantic leads. Many of them (growing up in the 70s) were downright abusive, frankly. And we were told that was aspirational as a way of being treated.

I grew up on romance novels and they are - almost universally - appalling relationship/behaviour modelling.

They were definitely detrimental.

I comment because I want to help the poster.

They are often being gas lit and can't see the wood for the trees.

I also comment if I see poor advice .. I don't want the op to be affected by it, with no counter balance.

I can't thank the mumsnetters whose advice i so desperately needed, but I can pay it forward.

@tothelefttotheleft

He was hideous. When I told him I wanted some time apart he went absolutely psycho in front of the children. - it was the day of DS’s 8th birthday party - took off in his car for a few days.

When I got into work on Monday and checked our bank accounts he had drained them. $30,000 in savings (we are in NZ) and about another 5k from the current account. I didn’t have enough to buy groceries or pay the nanny. I got him to put it back by threatening the police (we are both lawyers - the irony). We lived under the same roof for 3 months which was hell. Eventually I rented another property and fully furnished it myself - he didn’t lift a finger - and we “nested” for 6 months until he found a girlfriend and decided to live there full time.

He was an absolute pig about everything- he reamed me on assets, he is a terrible father - wouldn’t buy the kids clothes for his house until recently, would make me pack a suitcase and send me back the dirty laundry, didn’t come to DD’s first day of school.

I have been so lucky to have a good job with a salary that has enabled me to buy him out of the family home. Until 2021 I worked part time at a more junior level and had little children - my kids are still quite small but I work full time and manage with the help of our amazing nanny, a 22 year old uni student who has been with us 4 years and is more of a co parent to my kids than he has ever been.

@Endoftheroad12345

I knew he would be dreadful and also thought I bet he finds someone quickly!!!

Did you get the other place for him?

What hotbot and greywitch said 🙂
I post when I have had similar or same experience and also am older so have some experience to share

I have a few motivations!!!

Ex social worker hoping that less children will have to live in difficult circumstances. It's really demoralising seeing cycles of abuse sometimes.

Feminist, wanting better for women. Seeing what women are faced with, what they will put up with to have security of some sort, how they are trapped financially and emotionally after having kids with arseholes.

Personal driver, having seen close friends and family stuck in domestic abuse relationships and having to fight tooth and nail to be rid of them.

Also as someone who worked in a sexual abuse and domestic abuse setting, being able to offer something which may be useful - which is also why I do the job I do!
But also because I too learn new things such as new legislation or practices that are happening that are different in different LA's

The first person who said to me “That was awful, you don’t deserve that” about my ex who didn’t follow it up with “but he probably didn’t mean it because Dave* is such a nice guy” was a wonderful woman on a forum I used at the time.

It was the first time that the conversation didn’t end up being about how nice he was, and how he’d helped Mary with her kitchen, and wasn’t he wonderful when he jumped in and helped Steve and Sue when the removal van let them down, and all the kids at the big BBQ love him because he plays games with them, and isn’t he sooooo nice to his mum because he visits her occasionally…

Only 5 people replied, but it stayed focused on what he’d done to me, how wrong that was and that was enough to keep the fire in me enough to say I wanted a few days of space. As soon as I got him out of my home (it was mine) I was strong enough to not let him back.

so I post sometimes to give other people the same possibility I had - an opinion for someone who isn’t swayed on Dave by good, or bad, he’s done before

Most women have no idea of their self worth or inner strength and they work harder at trying to fix their partners problems rather than their own, which is often down to insecurity and lack of confidence.

@tothelefttotheleft

Yep I found the house, furnished it, down to his bed and the sheets on it.

It’s owned by friends of mine - I was so so lucky to get it as the rental market here is crazy.

The new gf is actually nice, the kids like her and I don’t know her but we have mutual friends. Poor thing.

this is so true and so powerful @ARichtGoodDram

in 2021 I was leaving my job - I had had a great opportunity at another company, big promotion, I was a popular member of the team and everyone at my old job was really pleased for me and gave me a great send off. DD was 3 at the time and DS 6 so I genuinely hadn’t been out later than 7pm in about 8 years.

We had drinks at the pub with about 50 colleagues there, all having fun, kicked on to my boss’ house (a woman in case it’s relevant) nearby. At about 11 exH started firing off texts “you better get home soon, I’m not getting up to the kids, it’s your turn with them, I will show no mercy to you do you’re hungover” etc

This say of talking to me was so normal for him I didn’t blink an eye until my boss said “is that how he talks to you? That’s really mean … that’s not ok” and almost for the first time I saw how bad it was. I mean, I knew he was an arsehole but the mean way he talked to me was just standard.

It took me another 18 months to leave but that conversation was the beginning I think. The first time someone had called out his behaviour and not couched it as “all men are useless!” “typical man, can’t cope with getting up with the kids haha” or something similar.

Honestly, to get things off my chest, not really for advice, and see if anyone has been through similar.

I know I can be exhausting wanting to analyse my relationship with my 'real' fiends sometimes, especially if it's an unusual situations, so an anonymous forum is better

I post here because sometimes women (yes, women) just need to hear it's ok to leave.

Even before I made a thread about my situation, I knew^^ I had to leave my EXDP because he was just so horrible to me, and I knew I couldn't live like that forever.

Real-life close family had initially told me stay "because I'd be breaking up the family".

If I'd known about MN before I met my EXDP, and read some of the threads, particularly those on the step-parenting board, I would have steered well clear of him.

Hopefully sharing my experiences can help another lady going through something similar.

I don't post very often, and usually only when I have experience that I think might be useful to others. But sometimes, when I think 'Oh so-and-so has already said that, I'd just be echoing it', I still post, because it's easier to discount the advice or opinion of a few than it is that of many. So I hope that by adding my voice to the chorus, the poster who needs help will be stronger in their resolution.

I read and read the threads here long before I ever posted. I learned so much about myself from MN. I had no idea that I'd had an abusive childhood, or that I was autistic and how much that contributed to my confusion about everything.

I first posted my own thread five years ago when my marriage was starting to feel unbearable, and I thought everyone would tell me to buck my ideas up tbh, but people were so kind and helped me realise I was being emotionally and financially abused.

I had my autism diagnosis in 2021, left my husband the following year, and I'm now in my second year of therapy. I'm getting better at spotting red flags and my boundaries are getting healthier, but my god, it's such slow going, two steps forward and one step back all the time, and sometimes the other way around. Right now isn't a great time, but I sometimes look back at my old thread and feel happy at how far I've come and so grateful to the mumsnetters who gave me their time and kindness. Everyone in RL thought my husband was lovely and whenever I bump into someone now who didn't know we'd split up, they always assume it was him who left me. I would never have found the support I needed. No one would even have believed me.

I post on other people's threads just to give a small something back, particularly if they seem to have picked a bad time and no one's really answered them yet, because my experience was that I needed to be rock bottom to risk sharing my story, and it would have completely finished me off if no one had replied, or if they'd been harsh.