Marriage on Mumsnet: One sock away from divorce?”

[Reasontoreason]

Does anyone else find it slightly alarming how quickly ‘divorce’ seems to become the default solution on here? A husband sighs about being tired or leaves a sock on the floor, and suddenly its papers signed and lawyers called. Is this just me, or who doesn’t see marriage that fragile?"

No, it doesn't alarm me in the slightest. There are some posters who are a bit trigger happy, but like all of us, they're drawing on their own experience to make a judgement. Women in happy, stable relationships aren't driven to post on here because of a sock. Almost inevitably, as the OP speaks more, it turns out to be indicative of a much larger problem. Actual violence is often not mentioned until several pages in.

I am not remotely worried about a mass exodus of women from happy, healthy marriages because of Mumsnet. It's not happening. Far more often, abused women simply stop posting and stay married.

By the time somebody gets around to posting about their relationship and feeling resentful or taken for granted, there will have been months (or more probably, years) of “socks”: loads of little behaviours and incidences of casual disrespect, thoughtlessness, lack of care and love. They aren’t just posting about “one sock”, and nobody leaves their otherwise happy marriage because their OH posses them off once or twice over a minor infraction. They may, however, realise when other posters encourage them to reflect, realise that many of the little things they didn’t think were “good enough” reasons to leave over, add up to a reason to leave.

No. Because men that leave the domestic labour and childcare to women are not viable life partners.

Everyone has the final straw. For me it was the weaponised incompetence of painting over flaking paint rather than sanding it first, meaning I had to go and sand three layers of flaking paint before redecorating. MORE work than the original job.

For others, it might be leaving his underwear all over the floor because he knows she'll cave and pick it all up.

These men want a bang-maid, not a wife.

I think that the majority of posters on the Relationship forum are in relationships so problematic that divorce is likely to be the best solution. I don’t think this reflects the population at large, only that for someone to post on here about it means the problems are pretty intractable.

This ☝️

Just out of interest OP, where did you copy the text of your post from, complete with trailing speech marks?

Interesting observation: sometimes women seem to ‘check out’ of a relationship emotionally long before they actually leave. And you may see the post as a final straw. But it could just be a general rant which can quickly get replies suggesting divorce within the first few messages, as if it’s the obvious, easy solution.

Staying is the easy option, leaving is really hard and people don't do it on a whim but it's sometimes inevitable and the best thing all around. You have a very simplistic view, it's not about one sock that is in the wrong place, you have to look at the bigger picture. Divorce isn't the end of the world and marriage shouldn't make you feel miserable or unsafe. If it does, it's not the right relationship.

I do think its a generation thing, peoples tolerance of behaviours so maybe now we just don't take the shit like generations before us, we have to, the shame kept most families together,

Remember my mum giving me ' sex education ' talk, I was a 50s baby, so walking back from the chemist with my doctor whites sanity towels, she said, well my dear your becoming a woman now, this thing what's happening to you ( monthly period) this is for when you have babies, and when that time comes, your man will come home and expect sex, you do not refuse ' or he'll go else where ' you just lay there let him finish, clean yourself up, and crack on you your day,

Forgot to mention my mum whispered about the sanity towels to the chemist because she was embarrassed,

I kid you not, my mum had 7 of us in total but bloody hell how times have changed thank God,

So yes I get its easier now to divorce as they made it that way but I don't think we make that decision easy, if that makes sense

I’m dyslexic, so I always run posts through a grammar checker. Somehow, I hope this helps you feel a tiny bit superior .

So what? Nobody in a happy, stable relationship is suddenly going to divorce because an anonymous Mumsnetter got the wrong end of the stick. They're far more likely to stay married even if they shouldn't.

Was the poster being a cow?

This has been done to death on here.

It's absolute bullshit. Nobody on here is advocating leaving someone over a sock FFS.

Until I started visiting Mumsnet I had no idea of all the cruel and abusive ways men could treat their wives and partners. I've read some fucking awful stuff on here. Mental abuse, verbal abuse, physical and sexual abuse. Control and coercion.

I actually find this viewpoint incredibly insulting and harmful.

What traps women in abusive and awful marriages is judgment from people like the op. They feel it's some sort of failure to give up on a marriage.

You don't ask in a petrolheads' forum if we should disincentivise cars and incentivise bicycles.

Just like you don't ask in a cyclists' forum if maybe it is wrong to make driving more expensive if we don't also provide more alternatives, because not everyone lives in London's zone 1 where you can easily take buses tubes bicycles etc.

Same here: mumsnet is a forum largely populated by women, so will have the same kind of bias.

The most glaring examples are with relationship and sex problems: if he wants more sex than her, he's a sex pest. If she wants more sex than him, he doesn't understand her needs etc. I am simplifying, of course, but there is a certain tendency of this kind.

All I am trying to say is that one should read and write in these forums full aware of their biases. Full aware that these forums are not necessarily representative of the general population, and that certain voices will be more represented than others.

If you do this, frequent these forums with open eyes, and appreciate that all feedback must be taken with a truckload of salt, they can be useful.

If you go in expecting that everyone will think like you, or expecting to convince other people of your strongly held beliefs, you risk stressing out and picking silly, avoidable, useless fights.

It's not the sock, or dishes, that's the problem. It's the disrespect and male entitlement behind it all. Not everyone can see it but those that have experienced it can. Instead of knocking those women for saying LTB just be grateful that you've had decent men in your life so you don't recognise those subtle red flags.

I wouldn’t actually say it, but as a long term single woman it horrifies me that women are staying in awful relationships and bending over backwards for absolute losers.

I just feel I couldn’t suggest divorce to someone based on a single post .

Try reading between the lines maybe? Find the subtle clues that cannot be articulated?

I’m not saying people shouldn’t leave clearly unhappy relationships with difficult partners, but I just feel like the word ‘divorce’ gets thrown around at the drop of a hat. In real life, you wouldn’t suggest divorce to a friend just because she had an argument with her husband

Do you honestly think that your one opinion is so important that someone will take your word and leave a marriage?

Posting on MN gave me the strength to leave an unhappy marriage and it was never one post, or a single sock.

There’s a post often referenced on here back when I was getting divorced called something like “she left me because I left dishes by the sink” written by a guy who realised (too late) why his disrespect in tiny ways added up to his wife feeling unseen and unimportant. It’s never about the sock, its about the contempt that the single sock implies, which is usually evident in hundreds of other ways when posters start replying.

I'm more alarmed at the twattery women are willing to/ have to tolerate to maintain relationships.
Anger, cheating, gambling, disrespect, neglect, overwork and a litany of other selfish behaviours.

Just why?

I just find it counterproductive when people ask for relationship advice and the thread is littered with ‘get divorced’ suggestions, even when the OP has said they don’t want that, with no other constructive advice offered.

Who cares? Do you think women on here are so weak and stupid that they'll immediately divorce a loving and supportive husband because someone on MN told them to?

To be fair to OP, whilst I totally agree that often these incidents are part of a much wider pattern and become evident as the thread continues, I don't think she's referring to posts saying things like, "Is this a one-off or is there more going on here?" but rather to the trigger-happy posts that jump STRAIGHT TO "well I couldn't put up with this, that would be the end for me" which personally I've noticed fairly often, and which I don't think are helpful as if I was posting about something which was in isolation fairly minor, I'd find it easy to rationalise that and consequently dismiss posters' advice as over-dramatic and hyperbolic. In reality there might well be more going on, but that's something better achieved at via gentle probing rather than a flat-out "LTB" on the basis of a post or two, surely.

I don't think anyone takes advice on Mumsnet and immediately acts on it. But sometimes hearing different perspectives and having others agree that you aren't over reacting (when he leaves yet ANOTHER sock on the floor) can help a reader to make up their mind.

I had a lot of advice to leave my last XP. I came on here to generally vent my spleen about his behaviour (which to me was annoying but not totally over the top) and the way so many posters reacted to tell me that this wouldn't improve and I should leave at first I shrugged off. Told myself that it wasn't that bad, that I could live with it. Eventually, after several posts where people all told me that it wasn't going to improve, I left.

So it wasn't the one sock. It was cumulative advice about half the washing basket that did it. And if I hadn't felt it was right, I STILL wouldn't have gone anyway.