It's your fault, you married him.

[Janos]

Not the best title but this attitude is something I've seen a bit of on threads and just wanted to explore the thinking behind it.

Often on a thread if a poster is complaining about her husband/partners bad behaviour (for want of a better term) someone will pipe up and say 'Well why did you marry him if he was like that?' or 'I wouldn't put up with that nonsense.'

I'm just wondering, why? Interesting to hear what people think about this.

Janos, thanks so much for your kind comment. Loads of very interesting posts on here.

I didn't know my marriage was doomed from the start until I went to relate. Because I fell in love slowly with no particular spark (like a warm love), there was no spark to be able to work to get back.
We just bumbled along for a long time and the time when we should have been working on our relationship and staying "in-love" was the time that was taken up with bringing up our children when they were young. I knew within a couple of sessions there was going to be no way to fix it, because it had been dead in the water for too long.
Also I didn't see the nasty side of him until I tried to end it, so I didn't actually marry a monster.

This is quite funny! I'm watching Columbo gently persuade a sweet, lovely woman that her boyfriend is a hard, inflexible, emotionally manipulative murderer.

You're welcome, Morris and thank you Grace

My XP was lovely to start with but changed gradually over the years (we were together 10 years). Towards the end, it was pretty much just awful and I was a nervous wreck.

And Roxi I fell in love quite gradually too. It was never 'wow'..nothing wrong with that tho I think.

Also that's interesting about Columbo..with my XP I was always the one who defended him or said he's not that bad . I mean obviously that's an extreme example from fiction but the gist is the same. Sometimes you just don't see what's happening when you're in the middle of it all.

And of course you love them and you believe/hope they love you so you hang on in there when you shouldn't. And if you have children you get messages like 'marraige is for life', 'you made your bed' (paraphrasing there). I think it must be doubly hard if everyone around you is saying stay, even when things don't feel right.

Another thing which I've just remembered, and always makes me smile when I think about this stuff is the memory of my dear old gran. She was a lovely woman, had some very old fashioned views, of her age..she was born in 1911.

I'll never forget her telling me, when I was a teenager that you should always live with a man before marraige...that you couldn't do what young people do now when she was young..and that if she'd lived with my Grandpa beforehand she never would have married him!

Not sure what the point of that anecdote is but thought I'd share it cause it makes me smile. I suppose, if there is a point it shows that the 'marraige for life' stuff can be a straightjacket and is not necessarily something to be emulated/aspired to.

God more waffle!

Hmm...I knew when I married him that I wasn't 'in love' with him. I knew that I enjoyed his company and we would have children together. I knew there was a strong chance that we wouldn't have to worry about money and we'd have a nice house in a nice area and everything looked rosy.

15 years after we met, I know that he isn't really bothered about spending time with the children and puts himself first. I know that he wants a nice, tidy home, the washing done and the food in the fridge and cupboards, but he isn't prepared to make any effort to make this happen. I know that he thinks his job is more important than spending time with his family. I know that he sees his income as HIS income, and not as money for us to share. I know that if something needs doing in our 5 bed, 750k house, I will wait weeks for him to do it, or months, or years for him to pay someone else to do it, or quite likely it will never get done at all. I know that he thinks he is entitled to have sex with the woman he has married and provided for, even if she doesn't want to. I know that he will defend the divorce application I am making, and will make every effort to make my life difficult and to hang on to every penny he can, even at the expense of providing for his children. I know that he thinks marriage is for life (even though he has been divorced already), and that he believes in 'marriage as an institution' and I know that if I don't get out of here soon, I will end up in an institution.

There's a saying that you don't really know someone until you have lived with them, but sometimes you don't know them even then.

I agree with SGB. Media, culture, general society all have this pervasive view that being single is somehow not good thing. That it's ok to be single for a little while but long term singletons have something missing. And then there is the implication that if you are single for long time you will never meet partner and be alone forever and die in a cat infested hovel on a rundown estate in Croydon. Or Slough.

So, I think that many of us pick a partner an then stay with that partner because we think that we should. It is a societal norm after all, therefore, choosing to stay single until that person who doen't pick his bum and go missing every time they are needed comes along is frowned upon.
After all, no point in witing for Mr Right, right?

Magazines do it all the time, long term sigletons who are single by choice have articles written about them and the article always has an undertone of false sympathy and general coupledom smugness.

It pisses me off really. I have two girls, both nine.
Both talk about, when I grow up aand get married and have babies....

My reply is always BUt you dont HAVE to get married and you don't HAVE to have babies.
You have a choice.

I am not married and probably will never be although I hve been with my partner for about 6 yrs now.

Yes - and one of the messages I'm giving my children (DS and DD) is to never "settle" for someone, just because of societal expectations. Although quite young when I married, I'd been out with lots of people and I wouldn't have dreamt of marrying someone I wasn't deeply in love with. That intense love has allowed us to weather lots of storms that might have floored other couples - and is still there over 25 years later.

I do think also that because of the pervasive lingering attitudes that women exist to service men, a woman who is not that interested in couplehood, or having babies but is passionate about a career or art or campaigning issues of some kind is under huge pressure to be Not Single. Unfortunately, because it gets very very tiring being constantly nagged at and fussed over and told that there is something sort of wrong with you (ie you think there's more to life than man-pleasing), intelligent and successful women can sometimes become the targets of the absolute worst type of predatory abuser, who is determined to destroy them. Because most, if not all male domestic abusers think women are just less than men, but the really awful ones see a woman who is not submissive to men, doesn't put men first etc and decide she has to be punished for it.

I think the attitude that women are inferior to men definitely still lingers on in all sorts of ways.

Not all men think that way of course, and those that do tend not to be outspoken about it as they realise the attitude is (thank god) becoming less acceptable but its still there.

The problem with abusive men is that very often they are very nice to begin with. real charmers. then when they walk down that isle they get their controlling hats on. So it's a very unfair to say ''well you did marry him'' to a woman. Peopel DO change and even so, what suits us ten years ago may not suit us now.

i think a lot of the 'why did you marry him?' type questions aren't about blame or making the poster feel stupid, those questions come up because often the OP describes behaviour patterns that have obviously taken years to bed-in and without understanding why they have been allowed to develop, then other posters cannot possibly help.

unless of course the OP wants sympanthy but no help, which is often the case, but when this is the case but not stated up front the thread will always end in tears anyway

what i mean is, it's not always about the DH as such though is it? the post is usually about a behaviour pattern rather than the whole man...

It's slightly pedantic but I must point out my XP was EA without marrauge being involved (we were as good as but just not official, mainly because I never wanted to).

He got married v quickly after we split.

You make a good point there fluffles.

And posh I think you are right about abusive men being 'charmers'. That in itself can be a red flag.

Of course not all charming men are abusers!