I’m confused - are you saying it’d be OK if a random drop-in poster got beat up for it, but a long-time poster should get a pass for the same behavior just because they’ve been around?
I didn’t read past the first page or two as it just getting to be more of the same castigation and beat down festival with no new info from the OP, but I was surprised he would throw this up for public review. I’m not sure what validation or whatever he was looking for by doing this, you could pretty much guarantee it was going to go nuclear.
If you’re asking for relationship advice here, you’d probably do well to just completely ignore the responses that come in at both extremes and stick to the middling stuff. There will always be someone (or someones) whose response to any hitch in a relationship is DTMFA.
You also have to consider the sources of the advice - most Dopers are US American, and last I checked, there is a very high divorce rate in the US - you probably aren’t looking at the best advice-givers in the world on these topics here. That occurred to me a couple of years ago - I was looking at a relationship advice thread, and realizing that a lot of the people giving advice were on their second/third/fourth/Xth marriage, or having a bad relationship of their own, or had never had ANY relationships.
I think the surprising part of a long term poster doing this is that over the years if you are regular participant you develop a certain board presence. It’s kinda-sorta like being in a neighborhood, you aren’t looking for validation from your neighbors, but regardless of whatever arguments you might have about political/world views etc. you’d generally like them to respect your ethical posture as stand up human being after having been around a while.
This was a scenario where someone stepped up and said “I followed my heart and left my wife and kids”. He might as well have taken a dump on the sidewalk and asked people to inspect it.
I must be a romantic. I advised the “stay together” option* in the last three relationship threads I posted in.
*Or at least its closest variant. It was one stay together, one get together, and one you should have stayed together.
As far as I know, Diogenes The Cynic is on his first marriage, a happy marriage, a marriage that’s lasted over a decade. From now on, let’s all get all our relationship advice on the SDMB from him.
Except that, if you didn’t know anything about human nature, you would actually have expected him to have been congratulated for it, for precisely the reason indicated in this thread. It honestly seems like leaving a person is always the solution to every problem. Why not the solution to “I don’t feel for my wife the way I used to”?
Human nature is to advocate one thing for someone you find sympathetic, and another for people you don’t. It’s also human nature to recommend one thing out of ideological concerns, and another out of practical concerns. I was very surprised at the number of people who stuck with the ideology and/or had the same opinion for someone who obviously did not post in a sympathy-inducing manner.
(Not that there weren’t some people who advocate doing their best to stay together who were upset because the OP didn’t even try. But, still, you’d be surprised how many time a superficial try is considered acceptable.)
Your point has some validity, and as others have pointed out in the past that 's part of the reason people (women especially) are generally more sympathetic and supportive to a woman “following her heart” than a man in leaving a relationship. Men are expected to “cowboy up”. As long as woman is not abandoning her kids there 's a lot of support for her leaving an emotionally unsatisfactory relationship if she “just doesn’t feel it” anymore.
Isn’t that the truth. You just need to see the thread about Lindsaybluth in the Pit to realise how feral folks can get.
Given how recent this incident is, calling him “some asshole” doesn’t exactly hide who you’re talking about. Don’t call people assholes in MPSIMS, pls.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Of course we all reflect our own experiences in those threads - and it’s one of the good things about message boards like this that people can talk about stuff and get different perspectives. I’m sure though, that just like anything online, it’s not the volume of responses that’s important (like you have to follow the majority advice) it’s that sometimes someone comes up with a perspective you haven’t considered. Oh, and they always make fascinating reading in an emotional-porn kind of way…!
There have been plenty of threads bashing other specific individuals, named or not, for all kinds of minor and major reasons. I don’t see why the fact of an individual’s prior participation in this board should afford any protection. It does, to some extent, and both lindsaybluth and Richard Pearse have their defenders in those threads. Actually I found the defenders for the latter the most eye-opening part; there may be several dynamics at work, but some are clearly favoring him. The same circumstances recounted by his wife or a third-party observer would not have received the same distribution of responses.
How do you know?
BTW Sparks, there is a lot of difference between being a defender and being a person who may not wish to condemn a poster.
If I post asking to give a guy a break that hardly qualifies as a defender.
I’m not familiar with the specific thread. But I’m sure with something like that, every person gets to project every bad breakup onto that discussion.
Reread that OP and imagine it being recounted from the wife’s perspective. (Husband has been working out of town. One night there’s a call, he’s “questioning our relationship” and yes, he’s hooked up with a woman he’s been working with. He’s leaving her and the young children to be with new squeeze.)
I bet that if she had been the longtime poster here, he would have had nobody calling him “awesome,” saying she “should have made more effort to keep him attracted,” or waving it off with “he hasn’t destroyed anyone’s life” and “it’s just a divorce…no one has done anything wrong.” I expect there would be, for her, limitless sympathy and e-hugs, advice on ruthless legal strategy, offers of assistance from folks nearby; for him, pure contemptuous scorn, and maybe a suggestion that he deserved to be shot.
Sure. But see, that’s just it–he took some heat, but it was tempered by the fact that he was “here.” She’s a little more abstract. If it were flipped, then I think you’d see the real wolfpack come out.
I know that I have seen posters recommend programs like Marriage Builders but I can’t seem to turn up anything in search.
Not frequently, I might add. But I had never heard of that program prior to reading it on here and it was some thought-provoking reading.
When my wife left me (we ultimately reconciled) I started a couple of threads on the issue: one just feeling sorry for myself, the other asking for advice on how to handle locks & keys & such. In both (but particularly the latter) I received some comments to the effect of *You’re not acting like someone who wants her to come back. If you want her back, do this instead of what you just suggested, idiot.
*A couple of those were surprisingly helpful. I probably should have said thank you at some point.
BTW, when I say “thought-provoking”, I am not indicating agreement. I don’t want to derail this thread, though.
ISTM that the posters on this board tend to skew young, and hence naive about a lot of of life.
In particular, there’s less of a willingness to accept imperfection in life and relationships, and this gives rise to the idea that if the relationship being discussed is clearly less than perfect, it would be a good idea to chuck it and go find one that is perfect.
I suspect that an older and wiser audience, which has learned to accept imperfection in life, and realizes that the next relationship will undoubtedly have imperfections and problems of its own, would have a different attitude.