Don't get it twisted; women didn't leave "in the good old days" because they were trapped, not because they were fucking ride or die. We literally had no choice but to put up with abuse and other myriad bullshit. Men cannot stand the fact that we are no longer forced to submit.

Lady_Schmoobleydong · 2021-01-31T16:43:40+00:00

My friend told me the story of how her grandmother was married at 16 (essentially sold) to a man who beat her up all the time, raped her and beat the children. When he died, long before my friend was born, she immediately sold their farm and all HIS stuff, bought herself some nice luggage and diamond jewelry. Which shows how she felt about him all those years. She’s not a hero or a “good wife” for sticking it out, she was a dependant child bride who had no choice in her life, until she was freed by her awful husband dying from pancreatic cancer.

She married again, but to a man who she chose and was kind to her and she lived happily with him until her death. Ride or die is good in some cases but when a man beats you, rapes you, is cruel to your children, drinks and mismanages all the money, we can leave now when we decide it’s not worth it anymore.

crapeescape · 2021-01-31T15:08:26+00:00

I cringe at the thought of everything our sisters had to do back in the day. I remember reading stories of the Oregon Trail and if your husband died you just had to marry whoever to survive. There was no opportunities for women to make a living and you can just imagine how badly they were treated.

alivebut-justbarely · 2021-01-31T15:45:51+00:00

I also think people who talk about how no one stays together anymore don't understand how hard it actually is to make the decision to end a marriage. It's not like people do it after one fight. Personally, divorcing my ex husband was one of the hardest choices I ever made because I still loved him but it was obvious he was never going to change. Three years later, he still hasn't, but I'm flourishing. But according to these idiots I should have stayed with him forever.

gutsandgorey · 2021-01-31T15:52:27+00:00

[deleted]

Mcccy · 2021-01-31T17:02:07+00:00

My great grandmother was married at 11 to a 50 year old man who raped her and left her pregnant at 13 (after God knows how many misscariages) he made her work at his fields along with his other slaves till she was 8months for punishment. She was crying to her neighbours, the priest, the workers, no one ever helped her and always told her she was lucky cause he was rich.

He died when she was 15 where she escaped the very next night with my baby grandmother to an women only village without even taking any of her stuff with her.

Women back in the days suffered. Most of them had awful lives and men hate they can't keep doing that.

AriaLuz · 2021-01-31T14:52:05+00:00

People don’t understand. Your grandmother wanted to leave and hated your grandfather. She stayed because she had no Choice or options to leave because he monopolized her life. Her family also never helped. She couldn’t work, have her own bank account, couldn’t own her own property, and divorce wasn’t legal. So your grandma and great grandmother had to deal with physical abuse, emotional abuse, marital rape, his second family on the other side of town, his bastard child from the lady next door, being a servant, and not having any control over her life. I guess no one researched that a lot of women went crazy in that time. They were always drinking and taking pills too. But no one looks at that.

At 30 I just found out how terrible the men in my family are as partners. Everyone always says that their dad and their uncles were great men YEEESS TO YOU! Because you’re his daughter or niece or cousin. Did you ever think how they treated their wives or girlfriends? They treated them horrible. That’s why I don’t believe the “not all men” bullshit because you don’t deal with them the way another deals with them.

__kamikaze__ · 2021-01-31T15:26:47+00:00

They “lasted” because women had no other choice! 🤦‍♀️

Altowhovian93 · 2021-01-31T16:49:12+00:00

Marital rape was not fully outlawed in the US until the 1990s. No fault divorce was not passed in all states until 2010. Women are still not guaranteed alimony and child support, you have to file them and then they still have to track down the dad and then he has to be legally working for them to be able to garnish his paychecks. It’s not standing by your man if you have no choice but to stay!

Morepaperplease · 2021-01-31T17:37:29+00:00

Women couldn’t open a checking account or own a credit card without their husbands permission in 1970...thank rbg for this.. just think about that..your grandmothers is who fought this fight.

2021-01-31T16:29:40+00:00

They never think about the quality of the marriage. It’s not a quality marriage if you’re effectively separated in the same house or straight up live apart and date others like couples who weren’t compatible used to do.

KingGeorgeTheeIllest · 2021-01-31T17:16:03+00:00

Short story: My grandmother was one of the first women to work as a bank teller in her tiny town. She worked there her entire life from the 50's to the early 80's. She would tell me stories about women coming in making deposits and managing checkbooks for their husbands but it wasn't legal (and wasn't bank policy after the 70's) to open bank accounts for themselves. She told me that over the course of 30 years she had to forge documents and meet with her friends and regulars after hours to help them get bank accounts in secret. Since this was a small town, she would tell me about women who were known to be in abusive, or arranged relationships, that would come in clearly miserable or battered, and she would find ways to signal to them that she had the means to help them. Not only did everyone know this was happening, but they still refused these women any banking services that didn't relate to her husband's finances. The last story I remember her telling me about working at the bank had to do with a woman who was a regular wanting to leave town. My grandmother and her two friends who she was able to get hired as tellers with her, were able to open her an account in secret, and crowdsource a little money for her to help her get out of town. I've never told this story before, but there are men that need to understand this.

favoritesound · 2021-01-31T16:12:22+00:00

“Serious question. Why don’t a whole bunch of black people work for free and not vote anymore like they used to?”

relationship_reddit · 2021-01-31T16:50:20+00:00

And I wonder why they last as long as they do now.

Divorce is legal. Why are you trying so hard to work things out with a man who cheated on you with 5 different women, thinks you're gross because you don't look like a pornstar and have stretch marks from pregnancy, yet has a beer gut and is balding, never does the laundry, and spends all of your money on video games. Like, if you have the means, just leave. There is no reason anymore to struggle to make things work with someone who you clearly don't get along with.

tinysilverstar · 2021-01-31T17:01:31+00:00

This woman I know Mrs. E (F77) is my mother's friend's mother. Mrs. E and her siblings were put in an orphanage when her mother got a divorce. Even if you managed to get a divorce, you had to give up your kids or likely starve. Mrs. E ended up married and pregnant by 15.

Watzoo · 2021-01-31T18:00:36+00:00

I mean, you can google “poison” and “husbands” for a lengthy history of how women handled a world in which they couldn’t divorce their batterers and slavers.

It’s depressing, but it is recorded history. Nothing ride or die about it, though.

killyergawds · 2021-01-31T19:13:40+00:00

My grandma was married at 17 and divorced by 21. She had a good paying job with the police department, but she still wasn't able to buy herself a fucking car because she didn't have a father (dead) or a husband to sign the paperwork for her. And that was in the early SEVENTIES. And it wasn't some backwoods town either, it was a dealership in San Francisco.

Summoning-Freaks · 2021-01-31T14:41:45+00:00

And don’t forget how divorce would’ve resulted in a woman becoming a social pariah, yet it would still have been her duty to care for and raise the children somehow.

The length of those marriages aren’t valid if the woman only stayed because she had no other option of survival and she had kids who’s well-being she put above hers.

blacklama · 2021-01-31T19:25:03+00:00

My grandfather, a small town physician in the 50s, said it clearly: many women would die early from childbearing and child rearing exhaustion, so men would marry again, usually with a younger woman and restart the cycle.

There was rarely enough time or energy to leave, and if there was, many children and financial dependence would lock the door anyway.

ivy176 · 2021-02-01T10:25:50+00:00

Yeah, I had NO romantic or sexual feelings for my ex husband for YEARS before it ended. People assume you stay in an abusive relationship because it was thrilling and you were addicted to it. Wtf no. I viewed him as a problematic child who was my responsibility and nothing more. I felt pressured by the marriage vows, by religion and the fear of upheaval of my entire life when I was barely able to get through each day. Asshole men on reddit use women like me to prove that "women like bad boys" and that we are attracted to assholes, yet they never even consider that most abused women are not attracted to or in love with their abusive partners. They can't fathom that kind of sacrificial life or being in a relationship when it doesn't benefit you at all.

And that's in the 2000s - women who came before me couldn't leave for many other reasons.

hdost34 · 2021-01-31T16:56:10+00:00

Women were not allowed to sit at bars prior to the 70s either. At least that’s how it was in Connecticut.

WornTheTshirt73 · 2021-01-31T22:00:46+00:00

Unfortunately, there is a massive push in the West to disempower women. Men are not enjoying giving space to women, having to view us as human, having to earn our respect , time and labour. If we let them, they will take us back to the 1900s, so watch carefully for stealth social and cultural movements which masquerade as inclusive and progressive, but undermine women’s rights.

PollyAnnaSunshine · 2021-01-31T22:26:23+00:00

Marriage in the good old days wasn't a choice. Let alone staying married.

Great g-ma on my dad's side was essentially adopted by another family because her parents couldn't afford to keep her and married off to my great grandfather at age 14 (he was 28). They were in America and he could not speak English yet but she could so she handled all the banking/finance things from what we know of and was very close with her children, all sons. She died in her late 60s due to gallbladder surgery and her dying wish was that her eldest son, my grandfather, would take care of his little brother because she feared how her husband would cope without her. Word from my grandpa and great uncle was that her husband loved her more than she loved him and was devastated when she died.

Another great g-ma was widowed, and emigrated to the USA from Italy with her 9 year old. She married out of necessity to another Italian when she arrived here, worked as a seamstress, and took care of her stepchildren as well as had more children with her new husband. He was reported to be abusive (at least verbally but who knows if it did not go further). My grandmother has a book of her letters saved and many of them are quite sad. It is clear that for her, marriage was a survival mechanism. She saw to it that all of her children were well educated and even many of the daughters went to college which was very unusual back then.

Another great grandmother was widowed when my grandpa was 2 and his brother who was only days old. Her first husband was handsome and reputed to be a kind and gentle person, unfortunately the man she remarried to was cruel and abusive to her children and probably to her. She became abusive to them as well and my grandfather didn't mention his growing up much but from the few things he said I can tell it was very sad. He was doing hard manual work as a young child.

Finally, my last great grandmother was married to a pretty nice man from what we all know, but she did a lot of manual labor and hard work, as did he. They experienced grinding poverty in the great depression. Even if he had been abusive, how would she have left? The little money the family had was brought in by her husband and she had 9 children. She developed dementia and died pretty young. My mother describes her as gentle and lovely.

Even in the best of these stories, these women did not have it easy, and were left with little choice but to put up with less than ideal behavior from their husbands. I definitely had this in the back of my mind when I walked away from my wedding a few years ago, noticing some poor character in my ex. In today's world I have the choice to be alone until a man who meets my standards come along, and I want to honor my foremothers who endured so much so that I could be here today and have that choice.

EveSerpent · 2021-01-31T20:47:02+00:00

If I had a dollar for every man who moons over his grandparents being married for their entire adult lives, I‘d be doing very well. Whenever some guy says this as if it’s a positive thing, my sympathies go right to the grandmother. If I try to point out that she didn’t have a choice to leave, they guy always gets a dumb look on his face before he goes into denial. As if he’d know anything about their daily lives and actual relationship. The stupidity is shocking.

davisgirl44 · 2021-01-31T19:49:12+00:00

Probably goes a long way toward explaining the derision for sex workers too. What else was a woman to do? If I hear one more dead hooker “joke”...

asteroidvesta · 2021-02-01T02:44:09+00:00

My therapist once told me that marriage is a patriarchal construct that was designed to protect men’s assets. She explained that children had always belonged to women alone, until men began to acquire property and wanted to be sure they only passed it along to their offspring - they accomplished this by marrying women and closely guarding their sexuality. I was very young at the time, and I’m not enough of a historian or anthropologist to look into it, but it would explain a lot. I find being single and raising my son alone much more natural for me than dealing with my ex husbands’ nonsense. Maybe marriage has always been a trap for women.

MargotteL · 2021-02-01T12:04:58+00:00

Wispers: "Aqua Tofana"

Sadplankton15 · 2021-01-31T20:52:42+00:00

I saw a post on Reddit yesterday, and it was of someone’s grandparents who had been together for 70-75 years (I can’t remember the exact length), and all I could think was “I wonder how much bullshit she’s had to deal with in that time”. Everyone was saying “goals” “this is how it should be” “what a perfect couple”, but that guy could’ve literally thrown copious amounts of shit at her and she wouldn’t have been able to leave. Really rubbed me the wrong way that there wasn’t a single comment about it. Ugh

kaoutanu · 2021-02-01T00:14:34+00:00

No-fault divorce simply wasn't a thing until relatively recently. Before that you had to prove one of the three "A"s - abuse, addiction, or adultery - in order for the court to even consider granting you a divorce. You also had to place an ad detailing the whole thing in a newspaper declaring the reason you wanted a divorce, I guess so any busybodies could have their 2c worth. Even then the court might tell you to suck it up and stick it out.

My mother's first husband literally left her and my brother and moved to another country, and started a family with another woman, and she still wasn't granted a divorce, even after meeting my father and having me. She died married to a loser who had left her destitute years earlier.

f_alt04 · 2021-02-01T12:45:44+00:00

My grandma divorced the deadbeat alcoholic who left and abandoned her & her three children (one of those being my mom) in the middle of the night in 1961. He ran off to Ohio from Michigan and never, ever paid a cent. She worked and took care of her three young kids (all born one year apart - 1958, 1959, 1960) completely on her own, not only as a Catholic but in a time when everyone would have looked down on her for being divorced. I truly don’t know how she - and my mom, when my sperm donor abandoned us - did it, but I am so grateful and so proud to be a descendant of Independent Queens. It taught me that I don’t need a man, I can be happy and single like the women who raised me were, and that most likely a man would cause me more trouble and work and stress than he would anything positive - I’ve always been happy on my own and never desperate for a relationship and always focused on myself and doing what I can to make my mom (who passed away when I was 19) and grandma and aunt (who also raised three kids alone after divorcing the loser she reproduced with) proud. I saw what men did to these amazing beautiful strong women in my life and decided they would never get a chance to do that to me - in their honor I ride or die for myself.

Yeah_hey_kittycat · 2021-02-01T02:40:52+00:00

One of my first moments “waking up” to the truth was when I learned in a “Family Studies” course in college that until the 1970’s it WASNT ILLEGAL TO BEAT YOUR WIFE! Literally. Only when a law was finally passed in the 1970’s that finally stated that it was a crime to beat your wife. 🤬

Mella_20 · 2021-02-01T08:59:11+00:00

Ugh I used to ask these questions tho. I can't believe I used to think that the olden days were better because women stayed in their marriages 😦

Title	Don't get it twisted; women didn't leave "in the good old days" because they were trapped, not because they were fucking ride or die. We literally had no choice but to put up with abuse and other myriad bullshit. Men cannot stand the fact that we are no longer forced to submit.
Author	azureangel35
Upvotes	7045
Comments	98
Date	January 31, 2021 2:35 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	/r/FemaleDatingStrategy
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/dont-get-it-twisted-women-didnt-leave-in-the-good.740752 https://theredarchive.com/post/740752
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/FemaleDatingStrategy/comments/l9dfwt/dont_get_it_twisted_women_didnt_leave_in_the_good/