Parents that have divorced their spouse with young kids- tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly.

There is no good, the bad is 10 times worse than your fear, and as we age, we only get uglier.

But leaving an abusive marriage makes those things seem worth it.

Oh wait, you didn't say that you were being abused.

Um, so, maybe get an individual therapist and a marriage therapist to get to the root of the problem before making a decision.

Never accept abuse. Never abuse. If you're a part of either side of that, seek help.

If it comes time to leave, you may find yourself alone for the first time when you should be reading bedtime stories to your kids. Meanwhile the kids are with him and you may not recognize the sounds of dying dinosaurs coming out of your soul between inconsolable sobs of grief. You may find yourself with kids that don't understand and are blackmailed/spoiled and brainwashed by the ex during the time you have no right to be there to help your kids (visitation). When they are teens, you may question whether they are just teen agers rebelling, or if the divorced really fucked their minds worse than you thought. You may think that half the expenses are his, but reality, you will have twice the expense and both sides expecting to split it. For ever. And don't expect to get things split and not have to go to court for 7 years after the "final". You may even find yourself in contempt of court because the ex concocted bullshit that you now have to contest with paying a lawyer to do so. Every single happy event is marred with "Oh, I've got to see the ex and pretend to be normal." Every single horrible event is the same. The other will remarry within a year and even though you don't give a single shit, seeing their wedding pictures with your kids embraced by the new one side by side with the kids she had with her ex, nothing but bewilderment arises as you try to wrap your brain around how not to fuck up these kids even more. And then your ex gets divorced again and you realize the kids just got fucked up even more.

Last, you may have to bury one of your kids after a tragic accident. And you may experience the planning of the funeral all alone, the planning of having to be at an "event" in public and in excruciating pain have to "pretend" to be ok with your ex. During your 17 year old son's funeral. You may be given the bill for the funeral with zero offer of splitting it from the ex. And three years later, you may be in a grocery store and something reminds you of all the pain and you can barely drive home with that same sound of dying dinosaurs coming out of your soul in between sobs. By now, you might be used to it. Because it's been ten years and the kids are now adults. But you face the kid's lifetimes of events that still have to be shared with their father. It never is going to end.

And even after all that, it's still better being divorced from a man who threatened to kill me.

If your life is not in danger, I beg you to consider trying something different.

Because, you know, you asked for an opinion.

/r/Divorce Thread