Divorce / family breakdown is hugely detrimental for the children

[Yogaqueen5]

This does not include obviously abusive relationships and situations where there is a very toxic environment at home and it is clearly going to be better to separate for all involved
I’m talking more of those situations where people have supposedly fallen out of love, grown apart, not getting along and the advice often given on MN is to LTB and pursue personal happiness and gains over thinking about the greater good for the family. People are advised how it can be harmful to the kids to model a loveless marriage. But is that really worse than the alternative for them? I have friends and families going through messy divorces, seeing how horrible it is, and feel they’ve just exchanged one set of problems for another. Surely that’s not good for them or their kids?
Surely it’s better to just plod along in a less than ideal relationship?

I agree that people rush into relationships and have children's too quickly.
However I believe society pushes for this. It's frowned upon to take your time and date lots of people. It's frowned upon to choose to be childfree.

I’m a child of parents that should have divorced but stayed together as it was the socially accepted norm - my childhood was not full of me begging my parents to get a divorce!

This is something I am currently struggling with. I despise my husband and he emotionally abuses both me and my children. However, no one would believe his behaviour as to everyone else he is shy and affable.

I'm desperate to leave but I know he would go for shared access to the children (not because he really wants to look after them but because mostly his parents would expect it and for appearances: he wouldn't accept being seen as an absent father) and that would mean for half of the week I would have no mediating influence over his behaviour towards them.

I feel like a terrible mother for staying in this toxic relationship but I feel like it would be even worse to leave him to his mean-spirited and nasty own devices for half the week and the effect that would have on my children. If I could get sole custody I would but it's vanishingly unlikely. I spend nearly every minute of the day trying to decide the best way forward for my children.

It's not as simple as ltb even in abusive relationships, if the abuse isn't visible to other people and there is a high chance that in leaving I would be effectively leaving my children alone with him regularly.

Yep, other things being equal, kids nearly always want their parents to stay together.

When kids are involved you should undoubtedly put up with a worse relationship than when they're not. Not put up with anything, obviously...

I am getting divorced amongst other things because stbx spent months at a time (literally) not talking to me. It was the dcs’ normal sadly, but hell for me.

Now he is still not talking to me, but it will soon no longer be my problem. The relief is immense.

Children do nearly always want their parents to stay together - because that is all they have known.

My son, who would have wanted us to stay together if he'd been asked, is infinitely happier with us divorced. He has thrived from having two families instead of one (ex-husband has married again). If we had stayed together, we would both have been less than we are now: our situation was similar to JaquesHammer's in that we had become like brother and sister. We may have come to be like brother and sister who hated each other if we'd stayed together, because we wanted different things from life.

We certainly did not rush into things - married at 28 after 2 years together, child at 36, divorced after 16 years.

Life changes, people change, and shackling yourself to someone forever on the basis of emotions and intentions from 20 years previously is no example to set to children.

Acrimonious divorces damage everyone - but maybe if people divorced before they hated eachother (and before cheating on their partner), there'd be less acrimony?