Colin, the comment about wanting to have DS and his life stay the same. This exactly.
very, FFF, bounty, handholding. It is shit, I have two failed marriages, I would not wish it on anyone. This is not a choice you made at the outset, and I would bet you have given your all to try and make it work. I think it is natural to be sad. And also to wish it had turned out differently.
That said, with both my xhs, I really do not see how it could have been different, because they would have needed to be different people and so, possibly, would have I. I would have needed to understand my need for approval, my inability to say no, and have had an acknowledgement of myself as a person, by which I mean recognition that my needs counted.. I would have also needed to understand the dynamics of control and abuse, and realise how it had moulded me growing up, I would have needed the ability to set and stick to boundaries, actually, even know there was such a thing, all of those things I would have needed for things to be different, to have had any chance of recognising a FW before the web was spun and having had any chance of a happy, intact, family life.
Which is not blaming myself, or anyone else who suffers abuse, just that, in the face of it, I did not have a chance. Because I did not know.
So, yes, the chance of happy families in the conventional sense has gone. And yet, I still have more than many in the form of two lovely dcs and the chance of properly being myself. And being the person who knows all those things now, and who can hopefully help dcs also to know them.
Forgive the introspection.