I believe in staying married and seeing things through, trying to overcome your problems, and spent 23 years doing just that, holding onto the positives, overcoming or ignoring the negatives. We have four DCs which H looked after while I worked, and life seemed to be rubbing along comfortably enough on the way to the grave, which I was quite looking forward to! I began to like the fact I was getting older and fatter because he wouldn't bother me with stupid jealousy - one day he'd surely look at me and see someone who no-one would steal, then we'd be fine, surely? I'd learned how to deal robustly with his sillier arguments, and had overcome his reluctance to go on holiday by taking one or another child for the odd weekend, leaving him out of it. As for the rubbish about the place and the increasing debts, well, if I played enough computer games maybe I could forget it was happening...
The day he called his sister and told her we were divorcing, with all sorts of fascinating details we were supposed to have worked out, which was quite honestly the first I'd heard about it, I felt a kind of dawning light and thought, you know, that would work. He didn't mean it, and denies now that it even happened.
So I agreed the marriage did indeed seem to be over, and of course it was a big shock to him as he had "never" thought anything was wrong! We had a long discussion and he promised to change. I felt trapped and panicky instead of happy, as I felt obliged to give him time to prove himself. A few days later when he started being arsey again I was actually relieved; I felt, thank goodness, I can go. We went to couple counselling, which he had refused with fury and contempt in the past, and he behaved like such an idiot that the only thing it did for me was to confirm I was right.
I still mourn the marriage and the absence of a loving partner he sometimes knew how to be, but it's just so over between us that I can't look at him and see someone I loved; that person has effectively died, if he wasn't always a figment of my wishful thinking. Sometimes I wish that shell of him that walks around with an annoying smirk in what is still currently our house would die too. Other times I wish him well but somewhere else, a long way away. Someone asked the other day what I would do if he got treatment for his depression and it turned him back into the nicer side of him, if that makes sense. I said it would be a good thing as he would then be a potentially better partner for someone in future. Not me! Never me!