What do you get out of this relationship now?.
What did you learn about relationships when you were growing up?.
There is indeed more to life than this. Divorce is not failure but living in this unhappiness is. Staying with him also actively stops you from meeting someone else.
I would urge you to make the break and sooner rather than later. Children are perceptive and pick up on all the vibes both spoken and unspoken. They sense the antipathy between you two both spoken and unspoken and sound travels too.
What do you want to teach your children about relationships and what are they learning here from you two?. You are showing them that for them a loveless marriage could be their "norm" too. If we want our offspring to have joyful and successful relationships, we need to provide them with the best example we possibly can. Living in mediocrity or worse burdens children with very confusing messages about relationships and happiness. It certainly instructs them that loving marriages and partnerships are not their birthright.
When marriages are angry, conflicted, or terribly mediocre, parents often default to staying together for the purported sake of the children. I wonder whose sake it this really for, in this instance I would argue its for yours rather than your children's. They cannot and should not be used as glue here to bind you and this man together.
As our children grow older, they tend to replicate relationships similar to what their parents modeled. As parents we’d never say we want our children to suffer or struggle in their relationships. Yet that’s the greater likelihood. It’s not what we say, but what we do that matters. Telling our children they deserve healthy, respectful, and loving partnerships isn’t taken to heart if we don’t have the courage to live up to our own words. What we model for them is very much what we might expect for them in their future relationships. From this perspective we might question the sincerity of the expression “for the sake of the children.”
Financial concerns or the fear of being alone often motivate such paralysis, hidden beneath the mask of staying together for the children. Unloving or conflicted marriages often follow a lineage as they are passed down from generation to generation. And so the cycle continues. Is this what we really wish for our children? It is much more challenging to come to terms with our own circumstances and face our fears than it is to hide behind them as we stay together “for the kids.”
Divorce isn’t failure, but living in unhappiness is.
Divorce, in and of itself, need not be harmful to children. It is the adversarial and contentious process of divorce, if continued, that may wreak damage. Yet research indicates that most children adapt to their new circumstances within a few years. Having two parents successfully move forward with their lives teaches an invaluable lesson: that we deserve to be happy and to feel loved. Conversely, remaining in relationships that perpetuate anger, devaluation, and lack of positive interactions leaves an indelible scar on children. We should demonstrate lovingly to our kids that we all deserve happiness, even at the cost of divorcing.