I separated from my ex 4 years into our marriage while I had been a sahm and still had very young children (a result of finding him online dating, pretending to be a single father, secretly contacting his ex girlfriends, being a porn addict and being financially irresponsible and emotionally abusive towards me in general). After I kicked him out of our apartment and met with not a very good lawyer I ended up taking him back because the lawyer basically scared me into believing he would have had more access to the children than he probably really would have gotten at that stage and thst I would receive very little financial support....so I just didn't feel I could do it then.
I stayed 4 more years and everything got a lot worse. I then did it for real regardless of whatever the consequences were going to be and I'm so glad I did. He made things very difficult throughout the whole process and constantly me demands for access to the kids then regularly failed to show up, constantly made getting the support payments from him difficult (but thankfully enforcement kicked in)...kept accusing me of parental alienation (but he didn't pursue his false accusations through court thankfully). He eventually dug himself into a huge financial hole that he lost his job and moved far away and still didn't keep up with consistent access to the kids in spite of his emails demanding it, and now my kids are teenagers who choose for themselves not to bother with him.
My only regret is ever having gotten together with him in the first place (but I don't regret my kids).