Children of divorced parents - what was it really like?

[Cvn]

DH and I have been married for 13 years. We married in our mid-20s but didn't have children for a while so we now have a 3yo and a 7mo.
The marriage has been up and down basically since the start, and now we're at the point where we're living as housemates.
Our days are as follows:
I get up early with the kids, get them sorted for the day, and start the day. DH wakes up around 9am. We might exchange 2 or 3 sentences. He chats to the kids a little or plays with them for a bit, then WFH until dinner time. We eat dinner together. Occasionally it's pleasant but often he's stressed, depressed, tired, and finds the kids overstimulating, so he gets snappy with them. I find aggressive speech really intimidating so I'm on edge throughout dinner. He and I maybe exchange a few more sentences about our days or about something in the news, but we mainly talk to the kids. After dinner we tag team playing with the kids / cleaning up, then are both involved in putting the kids to bed. Both are usually asleep by 8pm. Then he goes back to work until 1 or 2am and I doom scroll in bed until I fall asleep. We used to hang out in the evenings - watch TV or sit it in the garden with a glass of wine - but he doesn't want to any more.
Sometimes we try to talk about the relationship but our resentments are so long-standing and tangled up that we can't figure out how to untangle them. Our communication and conflict styles are very different and that makes any kind of productive conversation difficult. When we married, we practiced the same faith but he has lost his along the way, and it means we now have very different values and worldviews. His faith had also provided the basis for his moral framework so our views on e.g. porn are really out of sync now. It’s all such a mess and I can't see any way out. I'm desperately lonely.
He says he's previously tried to work at the marriage and it was a waste of energy, so now he's going to prioritise his career. He's content to live as housemates and co-parent, but I'm not.
He's great with the kids, and shares the housework and life admin. He just doesn't like me very much or want to spend time with me. Mostly because he's very angry and blames me for his career not going where he wanted it to - there have been times in the past when both of us have prioritised our marriage to the detriment of our careers, but he feels very resentful of that.
If not for the kids, I'd probably call it a day. But I'm torn. They adore him. But I don't want them growing up thinking this is what a healthy relationship looks like. But equally I don't want them to bear the scars of divorce. They're not exposed to arguing or violence because DH and I hardly talk. I think they have a pretty happy life and feel loved by both of us.
As my friend said, if DH was a real dick, or we were fighting all the time, it would be an easy decision. But he's a generally decent guy, just the marriage has been hard and I think we're not well suited, and that's taken it's toll on both of us.
If you've managed to read this far, and if you're parents divorced when you were a child:
a) how old were you?
b) how did it affect you?
c) what did they do / could they have done to make the divorce less disruptive or upsetting for you?
Thanks in advance! 🙏🏻

I was 11. Never saw my father again from that day . He died when I was 22.

The devastating fear of further abandonment has affected and destroyed every relationship I have ever had. I trust no one.

Adding something else too.

My mum has since died a few years ago. I miss her, she's my mum and I will always love her regardless of what's happened. But I don't miss feeling little around her, or not good enough. A few weeks before she died she screamed about my dad for cheating on her. 20 years later. She was still screaming about it. I couldn't believe it. She never apologised for bullying me. Some of her last words to me were "I know you don't believe me, but I do love you". It haunts me. She still blamed me for her bullying and actions even at the end.

My dad, I've got a fantastic relationship with him. I do still have questions why he left. But I can't be bothered with them. I've got a perfectly good relationship with him and he's a really good grandad. He's really good with my children.

I was 12 and my sister 10 when my parents split up. They remained relatively amicable. My dad moved about 4 or 5 miles away. I wasn't very happy about it (to say the least) but it did spare us from the frequent arguing. To this day I can't remember what my parents used to argue about, just that they used to argue quite frequently.

They didn't really do the EOW thing as they didn't want to have allocated weekends, but in practice we went to our dad's nearly every weekend from Saturday lunchtime to Sunday evening. What I found most difficult is that after about 6 months they both started seeing new people at the same time.

I was 15. It was both a blessing and a curse. My parents were never happy so it was nice to not be in that toxic environment any more, but it was just swapped for another. Dad cheated, so lots of anger there and Mum fell apart. She poisoned how we thought about him, and basically used us (3 kids) as a weapon against him, for example taking us to see he was living with the other woman. Mum then had a string of absolute arseholes as boyfriends. It didn't really get better until I was about 25.

If you do divorce, there is a way to do it that demonstrates respect for the relationship you both shared as long as respect for your children that you are both still their parents. They are entitled to a relationship with both of you, and your marriage needs to be treated as entirely separate from your parental relationship, in my opinion.

I was 12. My parents weren't happy together and I can't really ever remember them being happy at any point. They were not terrible parents though. I would say my own parenting style is however, an attempt to be better than them.

I always thought it was strange being around friend's houses and seeing their parents being happy together. The last two years they were together were awful. I became isolated from my friends as they were not supportive. Although what support can you expect from children.

The hardest part is losing the family home. That was a house my brother and I could of had as a secure base in our 20s. Rather we just had to live with our mother and pay rent like we were lodgers. Being an adolescent in a single parent family isn't easy. Not having much money. You can't quite make sense of the situation. Although my dad is now dead, I sort of worry about my mother financially unlike my similarly aged friends.

On the other side, I can think of friends who had unhappy parents that did stay together. They are hardly in a better situation now. Financially they might have been better off as a family, but emotionally.

I think it meant as an adult I was capable of having a better relationship with my parents. Because they could be happier apart.