Newby here, desperate for some advice (thread 2)

[JRuss]

Thanks, EDF. With these two friends, in particular, I almost get the sense sometimes that she likes the figure she cuts with them: long-aggrieved, but nobly suffering in silence tragic figure turned Woman Who's Doing Something About It (but still doing what won't screw up the kids).

Only she rarely speaks about the kids in this. She points to one of these two friend's own experience, where she and her XH co-parent well and without animus, with kids who don't seem too screwed up, as all the evidence necessary to show that our kids' experience will be the same. This just drives me nuts and gets me into a self-righteous fury. All of the data say even an unhappy but quiet/calm marriage is better for kids than a "happy" divorce, but, hey, there's this one friend who's done it, or so that friend says. But I'm the clingy one, trying to keep things together.