When your marriage is falling apart, should you stay or should you go?

When your marriage is falling apart, should you stay or should you go?

When a marriage is falling apart, should you stay or should you go?

Will life be better alone, even if that means single motherhood? Or is every marriage worth sticking with, however troubled?

This is the subject of a new book being written by two women who have faced this question themselves and come to entirely different conclusions. So who do you agree with?

Taking ur time to read this post by Lauren will never not be a waste .

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says Lauren Booth

This time last year, my husband Craig and I nearly split up. We've been married for seven years, but together for almost 20, and we have two daughters, Alex, seven, and Holly, five.

It seemed that everything had become a row. It had got to the stage where one of us would say "good morning" and the other would start snapping that it wasn't said in the right tone of voice. We would compete in the overworked stakes, constantly making lists of what we'd done each
day, both insisting we had done the most.

In retrospect, I can see what had happened. I was working away a lot, coming home exhausted to a grumpy husband, tired from looking after the children.

We weren't seeing much of each other so communication had broken down. Eventually, weeks of not talking ended in a stint in separate bedrooms. Wedding rings were left on a window sill.

For each of us, it was a display of bravado. We were both sure that we were in the right, but we selfishly didn't think about how it would affect our girls. In fact, it upset them so much that Alex made us put the rings on again in front of her and promise "never, ever to not love each other."

This made us feel childish, not to mention selfish for having conspired to cause such a traumatic situation.

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Afterwards, we stood in the kitchen (funny how these sorts of talks always seem to happen in the kitchen) and told each other that walking away was simply not on the cards.

Just expressing our commitment to each other in a serious, pragmatic way took the cartwheeling emotion and anger out of the situation. It allowed us to be a family again.

Since then, yes, we've argued, but we've been able to keep the rows minor, somehow. We've stopped throwing around expressions like "I've really had enough - I'm leaving," as if they meant nothing.

It's not only unsettling to us, it's cruel to our girls. And it would have been ludicrous to throw away the relationship - which has plenty of fun and friendship and good parts, as well as the arguments - and the home, and family that we wanted so much and worked so hard for, together, just because we could.

I can't help wondering if the urge to weigh anchor and "move on" is nowadays more about a false sense of opportunity than anything akin to genuine marital unhappiness.

More and more divorces seem to hinge on the woman's sense of "life passing me by" or some vague feeling that "things just aren't right somehow". Too many British women treat divorce as a lifestyle option rather than a last resort to an irreconcilable problem.

These days, married women can be split into two categories: "stickers" and "runners".

Well, I'm a sticker.

In previous generations, you just got on with it. But I'm not for one minute wishing to return to the days when you had to stay in a terrible relationship.

There are reasons why I wouldn't stay in a marriage - adultery, or if I was emotionally or physically abused, for example. But being grateful for the option of divorce doesn't mean you have to take it.

We live in such a disposable society, and marriage seems to have become a victim of that. Rather than working at a difficult marriage, we'd rather throw it away in the hope that there will be something better over the hill. Most of the time, there isn't.

We need to remember that the person annoying us now is that same one we fell in love with. And to walk away from a good person doesn't seem very sensible.

I have started to remind myself that I am not owed a happy husband, or an easy marriage. It does all need to be worked at, but that doesn't mean it's particularly hard - for me it means thinking before verbally lashing out.

If Craig is grumpy and cross, maybe he's feeling stressed or sad. Maybe he needs some love and understanding.

I've noticed that men tend to slam doors and shout when they're bothered by something, while women might cry. We should remember that, and appreciate our differences.

One easy mistake to make is to envy the most fabulous-seeming marriages. The reality is that they are actually the same as mine.

How easy to look at the glamour of, say, Victoria Beckham's life, all private jets and vast diamond rings and think: "If only that was me. I wonder if another guy might have given me that."

But you can't forget that David Beckham is not exactly the ideal husband - uprooting the family to a different country every few years for his career, oh, and with a string of women insisting he's had affairs with them.

The reality of flashy celebrity marriages is the same as my own. Lust and 'love' are replaced over time by rather less exotic feelings; irritation (the pile of washing he can't put in the basket), boredom (not more rugby on the telly) and disappointment (he hasn't said I'm beautiful in six months).

On top of those trials, modern life conspires to make marriage harder than ever. If awoman works, too, then why should she do all the housework and childcare?

And if she's earning a good wage - or knows she can get a decent settlement if they split up - then what is a husband for, exactly?

It's this niggling dissatisfaction, rather than more serious unhappiness, that has many women paying a visit to a divorce lawyer.

That is what I came to realise as I lay in bed alone while Craig slept in the spare bedroom last year. We still argue over the silliest things. In fact, we seem to be able to row over anything. But we try really hard not let it get out of hand.

What we keep reminding ourselves is that every marriage relies on tacit, unromantic deals to survive. Craig will tolerate my flabby bits because I'm the only one who can help the girls to get their tights on in the morning.

I put up with having heavy metal blaring over breakfast, because the next time the toilet is blocked it will be Craig, not me, who rolls up his sleeves.

We trundle - not unhappily - onwards, in this state of marital understanding which is, in equal amounts, both loving and uneasy.

Often, late at night, one of us will remember something good that's happened that day, kiss the other, and say: "We're so lucky to have what we have." Followed by a sleepy "Love you."

So, the shelves still need putting up, the bin is overflowing and his trousers are still on the floor where he kicked them off last night.

Oh yes, I understand the incessant niggles that drive many women into going rather than staying. I just don't understand quite why that so often translates into dragging children into a world of emotional turmoil, into the destabilising mess that is a broken home.

Finding someone more "exciting" than the man currently grumbling about putting the rubbish out sounds fun. But I'm staying put.

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GO

says Lowri Turner

My seven-year-old son summed up my marital history with a brutally frank assessment the other day: "Basically, you've failed twice, haven't you?"

Well, he's right. I have left two marriages. I say "left", although I wasn't the one to physically go in either case.

When you have three children, the opportunities for flouncing out are limited. I know some women do clutch a child in each hand and disappear into the night, but you have to pretty much be in fear of your life to do that.

In my case, it was emotional rather than physical pain I was feeling. Still, the need to minimise the trauma and upheaval for my children offset my compulsion to travel to Heathrow and board a plane. So, it was I who stayed put and my husband, in each case, who packed.

Both my marriages lasted only just over a year, although I was with my first husband for eight years, and my second for two and a half. I have two sons from my first marriage, and a daughter from my second.

Should I have remained in those relationships? This is a question I ask myself often, especially if things have gone badly, if I've had an argument with the kids or I read my bank statements.

After my first split, my ex and I had family therapy and we were advised to encourage the children to voice their fears, disappointments and anger.

In theory, that sounds fine. In reality, what it does is make you feel incredibly guilty at what you have done.

My seven-year-old son asked me if I was going to marry Daddy again the other day. When I said a firm "no" he added a hopeful "engaged?".

Even my five-year-old is apt to wade in with a wail of: "Why can't we all live together as a family?" Thank goodness my 11-month-old can't talk yet, or I'd be looking for a train to throw myself under.

This might sound flippant, but the weight of worry and guilt carried by divorced parents is immense.

You can't open a newspaper without reading that children from divorced families do less well at school, are less likely to get married, and are generally traumatised by an event they didn't choose - their parents' split.

Of course, I worry about all of this. However much I tell myself the kids are fine, I know my sons would prefer it if their mum and dad were still together. They tell me so.

But then, I don't think children benefit from living in a war zone. When a relationship is imploding, everyone gets caught in the cross fire.

Yes, children should ideally grow up in a happy, two-parent household, but when that is not on offer because one or both parents is deperately unhappy, then it is a case of the lesser of two evils.

You either stay, and worry that your children will hear the arguments. Or you go, and hope you can make it OK for them.

I have not told my children the real and complex reasons I ended either of my marriages. They are too young. Instead, I endure accusations about how I "threw Daddy out of the house".

I know I am not alone. Another mother once told me that when she split from her husband after he had an affair, her five-year-old declared: "I hate you because you sent my Daddy away."

The mother, who kept her husband's secret for the sake of her child, later took her unfaithful spouse back.

I know another mother whose daughter begged her not to take her alcoholic partner back. "But you need a daddy," she told her crying daughter. "Yes, but why does it have to be that one?" the little girl replied.

This mother was also reconciled with her other half, against her daughter's wishes, feeling that

two parents, however compromised, were better than one. And it's this that is at the heart of the choice a woman has to make if she has children and is in a relationship that isn't working?

A generation ago, many women didn't have a choice. Now, in the era of the working mother, the availability of childcare and the waning of the social stigma of divorce means getting out of an appalling relationship, or even just one where you both feel suffocated by boredom, is a possibility.

Does this make it selfish to leave a marriage in which you are unhappy? There are grades of unhappiness, from dissatisfaction to total, cry-every-day misery, of course, but I don't think martyrdom does anyone any good.

Of all the separated couples I know none of them took the decision easily. Only those with no experience of separation think that those who split have taken the easy option. Being a divorced parent is the hardest thing in the world.

If it is so hard, then why do so many of us do it? I look at my mother and her friends who are all in their 70s, and, although some are widowed now, they all stayed married, often in difficult circumstances.

I asked my mum why this was so. "We come from the stick with it generation," she told me. From my perspective, the stick with it generation was also the look the other way generation, the put up with unacceptable behaviour generation and the what will people think? generation.

In the midst of my first divorce, I got a letter from one of my mother's still-married friends. It had never occurred to me that this friend was unhappily married, but she wrote that she wished she'd been able to do what I was doing 30 years ago.

I thought, how incredibly sad, to have stayed with someone you were so miserable with for 30 years.

I have decided twice that I would rather go than stay. In neither case was this an easy decision. Some of my still-married friends say glib things like: "How lovely to be able to have some time off when the kids are with their dad." The truth is, it's not lovely, it's lonely.

What women should not believe is that as a separated person you're out of the warzone. In my experience, rowing, far from ceasing, actually gets worse after a split.

Skirmishes rumble on for months even, by phone, text and e-mail. Divorced parents are yoked together like children in a three-legged race.

You are hobbled by your past relationship. It creates problems when you want to start a new one and is a constant reminder of how you have failed.

So, did I do the right thing? Sometimes I wonder. I look at those in stable relationships and feel envy.

But then I examine the compromises you seem to have to make to keep a marriage going and, frankly, they are beyond me.

I recently met a female acquaintance in the park. She was with her lovely husband and her lovely child and her lovely dog. They were the picture of a happy family.

He was chiding her gently about an appointment they had and, as she left, she said jokily me: "I must go. I'm under orders." Something clicked in me. "That's why I'm not married any more - I don't like taking orders," I said.

She leant towards me and whispered: "Good for you." There are so many reasons to stay - the kids, the house, the extended family, the fear of having to find someone new. It's just that I couldn't.

After my second split, a relative wrote to me: "I have been married for 40 years and I can tell you that the first few years are the worst." The first few years? No thanks.

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