You do not need to be a pollster to understand that this phenomenon has alarming dimensions. If you are not affected by it personally, you certainly know a great many couples who are.
The mother cannot stand the father. The father, for his part, thoroughly detests the mother. The hostility and alienation between them are not loud or aggressive, but you will not find intimacy or compassion between them either, even if you dig with a bulldozer.
And still the contract between them is clear, stable and even agreed: we do not break up a family. This is what there is. Each to himself. Until death, or until the children leave home. Whichever comes first.
We who surround them are no better. We wring our hands in concern, blink, click our tongues to one another that we feel most sorry for the children — but we will not hurry to speak to them directly about the subject, about the situation, about the pain.
So let us internalise this: couples who find themselves in that hell think about the children non-stop. Whether it is a considered decision, a damaged family history, or a collection of rationalisations, the children are a constant and central consideration in the internal deliberation of both members of the pair.
Here are some points for thought for anybody currently in that situation. Not advice, not rules, not prescriptions. And believe me when I say: I am not judging you. This is not how you intended it to be.
One. There is something right in your insistence on giving the children a stable home. That instinct is sound and it is not to be dismissed.
Two. The research on this is less decisive than either camp claims. Children do worse after a separation than children from stable, warm households — and they do better than children in households with sustained, cold hostility. Which means the relevant comparison is not divorce versus marriage. It is divorce versus the specific atmosphere you are actually providing.
Three. Children are not deceived. Whatever you believe you are concealing, they have known for years — and what they learn from a household of formal politeness and no warmth is a template for what a marriage is.
Four. The most damaging arrangement is not either option. It is remaining in the second while conducting a permanent, low-grade version of the first — the sighs, the silences, the remarks. If you are staying, stay properly.
That is a genuinely hard instruction, and it is the one that determines whether the sacrifice you are making does the thing you are making it for.