This is a really nice article.  But it does not realistically apply to all spouses.  I wish I had been married to a man whom I felt comfortable enough to tell him calmly and reasonably that I wanted a divorce.  Perhaps if I were married to someone like that, I would still be with him.  You see, I was married for over 30 years, and I put up with a lot of yelling, name-calling, and belittling over the years.  I put up with a husband who had little consideration for my thoughts or feelings, and it got so bad that if I got upset about something he said or did, he just didn't care.  He complained when I was in the hospital about coming to see me.  He let me know more than once that anytime I got my way, as he put it, it was an example of my ability to have power over him, and he was not going to let me have power over him in any way.  It didn't matter how unreasonable he became in certain circumstances, and it didn't matter whether I was right about something.  It mattered more that I wasn't allowed to have an opinion.  If I tried to talk with him, he figured that yelling over my voice made him the winner.  He spent years wearing me down to the point that I have little confidence in myself.  I knew that if I hung around to tell him I was leaving, he would do anything and everything to stop me, or take any course necessary to make it hard for me to leave.  I know him so well, and I figured he would care more about the money than he would about losing me.  I was so right on that account, as has been proven out in settlement talks.  So, yeah, I left in a hurry while he was at work.  I left him a letter.  I took as much as I could with me.  He can be nice about it all now, but that only lasts until he realizes he is not going to get his way in settlement.  I believe if I had stuck around and waited to move out after I told him, he would have drove me to suicide.  Niceness doesn't cut it when you are d

Sorry, but the system cut me off, even though I hadn't reached the end of my character count, at least according to the counter.

I was only going to add that niceness doesn't cut it when you are dealing with someone like my husband.  I didn't want it to end like this.  And he did everything he could to try to make me feel guilty.  But that was his m.o.:  I was always to blame for everything.  When I had to quit a job for medical reasons, he was sure I had done something to jeopardize my job just so I could get out of working!  It all just got so ridiculous that it wasn't until I was in therapy for my medical condition that I even became aware of what was really going on in my marriage.  I am a very intelligent woman, a former professional, who has dealt with lots of tough situations and negotiations in my working life.  But I couldn't see what was going on in my own life.  My sister told me after I moved out that she and her husband always wondered why I put up with the way my husband treated me.  Apparently, to my surprise, this all started very early in our marriage, but I just didn't see it, and the situation just grew and grew over the years.  And, oh yeah, my son doesn't always speak respectfully to me either.  Sometimes when I'm talking to him, I could swear he is talking to me like my husband.  They both treat me as if I am too stupid and incompetent to do anything right.  But I didn't recognize what was going on with my son either until it was too late.  I always thought there was something wrong with me, that I was really dumb and that I needed the men in my life to help me just to survive.  Oh, boy, my husband did a number on me AND my son.  So, I'm not too worried about the way I left.  It was the only way I even could have thought about leaving.  It has only been since I left that I have become assertive enough again to speak my mind with him.  And I do so rationally and reasonably.