I'm with you, Jabber. I did not want to put my kids, who were 5 and 2 at the time, through a divorce, so I probably would have stayed with my ex even though I was pretty darn sure he was cheating. (His job, which had him out of town half the time, made it easy for him to cheat.) We saw a marriage counselor, instead, which did no good. He lied to the counselor, too...

So instead, I went back to work -- I'd happily become a stay-at-home mom when my daughter was born -- so I'd have some money of my own, but it wasn't really enough to allow me to support myself in the manner to which I'd become accustomed, so I didn't take any action to separate at that time.

It took my ex's then girlfriend moving to town, and his installing her in the apartment complex we'd lived in prior to buying a house, before I finally took action to file for divorce.

And then, if you can believe it, he even had the nerve to suggest that the girlfriend use the same daycare provider we were using, so there was always a chance I'd run into her when I went to pick up the kids...

Well, that's all in the past... Long story short is that the girlfriend moved to town, we divorced, five years later I met and married Steve, and we all agreed on joint custody of the kids. (I wanted them to know their father, so I didn't press for sole custody, though my divorce lawyer thought I was crazy.)

My ex did not marry the girlfriend. Eventually she moved away, though she came back to help him a year or so later, when he was diagnosed with non-Hodgekin's lymphoma.

Three years after Steve and I married -- so 8 years after the divorce -- my ex died.

Lord knows, I never would have wished him to die so young, especially of such a gruesome disease. But I've always kind of wondered if it was God's punishment for the way my ex treated me...