For the other married couples, particularly with children, you may have these feelings and thoughts as you contemplate divorce:



You are not happy with your life. You sometimes don't want to get out of bed or come home from work. You and your spouse are not being intimate anymore. You feel you made a mistake getting married to your spouse. Your spouse does not appreciate you. You argue too much. The children are witnessing unhappy parents. This list goes on and on.

The best way to decide if the grass will be greener on the divorce side is to take a look into the future.

Stage one is the separating process. There are many decisions to be made. You need to make arrangements on how you are going to live on your own. If you don't have your own job or make enough money, then that becomes a major obstacle. Finding suitable employment and paying child care need to be solved.

You need to figure out how you will have enough money to live. You can ask for alimony if the other spouse makes a substantial higher amount of income. This will most likely cause the other spouse to become more adversarial. So any first thoughts of a friendly separation are already being tested.

Second, if there are children, who will they live with, and how much child support can the non-custodial parent afford? If it is not enough for you, then you can force child support payments through court action. Again, this will have an affect on the friendliness of the separation. What about any real estate, cars, loans, credit cards, and pensions? How will these be divided?

The most serious issue is the children. What affect will this have on the children? Will they have to change schools? What does the custody and visitation schedule look like? How close are the children to the non-custodial parent? If very close, they will surely miss that parent.

If you remember in your marriage the problems getting along with your spouse, well just think two more people may be involved in your life. You and your spouse will probably move on and find new loves of your life. Now there will be four personalities involved in your lives when it comes time to spend time with the children. They both will want to have some involvement in raising your children. They may not agree with your style of rearing the children. The time the children spend with the other spouse is not under your control.

Also, your children may even want to call the new spouses mommy or daddy. Even though this can be prevented legally, it still shows the attachment they have with the new step-parent. Is this something that you are ok with?

Maybe there will be more children with the new spouses and you will now want to or have to figure out how all the children can spend time together. Also, you may feel that your new spouse treats your children from your previous differently than your new children. Maybe your new spouse has children from another marriage. That adds more ex-spouses to the pot.

How about money and how you spend it on your children from the previous marriage? If you die, how will you devise your property between your new spouse and the children from the previous marriage?

After answering all these questions you still feel the grass is greener on the other side, you have serious marital problems and should immediately go to a counselor.

If you come to the conclusion that the grass is not greener on the other side, take action, and seek counseling. Do not settle on being miserable. Make a commitment to be a different person and open the love tank in your spouse and yourself. Remember in the Beatles song, "And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make."