Aaaand this is the part where I must disagree with you. Not for argument's sake or to pick a fight, but because through my personal experience, sometimes divorce is a better option than staying together "for the kids' sake."

My parents got married in 1990, I happened five years later, and then my little sister was born three years after me. For as long as I can remember, every single interaction between my parents up until their divorce almost two years ago consisted of stiff formality, and any period of time spent together that went over maybe five or six hours inevitably lead to a fight. I clearly remember being in third grade and sitting on the landing between the first and second floors and listening to them bicker. They did a very poor job of trying to hide it from my sister and me. It never escalated to a physical fight, and they never brought my sister or me into it. As my sister and I grew up, the arguments got worse and worse.

The littlest things- maybe Mom forgot to buy more orange juice or Dad forgot to sort out the recycling- could set off a fight that would last until around two or three in the morning. It got to the point where they couldn't even talk to each other without one of them blowing up. My mom was usually the more emotional, volatile one, but my dad was harsher with his words. They reached this point about a year before selling the house and each moving somewhere new. That last year was an absolute nightmare. The screaming, the swearing, the constant blame game... I think the worst part of it was how my mom started drinking more to cope with it. She'd come home flat-out drunk in the early hours of the morning. She would come into my room and sit on my bed and start sobbing her eyes out about how horrible the situation was, and how awful my dad was being, and how my sister couldn't do anything. She treated me like a counselor. I was a freshman in high school at the time, and along with all the intense teen angst I was dealing with, I also had to help my mom get through this divorce. My dad would unload onto me as well, describing the various tiny little things my mom did that would set him off.

Finally, finally finally finally, someone bought our house, my parents moved out, and the divorce papers were finalized. My parents were to share custody of my sister and me, switching off each week. It took a long time for things to calm down properly. Any mention of my dad around my mom, and she'd get visibly upset; any mention of my mom around my dad, and his face would go red and his knuckles would go white. It's been almost a year and a half now since they each moved out, and they can barely even look at each other, because anything more than a few words exchanged turns into another shouting match in seconds.

Other than that, though? Everything is much, much calmer. It's lovely to be able to go to sleep and not worry about your parents' screaming waking you up. I could go on for days about how much better things are now. It feels like this fat cloud of tension and resentment that's been looming over my head for almost nine years has finally floated away.

I asked each of my parents a while ago why they'd waited so long to divorce. They both said the exact same thing: that they wanted to protect my sister and me. And don't get me wrong, I completely understand why they did it. Everyone wants their child to grow up in a safe, happy, loving home, and to my parents, that meant staying together so that my sister and I could have both a mother and a father present in our lives. However, I firmly believe that those constant explosions of years and years and years of pent-up resentment could have been avoided had my parents divorced earlier in my life. It also would have provided my sister and I with a greater sense of normality regarding the concept of two homes, moving stuff back and forth, etc., and might have enabled my parents to at least act civil towards one another by now. Honestly? I think a civil divorce at age 8 would cause far less trauma then an incredibly tumultuous one, combined with another eight years of constant arguments, at age 16.

TL;DR: Sometimes, staying together for the kids can be much worse than splitting up. Case in point: my experiences with my parents' divorce.