Oh, and I guess I'll mention the wife and I split about 7 months ago. We still live only like 7 miles apart and have been for the most part amicable so it hasn't been too tough on the kids thankfully. It's not ideal but it could be worse.
i'm sorry to hear this too... loss of a dream sucks.
funny, i guess: when i finally broke it off with the first, i was incredibly sad about the break only because of proving to the world i'd made a mistake and having to own up to it- the dream lost was the only source of pain and indignity.... but honestly, this was my experience:
a few days after, i wake up on a Saturday morning flat out anxious to the point of almost panic trying to figure out what i had forgotten to do.. it had to be something, and the way my conscious was beating on me it had to be something BIG i was forgetting about or late on or whatever it was...... so i forced myself to settle down, have a cup of coffee and fire up a cigar (which is something i never would have done with her around that time of day- a cigar usually invites a transcendental-meditative state for me)... five minutes into that, i realized exactly what my problem was...
i wasn't forgetting a thing... i was instead at peace- a state i had been holy evacuated from since almost the moment i said 'i do'... it was so friggin' alien it must have freaked me out... from that second on, only a few days after making the decision and then bouncing- i knew i'd made the right one and i never looked back even for a second.
your children, though.... that makes yours helluva lot more difficult than mine was. i didn't have children then.
