If I could go back in time and tell myself to not get married in the first place, would I? Heck no. My kids are amazing and even if this marriage ends in a gigantic mess of hurt feelings and resentment at least I know that I'm halfway responsible for bringing two astounding individuals into this world as a result of the marital union.

When I look at my kids I know that everything was worth it. I think about how my husband made me feel about as big as a gnat, but then I see my son giggle and I know it was worth it.

I think about how my husband prefers silent treatment and guilt trips over rational conversation, but then my daughter dances through the house and I know that it was worth it.

I think about how my husband doesn't follow through on his obligations and how he resents me wanting him to push hard to succeed, but then my kids give me a big hug and I know that it was worth it.

It's when I start thinking about leaving that these same things keep me here. My husband twirls my daughter around or he sends my son into a fit of laughter from making funny faces and I feel guilty about ever tearing this all apart. I love my kids more than I have ever loved anything before — including myself — and the idea of shaking their world up bothers me to no end. 

How much less would my kids see their dad if the marriage ended? Would he take off like his father did? Would the seemingly unshakeable bond they all have together now be reduced to occasional visits and greeting cards on birthdays?

Or would my husband fight to take the kids away from me?

I hate that things have to be this way. I hate that I'm not part of a family that is altogether happy and content. I hate that my beautiful children will probably be the ones most hurt by a divorce. The mere thought of ever hurting them makes me want to scream, or throw up, or curl into the fetal position and cry.

I don't know what to do. 

I got a great lesson in perspective from my four-year-old daugter, Lila, the other afternoon.

We're sitting out by the banana tree — I love saying that. Anyway, we're in our zen little garden having a picnic by the banana tree in the September warm and sunshine, daisies along the garage and the fountain is trickling.

First afternoon at the new house. We're like a freaking Norman Rockwell, and you'd think this almost four-year-old would be out-of-her-mind to have just one home with her parents together in it and no more back and forth between houses.

We're eating PB&J in a sunny spot, her hands all strawberry jelly sticky.

"Mom," she says. "Next time we move can we go back to our old houses?"

"Houses?" I say. "You want back to two places?"

She sucks jelly from her forefinger.

"I liked having two houses," she says. "Why can't we have two houses anymore?"

When I left, she was 23 months old, and we had the reverse conversation. A day or two into the apartment she looked up from snapping Legos and said "I want to go home, mommy. I want to go home."

I was sure I'd ruined her life.

I take a bite of sandwich, swallow down my water and consider how to explain.

And I'm thinking, really? Is my four-year-old really asking me to justify moving back in together, to explain why we must do the very thing I'm positive all kids want above all else?

Of course she is.

She has no memory of us living all together. This is a huge change and I don't mean to sound flip or disrespect the gravity of splitting with young kids, but for Lila — for kids so young — the change itself is the hardest part.

Change is change is change is change. After the transition, then it's just normal.

There's something about contemplating divorce that a lot of folks don't realize.

The fact is that — at least in my particular situation — my husband and I aren't at each other's throats and hurling insults at each other. One of us doesn't walk out of the room when the other one walks in. We can have a family outing and have a genuinely good time, laughing and joking with each other.  It's not like we're faking our merriment either...we're really having a good time.

That's what's so stinking confusing about the whole thing. The constant sense of underlying marital unease is once in a while tempered with bouts of compatibility. The problem is that the uneasiness never goes away.

It's because of these times that I get really confused and start thinking to myself, "Well, gee, why couldn't this work? If we can get along and enjoy each other in this moment in time, why not always?" The relationship is steady; it's sturdy; it's stable.

But the uneasiness never goes away.

There is always the feeling of, "What am I doing here? What am I waiting for? Is this really how marriage is supposed to be?" It's like walking through a really muddy path, and every so often there is a really pretty bush of colorful flowers that I can stop and admire.

I start to wonder if this muddy path is worth the trouble because of the occasional flower bushes I encounter because after all, the flowers are beautiful.  I just hate having to trudge through the mud the majority of the time in order to stumble upon these flowers.

Plus, there's the fact that the mud really never goes away, even when I'm admiring the flowers. 

My husband served in Iraq for a few months back when our first child was a young baby. I was really proud of him for what he was doing even though I was scared out of my mind for the dangerous situation he was getting into and also because I was really new at the whole mommy thing and was about to do it all on my own.

When he came home he was different. I know you've all probably heard about how people go away to war and then come back somehow changed, but unless you've experienced it firsthand then you probably have no idea what it's like.

It's not like in the movies where he sits in a dark corner and smokes cigarettes while grumbling about the ills of war. Instead it's as if he went away one man and then came back another.

The only way I can describe it is that he came home himself, but a different version I had never seen before. Less patient. More prone to anger.

One minute he would demand attention and the next minute he would shut down and want to be left alone. He laughed less and was much more critical of everyone around him.

He's gone to counseling and the therapist told him that although he probably has some PTSD issues; chances are he'll bounce right back eventually. That was five years ago, and most of the time I still feel like he's a stranger.

What kind of woman leaves a husband who changes after serving his country? He may be a different man, but he changed because he went off to fight for the liberties I enjoy daily.

I struggle with this all the time. Is it his fault that he's different? Why can't I adapt to his changes? Should I have to?

I took introduction to psychology in college so I have a general idea of what the term "passive aggressive" means. It wasn't until recently, however, that I really got to witness it in person.

Apparently my husband has decided that this is his newest way to complain about the things I do without actually complaining about them.

Here are a couple of examples, which could easily be compiled with a slew of others for a "passive-aggressive husband reference manual":

The other day my kids and I went out to lunch with a couple of other moms and their kids. I don't eat out for lunch all the time, and this was an impromptu get-together. I had packed my husband a lunch that morning for him to take to work so he had leftovers. When he gets home he tells me this: "The guys at work said, 'Let me get this straight...she gets to eat out for lunch and you have to eat leftovers? Man, that's messed up!' Ha-ha!"

Translation: He's ticked off that I got to eat out and he had to eat leftovers.

My husband recently did some volunteer work with the guys at church that involved a lot of physical labor and when he got home he said, "Bob told me he was so glad that his wife and daughter were out of town because after we finished up he was going to go home and take a long nap without interruption. Ha-ha!"

Translation: He wants to take a nap but knows that we already agreed that he would take the kids so I could get some work done. He's hoping I suggest he takes a long nap and I'll just stay up until two in the morning working.

How do I know it's all passive aggressive? These comments don't even go with the flow of conversation. They come out of nowhere, and he gives a long pause afterward as though he's waiting for me to fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness for going out to eat with my friends/not offering him a four hour nap/whatever else I do that ticks him off.

We've been looking for a place to rent for almost two months, but we're still in the same broke boat, with the same crappy credit we had two years ago when I left.

And just like when I left, and all the long years leading up to it, the weight of financial pressure creates this ongoing competition for resources that exacerbates all of our other problems.

Sam says I'm more stressed about it than he is.

He says it to me and he says it to our therapist, then we walk out of the appointment and he accuses me of wanting more than I actually want, of wanting to keep up with the Joneses, when actually I could not care less about anyone else's lifestyle.

I don't want a McMansion. I just want to get by without struggling.

It's the same old fight.

Not being able to support our family makes him feel inadequate, and I know it's true because when I left because he owned up to it. Admitted the nasty things he said were about being angry with himself, not me.

So I call him on it, and he apologizes. It's an improvement I'm willing to work with.

Our therapist once told me finances are cited as a key factor in 80 percent of divorces. Money is the number-one point of contention in marriages. I'll buy that. There's so much stuff bound up in dollars.

Like they say, money is power. So, of course, there's contention about who spends it and how. That's assuming there's money to be spent.

Those arguments feel luxurious to me. We don't get to fight about whose spending irresponsibly. More likely, I ask Sam to ask his family for a loan; he refuses. Or what we are going to do about child care this fall because we owe Lila's pre-school more than it cost me for a year of college back in the day, and until we pay it down, we can't use their before and after care program.

Sam and I both work hard at jobs we love, but we don't make much money doing it.

OK, so you're asking: Why am I still here?

I think I've got a new answer this week: Monkey Branching. You know, brachiation, swinging from limb to limb. Something gibbons do in the jungle.

It's positively evil, emotionally unhealthy, this notion of keeping one hand on the solid branch of home, family and two cars in the driveway, while reaching the other hand out for some branch that may be out there somewhere.

But that's how I plan to go about searching the suburban jungle — finding something, some new guy, new while clinging to the old.

It's not like no one's ever done this before.

In high school we called it keeping another guy on the "back burner," in case some other relationship turned out not to be on the boil.

Alas, in high school, it was just you and the candidates for prom date. Now anyone on the back burner, or, to mix metaphors, any new branch, is going to have to hold not just my heart but my two children as well.

What sort of man would provide such a strong branch? Who would want to? One thing I do know: I won't be swinging on any new branches without my kids.

I know, I know.

My girlfriends, the talk show psycho-bablers, the self-help books, the marriage counselors, all say, "You have to be on your own before you can find somebody else."

Yeah, but I've been on my own before.

I'm no princess, waiting in her turret for Prince Rescue to come along. I've paid my own rent. Worked in Corporate America (high-profile and six-figures, thank you). Dated bigtime in the Big Bad Apple.

It's just that I've never done it with two beautiful pre-school kids in tow.

Monkey branching? Me? The library-helper-mom? The bake sale mom?

Isn't that sleazy?

I'm somewhat resentful and frustrated by aspects of my parents' marriage and divorce but that hasn't blinded me to the lessons to be learned.

I've learned from my parents' marriage not to let a few rocky patches turn into decades of dissatisfaction. Their betrayals of each other — big and small — and their unhappiness across the years show how easily people can get stuck in terribly unhealthy relationships. So with Rob, I've delved into couples therapy. And if that doesn't work, I'm not going to stay put forever.

I've also learned — and this is a big life lesson — how to muster feelings of compassion toward very difficult people. I can't forgive my father for his betrayals, or forget how he could make his kids feel like unwanted nuisances. But as his Alzheimer's disease rapidly progresses and he becomes further forgetful and confused — and, ironically but most helpfully, increasingly nice and gentle — I can let my resentment go and help him. He didn't take care of me so well, but now the roles have reversed, I don't need to repay his unkindness.

In all the crap life throws at us, divorce and disease are up there among the worst. But it is short-sighted to dwell on their difficult aspects only. Lessons to be learned, silver lining, lemonade from lemon, "challenges" — call them what you will — I'm not letting anything get the best of me.

Though...I'm on duty with my dad for the next few days, so let's just wait and see what I have to say after that.

A year ago when Sam and I began round three of counseling, our therapist recommended we draw up a contract, a kind of pre re-nup agreement, spelling out our needs and expectations.

Said it's a way to protect yourself — not your finances — the self that is YOU from being swallowed whole by enormity of committing to forever as part of a pair. Fear of losing myself in this, or any other, relationship ever again is huge for me.

She said it could be a detailed as, "If I want to go traveling in Asia alone for two years, it will be alright with you."

I never drafted it. Truth is, back when she was giving that advice I still thought I was in counseling to end my marriage, not to consider how best rebuild it.

What a difference a year makes. Closing in on this reunification, here's the rough draft of my Soul Protection Contract:

-I will always have a room within our house that is mine alone to work, think, be, and sometimes sleep in. It will have a locking door.

-We will have each have one "off duty" weekend every month with no responsibility for parenting, housekeeping, or partnering.

-We will have one free day (or night) every week.

-If someone does not use his/her time, that decision does not affect the other's right to do so without guilt.

-If I have the opportunity to travel for work to a place you would like to go, but can't because of your own work, this will be okay with you.

-When I need space for friends or I need to spend nights-on-end holed up in my room to write and think, and I emerge only help with the kids, this will also be okay.

-We will maintain separate banks accounts in addition to our household account.

-If you want to take an extended road trip with the girls during your summer break (Sam is on a school calendar) and I cannot go because of work, this will be okay with me (and with you.)

I've blogged about contemplating separation from Rob, but barely discussed how I recently became a child of divorce. After 37 years of marriage, my parents split when a marathon argument revealed the details of my fathers' many affairs...the longest and most significant of which was with my best friend's mother. (What a jerk, right?)

My mother's decision to leave my father did not rock my world at first. I had felt, for many years, she owed it to herself and her kids to get out from under his cloud of darkness. The illogical behavior and unreasonable mood swings grew worse over time. Finally, she was taking action.

The tragedy is this: months after their split, my father's crazy behavior was diagnosed as early-stage Alzheimer's disease.

And just a year later, the disease has ravaged his intellectual capacity and ability to communicate. This once angry man is now a gentle giant in need of my care.

I'll never fault my mother for leaving. But the timing of Dad's diagnosis weighs heavily on her, as if she should have known and stayed to care for him. (Traditionalists might point to marriage vows and agree.)

But I can't spend time helping my mom feel better about herself. My siblings and I have more pressing concerns. My dad, the man who put the anguish and anxiety in my childhood and who betrayed my entire family, now like a child, is a serious responsibility.