But there was another crucial factor contributing to my recognition of that fact. It was the death of my mother, a woman who had relished and celebrated life more than anyone I've ever known. Her death taught me to recognize the preciousness of my days. I came to feel that life is too precious to spend crying. Too precious to spend arguing.
Childhood is too precious to spend with unhappy parents.
I can't live this way. If you feel that way, you need to change your life. Maybe you can change your life and still stay married, and if so, that's the best of all. In the end, for me, the only way to change my old way of life was to leave. And so I did.