"=== your Humanities Reference Desk question === 
 someone keeps removing the clarification of the answer to your question I posted, which I still think is very useful for you, so I'm putting it here so you can read it: 
 :::what if the marriage is falling apart because of an abusive spouse? Do you really believe that the children would prefer an abusive parent to a divorced one? What if in their minds, sticking around in an abusive marriage makes them lose all respect for the suffering parent? Worse yet, what if, following the IP's logic, it turns the children into abusive parents eventually? It could be the case, as could the IP's scenario. 
 :::: Your scenario makes perfect sense when considering marriage to a stranger, for example one arranged by your Indian parents.  You could definitely end up with one of the few people in the country who is a psychotic killer, and in that case, getting away with your life (which can't be said of the 34 people nationwide he's murdered during your marriage, while telling you he was going on business trips) is the happiest, luckiest outcome.  But wait, what's that?  Your marriage was neither with someone you hadn't met before your engagement, nor, in fact arranged at all?  You knew this person personally?  Well: if your relationship is now sour, it means you (two) haven't played your cards right.  The reason you haven't is because your parents didn't show you how to.  To hear these people talking about abusive relationships, you'd think it was a lottery like a government assignment, and some people get to work in Paris while some get sent to a Balkan warzone.  Um, no.  It's like all these guys complaining about how this wasn't the woman they married, she's gained 45 pounds and turned into a lazy couch potatoe.  ""how do I get my wife to lose weight"", they say.  Fucking amateurs.  the reason their wife is the way she is is because the whole couple didn't play their cards right.  that's true of abusive spouses, of fat couch potatoes, of men who don't do anything but watch sports, of callousness, of emotional blackmail, and the list goes on and on.  These people are just amateurs, but hey, if you don't want to learn to be a pro, go ahead and pass that example on to your children.  It's no different from taking your six year old to McDonalds and ordering yourself a supersized big mac meal and a couple of cheeseburgers to go with it.  Maybe you're getting your child a happy meal, but thirty years from now, you'll have no one to blame but yourself that your child is a fat pig who routinely eats a supersized big mac meal with two extra cheeseburgers and a Sundae.  Did you teach them how to cook for themselves or others like a fucking civilized member of the human race?  No: you were busy teaching them how to be otherwise.  Go ahea and teach them how to be a sorry excuse for a member of a marriage and don't be surprised when they end up in the same position.  Or, with the analogy, learn how to cook.  Learn how a marriage is supposed to work - your parents might not have showed or taught you in a way that is applicable to your situation, but it's 2010 and you can sure as fuck learn.  (For starters: the answer to ""how do I get my wife to lose weight"" is to do something togeter that she enjoys as a hobby, whether tennis, hiking, dancing, rollerblading, whatever.  maybe if you tookthe time to sugest it, you would find your particular spouse would love to go to the gym with you, or go swimming with you, or whatever. Don't mention her weight or answer questions about it.)"