The devastating feeling of 'being a failure' when a divorce seems inevitable, must be the universal feeling of everyone who has ever contemplated or taken the final step.  Many people feel that they have somehow become a complete failure and this can have a very debilitating effect on their whole lives.

Of course, this is a very normal human feeling and must be seen in context of the whole of the circumstances.

The marriage may have been initially very happy but gradually, as often happens, something occurs to make  one or both of the partners unhappy.  Many marriages manage to overcome these difficulties and go on to last a lifetime, but others, sadly,  do not.

If you are contemplating divorce you need to consider the following:               firstly, unless the partners were in an arranged marriage, they must have loved one another once, or perhaps, and here is the rub, theythought that they did., which really amounts to the same thing.  If you feel now that you actually hate your spouse and cannot contemplate staying together no matter what, consider that hate is akin to love, they both being the strongest human emotions and both require huge amounts of emotional energy.   Could it be that a little talking and airing of problems might make a difference, after all, it is a well known fact that many people do not talk and 'fester' in silence, expecting the other partner to know what is wrong?

No matter how long the marriage lasted, be it long or short, the intimacy, both sexual and social, in a marriage is unlike any other relationship and after divorce that intimacy will  no longer be there and you may find that it is something that you cannot very well do without

The intricacies created with other family members must also be taken into account -  the various siblings and other family members of the  spouse; after all, you may very well  have very friendly and loving relationships with them and maybe, you do not want to divorce them as well.;  quite often after divorce, probably because of ill-feeling on either or both  sides, these relationships are terminated, to the detriment of both parties.

Most importantly, the presence of children, be they children of the current marriage or indeed step-children;  as is very well known, children are the ones who usually suffer most for many reasons, the main one being the fact that they love both of their parents and cannot be seen to take sides without feeling disloyal to either of them.  There are endless problems relating to children of divorced parents and each case is different and special but all the ramifications need to be carefully considered.  This is a very emotive subject and would need a whole set of volumes to discuss all the probabilities

You are human after all and each person has their own level of tolerance and  forgiveness.

Consider this: you do not know what a person's life is like unless you walk in his shoes and you also do not know what goes on behind closed doors,  therefore, when you feel that everyone else has a perfect life, it is just not true.  They probably think that you have a very happy, successful life and know nothing of your private thoughts and traumas.  Everyone on earth has some problem or another and when you have reached the end of your tolerance, you must do what is right for you because you are the one who will have to carry on and live the rest of your life.

For many divorced people, after the final step, there is a new lease of life and they may well stay single, but many go on to try the marriage game again and are often very happy.