Consider all the hoopla around weddings. Your family and friends surround you and pronounce, through their words and deeds, that they stand by your side during this life-changing experience. The band or DJ plays your favorite tune as you and your husband sway together wrapped in each other's arms. It's a great moment in your life.

Yet when you choose to make an equally life-changing experience to end your marriage, there are no rented dance halls, elaborate floral arrangements or three-layered cakes. And, more importantly, there is often no support around you for the decision that you make. There are many reasons to decide to leave a marriage, just as there are many reasons to start one. The problem is, you don't have nearly so much explaining to do when you are putting the ring on as you do when you are permanently taking the ring off. Many couples I talk to say that they feel pressure from family and friends to stay together in the marriage for one prevailing reason: the children.

Admittedly, I'm one of those therapists who supports people staying in a marriage that's less than ideal, particularly if there are children involved. If there is domestic violence in the household, or any dangerousness, either from substance abuse or sexual infidelity, then leaving a marriage may be the only option left. But, the fact is, for many reasons, marriages end.

Most children haven't read the textbooks on human psychology, but they have an uncanny suspicion that an ideal world is one in which their mother and their father participate together in bringing them up. The problem for the children is that they cannot choose whether their parents stay together. That sobering reality leaves parents who decide to split with the possibility that their children, whom they have promised to protect against harm at all costs, may suffer.