I have a bit of a different perspective...hopefully you are still reading this. I have several points to make. 1st: your Christian faith is an important factor OF COURSE. Anyone that does not understand this may never understand. However...know the Bible. See God's heart...and assess the scriptures by that and not just what you have heard some pastor say. TONS of Christians talk like you should never divorce Biblically, but that is not what the Bible says. God made marriage for mankind...not the other way around! Relationships are challenging for everyone, and if we are truly living in submission to God's ways, we are supposed to learn and grow in any relationship because of all the good and bad. God never intended anyone to be miserable, but he did intend for us to stretch and grow TOGETHER in a relationship. 2nd: Love is a VERB. It is an action...in any relationship it takes work to keep that "feelling". You and your husband both have work to do in that area. You have to choose to DO IT! That old warm fuzzy feelling isn't going to magically appear, it takes time and determination. If you work on it, even alone at first, chances are your husband will be inspired to start trying to treat you with love again too, and that gets the ball rolling. Certainly not easy if you aren't feelling it. God will give you strength if you start asking for it! Really! Also...Chances are, especially if your husband is a Christian, he is carrying around a lot of shame which is debilitating sometimes. Feeling love and forgiveness from you may be just what he needs to start wanting to change. Forgiving him doesn't mean you are going to "let" him continue to be stupid. It is recognizing that it is HIS battle, and let his wrong crap be his wrong crap! It helps you start to separating his stupid actions from yourself, you can stop taking it personally. You need to see that it is his life he is screwing up, and you don't have to let him take you and the kids down with him. Even if you stay with him, that will be an amazing difference for you that will help you to stop reacting to him the same way, and you will hurt less and less. Forgiving him, and learning to stop worrying about what he is doing wrong, does free you up! It will be the catalyst that starts you on a path of freedom. You will start to see the areas of codependency you have. Read about what codependency is for sure. It is very important for you to start seeing how you are enabling him. Learn better how to set some realistic boundaries that are not made in moments of anger, and make sure you know how to respond if he crosses them. Boundaries do no good if you don't enforce them somehow-that's the tricky part. My 3rd recommendation based on personal experience. I have found no Christian guidebook on this one! After reading the Bible more, praying daily for God's heart in the matter, researching codependency...etc. think about a split for awhile. Tell him you are not ok with being unhappy like this the rest of your life...BUT-do it after lots of prayer and submitting what happens to God, because you have to be ready for however he may react. FIRST- make sure you don't do it when you are angry. It works so much better! Get your heart in a loving, hopeful place first, and be so sweet to him for a while that he knows something is up. (Besides...you getting to that place first may do the trick with no split!). Be "sweet" for at least a few weeks first! It will take forgiving him first, and learning to quit taking his wrongness personally. VERY HARD. You will definately need to lean on God during this time, and you need some support. Go to a counselor on your own, or have a great support system of people who are supporting you with really good advice that is not bashing him or marriage-etc. Talk to him about the fact that you want to go into the split with the intention to heal your marriage-not end it. You may really have to put your foot down to make him believe you are serious-because you have probably been making idle threats for years. Like I said tho...do it sweetly with love and hope. Be genuine-not fake. Let him see your heart, admit your vulnerabilities and fears, but be strong and resolute at the same time. This helped me and my husband so much! Until I did this, I was not able to really understand the ways I was subconsciously codependent. I just couldn't see it! It helped me to let go of feelling like it was my responsibilty to "police" my husband. It forced me to recognize that he is going to do whatever he is going to do. It made him take me seriously, realize he loved me too much to risk losing me over stupid addictions, and finally get some help and do the work that was long over due. Our "spark" is back! It sounds like you still have some hope or you wouldn't be reaching out! Most people (esp. Christians) tend to look at a separation as the road to divorce...but you don't have to! That is just fear based. Make it about hope. Tell your children you are doing this because you want to make your marriage better, and relationships take work. If you and your husband can do it with determination to really work on yourselves during your time apart...your kids will be impressed with the new you(s). Let your husband come visit often. Spend as much time with him as you want-or don't! There are no rules saying how to do this...base it one day at a time and do it with prayer. It is easy to forget how to really talk to God...it makes all the difference. Talk and listen! You can inspire your kids for their future marriage too-that is important. It may be refreshing to them to see you and your husband choosing to work on it out of hope of a happy future together. Go into it with the understanding between the two of you that things MUST change in order to live out the rest of your lives together. God doesn't want anyone to be miserable! Expect great things and have hope. Choose to love. I'm praying for ya!

Gotta love Raymond Carver's Short Cuts. (The movie was really good, too. It had an all-star cast: Lily Tomlin, Jack Lemmon, Andie McDowell, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr., etc.) I also really enjoyed Any Small Thing Can Save You: A Bestiary by Christina Adam. Each chapter is about humans interacting with a different animal-one for every letter of the alphabet. My favorite story was about this woman in her fifties who had been horse-crazy when she was a girl, until she read The Red Pony by John Steinbeck (that book ended my horse craziness, too). One day, she decides to buy a Tennessee Walking horse. And so she goes out and does it. Her husband thinks she's nuts, but she's happy. It gives me hope that I, too, will own a horse someday. I like that she still had the capability to surprise herself. All the stories in that book are gems of this caliber.

I loved Kurt Vonnegut's collection Welcome to the Monkey House and Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected and More Tales of the Unexpected. Another collection I enjoyed was Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. If you like mysteries, try a collection of the best Father Brown stories by Chesterton, the best of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle, and the best Dr. Thorndyke stories by R. Austin Freeman. For fantasy, I second the suggestion of Neil Gaiman, and would like to add Fritz Leiber (also good for science fiction short stories) and Lord Dunsany. Then there are classic short story authors like Aesop, Poe, O. Henry, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Guy de Maupassant and James Joyce ("The Dead" from Dubliners has been called the best short story written in the English language). The A Thousand and One Nights can be seen as a collection of short stories contained withing a framework story, as can The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales. Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" is one of the best short stories I have read.

This story has taken me back to various Great Aunts and other ladies of a 'certain age' who always wore these fox furs as they were known over here. Being small at the time I used to be on a level with the eyes and teeth of the fox and used to put out a tentative finger "Will it bite me?" To a small child they were very life-like.