Thanks for this post.  As someone currently walking through the pain of a divorce I never saw coming, this is helpful.  I'm fortunate to not have kids involved, and fortunate that mine is not a volatile, yelling-at-each-other, venomous experience.  It's horrible in other ways, to be sure, just not those ways.  Damn, this stuff hurts.  I feel myself trying to avoid getting my hopes up for an ending like yours, but it sure sounds lovely.