I am twice divorced. I had a "starter marriage" in which we were both too young and immature. We were separated on and off for half of the three-year marriage, "yet I clung to it like I had slipped out of a window and it were the window sill my fingers grasped as the only thing that stood between me and being Humpty Dumpty after a great fall" before I finally surrendered and it was painfully sad. We both remarried and had kids, me 2 and her 1, and we both divorced again. We stayed in touch, birthdays, holidays, ran into so and so, etc. Then two years ago I sent her a story I had written about our marriage and many texts ensued and we each discovered how much we had grown. I wrote about that here. https://medium.com/channspirations/poignant-pockets-redux-8d54f96f69f3

I experienced the growth many years after my second divorce. After many rocky years, all my fault for the mid-life crisis manner in which I left and handled or didn't handle the divorce, we are friends and co parents. I often stay with her and the kids when I visit NYC. I don't think she is particularly happy with her life but she copes.