This process can take months, but most often it evolves over a period of years. There is vacillation and indecision. One struggles with the morality of these thoughts, but a desire to escape is always there feeding on itself and growing. Eventually the ethics of divorce are worked out in the mind, which may take three to five years to settle in fully. The initiator thinks, This marriage is not really working out. There are fantasies about freedom. The non-initiator’s weaknesses become more noticeable