How do you explain to your kids that it would have been worse if we stayed together

Hello

I can talk fairly easily to my X now, as long as we avoid talking about the our personal past together and avoid discuss that involves laying blame for who did what.  It is done, and no amount of arguing will change anything or make any difference other then raising both our blood pressures.

Being single parents does make aspects of life more difficult, financially it is harder and there is more demands on your time when you are with the kids when they are younger.

But, both my X and I agree that if we stayed together things would have been way worse. We are both happy now, enjoy life with and without the kids, we both struggled for quite a while adjusting to not having the kids around.  Now we are both okay.  We are both confident that if we stayed together the atmosphere in the house would be intolerable. I am confident that the fights would be none stop and both of us would have been tense all the time.

But how do you explain to the kids.  Kids will believe that everything would have been great if my parents stayed together. Part of that is true, I believe a 2 parent family is better IF and only IF the parents get along.  If they can't it is worse, I believe way worse.

I have tried very hard through this entire adventure to divorce to never bad mouth the kids Mother. I think that has given the kids the impression that everything was good between me and my X.

How do I explain to them that it would have been terrible if the two of us were under the same roof.