Wow, thankyou all so much for your thoughts on this! I suppose I should clarify a few things.
My husband is never abusive or anything like that, he's just so different to me, in a bad way, not a good way.
He is a decent person with good morals, I think that's why i still care for him and wish him every happiness, but in saying that, he also chooses to live his life in a way that I don't wish to live mine.
He is quite a negative person, quite *****y and backstabby,even about his best friends,( which i really find hard to tolerate and I have tried to help him overcome this bad habit but to no avail), he doesn't put any time into our children away from the house (won't go to school things, won't drive them to sports etc), this probably sounds quite petty on my part but it's hard to write down a situation and have people understand where your coming from.
I am reading a book on happiness at the moment and I asked him what true happiness means to him (just out of curiosity) and he said it's money, if our business made enough money to have no worries ever again that would be his true happiness, and I also asked him what he would do with his life if he won $50 million dollars, and he said he would keep our business, just buy heaps more machinery and all brand new gear to go with it.
That just made my heart sink, he never mentioned us at all! I know he loves and cares for us but he's caught in the material world and i am the opposite.
He is very rarely happy and he is not an easy going person, everything is a hassle and I just don't want to live the next 50 or 60 years this way.
I think you are all right, what am i teaching my children by staying? I too agree that todays society is a throw away society and I too stayed and have persisted for so long because I know marriage is hard work, and anything worth having won't come easy, but where do you draw the line? Why should people be miserable 6 days out of 7? In saying all of this, he is a caring dad (even though he chooses not to go out of his way much) and he is a good man deep down but I want to spend my life helping people as much as i can, learning as much as i can and most importantly loving as much as i can and he doesn't, it's that simple.
Thanks again everyone for your thoughts, I am still pondering deeply on this one.