Unfortunately, a lot of us are forced to evolve through such awakenings.
My mother married in 1951 and "woke up" years later to find she was coupled to a malignant narcissist. She wanted to divorce and escape, but she didn't trust the courts. (This was the late 60s.) This is where her marriage led: her husband/my father unethically intervened with her primary physician and told her not to tell my mother that she was dying of cancer. Of course, Mom figured it out, tragically in the last days of her life. And then my father unilaterally had morphine added to her IV and that's how she died. I don't know if Mom had previously discussed her end of life, but she certainly didn't get to decide. I know because we had intense discussions during her last hours.
BTW, I'm an attorney. One of my first legal actions was providing a free divorce for a woman who was physically, mentally, and emotionally abused. She had a four year old child. We were lucky that her husband had his next wife lined up and we cruised through the court with NF divorce (before the prospective fiancée discovered his true nature.)
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