Joseph – I just want to ask you one thing, and I realized I need to make it clear what it is. From reading your posts, someone could come away with a very negative and completely untrue idea of Judaism. Specifically, they may think that if a husband is abusive or controlling of his wife, she is stuck in the marriage forever, unless there is a witness of physical abuse. Since abuse almost never involves physical abuse and since it would be almost impossible to find a witness in those rare cases in which there is physical abuse, this would mean that a victim of abuse (of any sort) would almost never be able to get divorced.
This is far from the truth! In nearly all cases in which a woman feels that she is being abused, she IS able to obtain a divorce. Additionally, even in a case in which there is no abuse but just personality differences that render the marriage impossible despite the couple having attempted marriage therapy and spoken to Rabbanim who tried to help them, most of the time they are also able to get divorced.
I know all this for a fact. I do not know just a few cases (as you stated). Most of the guys who have been suggested to me for the past decade or so were divorced, and I check out their situations extensively!!!! Whenever a divorced guy is suggested to me, I usually speak to either the marriage therapist and/or the Rabbi/s who were involved in the divorce. That means that I have been researching divorce in the Frum world for the past decade!
Additionally, my mother is in the middle of writing a book on the topic and has been researching the topic for well over a decade, including interviewing numerous divorced women. I asked her about this topic on Erev Yomtov, and she told me that in these types of cases (the wife wants a divorce and the husband doesn’t but there is no physical abuse), they are usually able to get divorced since the Rabbanim and/or therapists usually are able to convince the husband to do so. She did mention that in those cases in which the husband does not agree to do so (hopefully, the minority of cases), they have to “buy him off” and give him a lot of money, but in any case, they are nearly always able to get a divorce (and usually without major extortion).
The only “sources” you have been bringing do not contradict any of the statements above, but someone reading this thread may receive the incorrect impression that they do. All they show is that Jews believe in making marriage a priority and trying to make it work whenever possible. That does not contradict anything that I wrote.
That should be obvious, but may not be to everyone, so I would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that fact, for the sake of our readership who may inadveretently receive the wrong impression.
If you can’t do so, then I appreciate it if the moderators could close this thread because I think there is no point in continuing it anymore. I think it accomplished everything it was meant to that it could.