“Religous level differences might be a reason too. People who lie to others andor themselves about their religous level before getting married, or people who simply change at some point in life.
I don’t know how common it is but I know it exists.”
When I check out divorces for shidduchim, I often hear of cases like this. Sometimes, it is a matter of the wife “going off the derech” (of course it can happen the other way, but I obviously I don’t get redt those shidduchim), and sometimes it is a matter of one being (or becoming) more modern than the other or one being more into chumras.
However, personally, I think that in most of these cases, the failure of the marriage is probably not to blame on the religious issues. First of all, if they had a healthy, happy marriage and they were both emotionally stable people, it is highly unlikely that one of them would stop being Frum. These things don’t happen out of nowhere.
Even if someone started having religious issues (which again, I don’t think can happen out of nowhere), if they were really committed to each other and to their marriage, they would probably find a way to deal with it.
When someone stops being Frum, I think it is usually because there was a problem in the marriage and not the other way around. I remember one time there was a guy I checked out whose wife had stopped being Frum when the marriage went bad. The wife was bt, and a friend of mine made a very good point – As a baalas teshuva, when her marriage failed, all she had left was her family of origin, so the natural thing for her to do was to go back to her family.
Once a guy was suggested to me whose first wife had had a lot of problems. I was told that after the divorce, he had a tekufa where he was not so Frum. I was told that he was not to blame since it was a result of the gehinnom he had gone through in his marriage.
The next time that a divorced guy was suggested to me, I was told that the divorce was not his fault – it was because his wife stopped being Frum. I was like, wait a second, when he stops being Frum it’s his wife’s fault, but when she stops being Frum it’s her fault. Maybe she stopped being Frum because of the way HE treated her.
I’m not saying it’s always that way, and I’m not saying that the other spouse is to blame when their spouse stops being Frum or becomes less Frum. I am just saying that I think that in many cases, that was not really the real reason for the divorce.