A hundred years ago there was plenty of divorce and abandonment. Frequently it would take different forms. Husbands would leave for America and not send for their wives, or perhaps marry another woman in America. It’s not generally talked about much, and of course it didn’t happen to your great-grandmother or -grandfather.
Dowry-Farmers would go to a shtetl, marry a woman, collect her dowry, then move on to repeat the same in another locale, or just move to the New World.
There was also plenty of marital unhappiness then, too. But what era has ever been free of that?
There was great shame in divorce, but there still is today. I’m not sure anyone WANTS to get divorced.