First of all I feel that I qualify to write a response because I’m a girl who grew up in a gerra family and I’ve spoken to my mother countless times about this topic before I got married. At first I was so angry when I heard about all these chumros that gerras present as halachos. But it’s not all how it seems; I read the article that ha’aretz posted and although they may have the halachos right, they definitely did not get the spirit of the halachos correctly and one of the basic reasons for these chumros is so that there SHOULD be more feeling in the marriage, and not the opposite. Obviously, it’s not for everyone and many people only keep the extreme chumros for the first year (or for the fist couple of years/ while the husband is still in learning) and then afterwards they will often find a happy medium that suits both of them.
Once, when a girl wrote a letter to today’s gerrer rebbe complaining that these halachos seem so hard for her (i’m not sure if she was a unmarried or married girl), the rebbe responded by saying that (paraphrased) “he truly feel her pain, but there comes a time when the couple is much older and the physical strength is weak and at that point, the marriage will have been developed in an internal way and that will remain for many years to come.”
Also: Do not believe everything you hear or read because many of them are not true and a figiment of some people’s imagination or what people just assume is an halacha because it fits with the idea (a silly example is that gerras don’t have a mitzvah tantz which obviously isn’t true). And many chumros are not kept (at least not in the US) simply because it’s not for everyone, but this doesn’t make you any less part of the gerra kehillah because it’s an understood rule that everyone takes the chumros on their level and it’s no ones business what the other one is doing in the privacy of their own home.
In this case, if the boy is known to be more openminded, than it’s highly unlikely that he’ll keep these chumros.
About the point that the steipler disagreed with many of these chumros-this doesn’t make them wrong- rather, there are many ways in avodas Hashem.
I will repeat it again: it’s not for everyone, and therefore not everyone keeps to them. (in fact i would say that less than 10% [15%?] keep to these halachos after 10 years of marriage) I don’t even think the chumros were originally made for those who are working or for those over 40.
Another important point is that the way the chumros come out in the marriage very much depends on the comedant (geras who teach the halachos and chumros to the chasanim in EY) and if it was not taught correctly, many problem could arise in the marriage, on the other hand, if taught the right way the chumros bring more kedusha and Tahara to the marriage.
May we only hear of simchos!