One thing that people don't talk about much is how much people just suffered before divorce was normalized. People who call their spouse "the old battleaxe" or

One thing that people don't talk about much is how much people just suffered before divorce was normalized. People who call their spouse "the old battleaxe" or "the ball and chain". Old married couples who are miserable, hate each other's guts, and fight all the time. People who spend as much time as humanly possible at work (both at the office and travelling for business) so they don't have to go home. People who sit there and take it as their spouse cheats on them again and again and again. People who silently suffer through abusive relationships and just have become highly skilled at covering up bruises. People who become abusive because they can't stand their spouses and are taught that it's more wrong to leave your spouse than it is to hit your spouse. And you'll still see it to this day in religious communities where divorce is stigmatized. My ex-best friend once told me about his brother's marital problems. At the time, he was about 50 and got married very young. He couldn't stand his wife anymore, to the point where he became a violent suicidal alcoholic. At one point after one fight where he put his fist through a wall inches away from his wife's head, he walked into his shed. Several minutes later, his mother followed him in, and she found him with an empty handle of whiskey on the ground and a shotgun pointed under his chin. He had quickly emptied one object into his head, and he was about to do the same with the other object. She talked him out of suicide. And according to my ex-friend, that was a regular thing. Why didn't he leave her? Because he—and the whole family—was very religious, and their church (a small ultraconservative sect of the Churches of Christ) didn't recognize divorce. Even if he legally got a divorce through the courts, his church would consider him an adulterer and disfellowship him if he ever got remarried. And his church was the center of his life, so he couldn't go against them. Because his church doesn't allow divorce, he abused his wife, nearly killed himself, and traumatized his mother (who was still on antidepressants after losing her husband in a farm accident 15 years ago). I'm not excusing his abusive behavior—it's reprehensible no matter what, and he's a terrible human being—I'm just pointing out that stigmatization of divorce only helps encourage and normalize abuse.