I think that my primary issue with ORMs is that they often allow you to code as if the database doesn't exist, instead of explicitly structuring code to handle

I think that my primary issue with ORMs is that they often allow you to code as if the database doesn't exist, instead of explicitly structuring code to handle network and database failures at the points where you deal with external data. It is a problem if potentially any part of your program can just fail, and that happens if you allow magic ORM-objects to leak onto code paths that aren't written to handle them.