Generally speaking, divorce is incentivized for women, and deincentivized for men. So I don't think it's a huge mystery why women initiate the majority of divorces. And yes, often it's because of a shitty husband. But there are also many cases of shitty wives. Likely, the context most often lies somewhere in middle, with both parties partly at fault. Only for men, they generally don't get paid to get divorced. For women, it's a second lease on life, on their ex's dime.
It's pretty amazing how when people get married they are totally lying about staying with someone in sickness and health, better or worse etc. That part of the vows usually makes me want to throw up a little in my mouth. Generally just losing a job is enough to put strain on marriage to the point of divorce.
I'm not good at multi-quoting posts, but Pan's thing on marriage not working for women and analogies to buying a financial product or quitting a job isn't what I consider the salient thing IMO. A relationship is give and take, you are both a theoretical buyer and a seller at the same time. Both parties need to make an effort. It's not uncommon for someone making more of an effort and being the "superior" product in a sense is the one who is deemed the one not being up to par. It's like two people are trying to make the same thing for each other (let's say in ipad in Sherdog lore), but one can make a pile of shit and give it to someone, and the other come up with somehting that resembles an ipad but isn't quite as good, and you have the person who makes the shitty one complain and say the deals off.
Bit close to home, my brother in law is a high powered dude, and when he married my sister, it was pretty obvious what attracted her to him. Yet, after they got married, she was constantly complaining about the strain on their relationship of him not cancelling appointments or delaying stuff and putting work "first" ahead of her etc. But it's like, if that wasn't his character trait, I doubt you would even be with him in the first place.
It felt like there's a bit of lot of wisdom in the nugget that "when a woman marries a man, she hopes he changes, but he stays the same. When a man marries a woman, he hopes she stays the same, but she changes." It's my fave marriage nugget, even ahead of "when a man walks down the aisle to get married he is smiling because he thinks he's going to get blowjobs for the rest of his life; when a woman walks down the aisle she's smiling because she thinks she's never going to have to give another blowjob for the rest of her life."
It's as common as the sun rising in morning that relationships get strained, and having friends in your ear saying how you should leave, or unrealistic standards, your own sense of duty or commitment, and/or the fallout in terms of impact on children etc are a big factor of divorces happening. It's very very possible that people who contribute less to a relationship instigate divorce not because they offer something superior to their partner, but require a much greater checklist of things required to be happy in a relationship that can go anywhere on a scale of being reasonable to almost impossible for anyone to fulfill. I mean, take a look at Tom Brady - not saying it's possible to know all the ins and outs of their situation, but it's reported that he didn't want to get divorced and she's upset about him still playing football. The guy is 45 and looking to work one or two more years IN HIS LIFE. That is grounds for divorce?
