When people imagine divorce, they imagine a marriage ending with a bang – some sort of scandal, betrayal or explosive conflict. But in my time as a divorce lawyer, seeing the highs and lows of navigating the legal roadmap of the most delicate time in a person’s life, I can tell you that is usually not the case.
“He Likes Girls Pictures”
Infidelity was, and perhaps always will be, one of the leading reasons for divorce. However, as our attachment to social media grows ever more profound, so does the illusion of endless choice it creates. Our definition of infidelity is morphing into something far more nuanced than the dramatic affairs of decades past. What once required secrecy, planning, and a physical act can now occur with a simple double-tap on a stranger’s photo.
The boundaries of what is “acceptable” will blend and blur from couple to couple. For some, a simple like on Instagram might be harmless enough, a fleeting digital gesture with no real weight. But a string of comments under another woman’s photo? That crosses a line.
What I see in practice is not only the act itself but the erosion of trust it triggers. One partner begins to wonder: If they are this comfortable showing public affection online, what else might be happening in private?
Infidelity today lives on a spectrum. It may not always involve hotel rooms and hidden phone calls; sometimes it’s subtler, quieter, but no less corrosive. And increasingly, I see marriages ending not because of what was done in secret, but because of what was done in plain sight: liked, shared, and commented for the world to see.
“We Haven’t Had Sex for Two Years”
Intimacy is the glue which keeps marriages together. When it fades away, so does the marriage. I’ve had clients confess that the lack of physical affection made them feel invisible, undesirable, or unloved, even when everything else in the marriage appeared fine from the outside. Sometimes this starts with one partner being too busy, too tired, or too emotionally withdrawn. Over time, the absence of intimacy becomes a wedge that grows larger. By the time it’s spoken out loud in my office, the couple has usually been living as housemates rather than lovers for years.
The consequences are serious. The absence of intimacy can push one or both partners toward affairs, seeking elsewhere what they feel they have been denied at home. Yet more often, the damage comes not from betrayal but from neglect: a lack of understanding about just how crucial intimacy is to the health of a marriage. Too many underestimate its role, assuming that physical closeness is secondary to shared goals or daily routines.
In reality, physical intimacy grows out of emotional intimacy. When a couple stops investing in emotional connection – listening, reassuring, showing affection – the physical bond withers too. It is not simply about sex, but about the feeling of being chosen, desired, and cared for. Without it, the relationship loses its warmth, and over time, its very foundation.
“He/She Just Changed”
This is one I hear often, spoken with quiet resignation. “We used to be so close,” they say, as though the bond dissolved without either of them noticing. It rarely happens all at once. More often it is a slow drifting apart, a gradual forgetting of the little things that once made life feel full. The jokes, the small kindnesses, the daily rituals that gave the relationship its warmth are lost in the background of ordinary life.
Change itself is not unusual. It can be brought on by children, who reshape a marriage into something different and all-consuming. It can follow a death that shifts priorities, or a change in financial circumstances that alters how a person feels about themselves and their place in the world. A sudden promotion can be as disruptive as a redundancy.
The difficulty lies not in the fact that people change but in the failure to adapt together. One grows while the other stands still. One turns to face the future while the other holds onto the past. Slowly they become two people leading parallel lives, bound by history but disconnected in the present.
By the time it reaches me, the words are familiar. “He is not the man I married.” “She is not the woman I fell in love with.” Perhaps that is true. Or perhaps they are, but the effort to notice and meet each other again, in all the ways people inevitably evolve, has been abandoned.
“He/She was a Narcissist“
If I had a penny for the number of times I have heard this one, I would have quite the collection. The word narcissist has become a shorthand in modern breakups, a label that gets applied to anyone who is selfish, controlling, or simply difficult to live with. Sometimes it is justified. I have seen marriages where one partner dominates every conversation, controls every decision, and leaves the other feeling completely erased. But oftentimes, it is less clinical than that.
It is striking how freely clinical terms such as “narcissism” and “borderline personality disorder” are now woven into the language of everyday breakups. Have we, as a society, always carried these traits and are only now stumbling upon the words to name them? Or is it that we have drifted into a more individualistic age, restless and self-seeking, forever in pursuit of pleasure and validation?
That said, the feeling underneath the word is real. The partner who says it usually feels unseen, unheard, and unloved. They feel that their needs were never considered, that their marriage became a one-person stage play. Whether or not the label is correct, the pain it conveys is genuine. And more often than not, it is that pain, rather than the definition of narcissism, that ends the marriage.
Ultimately, our role as lawyers is not only to navigate the legal process but to witness the human stories that bring people to it. Behind every petition and every clause lies a story of distance, disappointment, or pain that could not be bridged. The labels may differ, but the truth is the same. Someone stopped feeling seen, and the marriage could not survive it.
The Divorce Diaries 
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