A Trusted Friend in a Complicated World

12 Crazy-But-True Reasons People Filed for Divorce

They promised to stay together "till death do us part," but some unusual deal-breakers got in the way.

lottery
Gabriel Petrescu/Shutterstock

1.3 million reasons

In January of 1997, a California woman filed for divorce after 25 years of what her husband believed had been a happy marriage. The real reason didn’t come out until two years later. On Dec. 28, 1996, just 11 days before she filed for divorce, the wife had won $1.3 million in the California Lottery. Thereafter, she took various actions to keep the money all to herself, including filing for divorce. When the truth came out, a Los Angeles family court judge ruled that the woman had violated state asset disclosure laws and awarded every cent of her lottery winnings to her ex-husband. These are the signs you could be headed for divorce.

couch
Syda Productions/Shutterstock

He built a wall

Literally. In 2009, a German woman filed for divorce after her husband knocked down and rebuilt a wall in their home—because (he said) it got dirty. This was apparently the final straw in a 15-year marriage during which the husband obsessively cleaned the house and rearranged the furniture.

vote
Gino Santa Maria/Shutterstock

Voted out

Earlier this year, a California woman left her husband of 22 years when she found out he had voted for President Donald J. Trump. Apparently, this “betrayal,” as she put it, was the tipping point. “It opened up areas between us I had not faced before,” she explained.

divorce
Gajus/Shutterstock

Because he divorced her first

Four months after their 1994 wedding, a New York man secretly divorced his wife in the Dominican Republic. She didn’t find out for another 22 years, during which they went on with their lives as a “married” couple, raising a son and living the good life, jetting between homes in New York and France. When she learned the truth (after discovering that she was not listed as an owner on the deed to their home), her husband claimed it was an attempt to protect their assets. She believes it was an attempt to rob her of assets and is now seeking to nullify the divorce and, presumably, divorce him legally in New York.

makeup
AlikeYou/Shutterstock

Stuff you can’t “make up”

A 34-year-old man filed for divorce from his 28-year-old bride just days after the wedding, after he saw her without makeup, according to Dr. Abdul Aziz Asaf, a psychologist at the clinic where the woman sought help in recovering from her psychological suffering as a result. Apparently, the man felt that his wife had deceived him with cosmetics, including false eyelashes. The “deception” was discovered when the two went to the beach together, and a dip in the ocean washed away her makeup. Learn about the 10 biggest plus-sides of being divorced.

bible
Anelina/Shutterstock

The devil made him do it?

An Italian man filed for divorce on the grounds that his wife was “possessed by the devil.” Apparently, the woman had displayed “inexplicable behavior” since 2007, including fits, body-stiffening, and even self-levitation. A court in Milan granted the divorce, acknowledging the existence of the behavior but declining to say it was the wife’s fault.

cooking
nenetus/Shutterstock

No more “Mr. Nice Guy”

Rashida Lucas divorced her husband, T.P., because, as she said on national television, he was just “too nice.” Chief among Lucas’s grievances were that T.P. said “I love you” too much and that he was such a good cook that it had caused her to gain weight. Normally, though, “I love you” is not one of the things you should never say to your spouse.

inbed
sirtravelalot/Shutterstock

 Irreconcilable differences

That’s the polite way of putting it. In 2015 it was reported that a Nigerian woman had filed for divorce after only one week of marriage because she couldn’t handle the size of her husband’s penis. After their first unsuccessful attempt to consummate the marriage, she took medication given to her by her mother. It didn’t work, and “the experience was a nightmare,” the woman said.

letter
Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock

She kept a decades-old secret

After more than 70 years of marriage, a 99-year-old Italian man divorced his wife after he stumbled across love letters she’d written to a secret lover in the 1940s. The wife then confessed to having had an affair and begged her husband’s forgiveness. But the husband wasn’t having it. Apparently, their marriage had been long, but it had also been rocky.

poker
nazarovsergey/Shutterstock

He lost a bet

In 2007, a Russian man ran out of money while playing poker, so he bet his wife—and lost. When his wife found out, she left him for the man who’d won her and her heart. Check out these hilariously accurate cartoons about love and marriage.

inbed
Jacob Lund/Shutterstock

He couldn’t keep up

In 2014, an Indian man was granted a divorce by a Mumbai court because of his wife’s “excessive and insatiable drive for sex.” He alleged that she often forced him into having what he described as “unnatural sex,” and that when he tried to resist, she would abuse him in various ways, including forcing him to take drugs and imbibe alcohol.

movie
Peter Bernik/Shutterstock

Frozen out

For one Japanese couple who had been married for six years, the movie Frozen was the deal-breaker. After watching it, he made the mistake of asking her, “Did you really think it was that good?” Well, apparently, she did, and the fact that he could even ask that question made her question what sort of person he was. And she couldn’t seem to “let it go,” moving out of their marital residence soon after.

Lauren Cahn
Lauren has covered knowledge, history, the British royal family, true crime and riddles for Reader's Digest since 2017. Having honed her research and writing skills as an attorney in the 1990s, she became one of HuffPost's first bloggers in the early 2000s, graduated to reporting hyperlocal news in the 2010s and has been researching and writing news and features for a wide variety of publications ever since. Aside from Reader's Digest, her work has appeared in Mashed, Tasting Table, Eat This, Not That!, Grown and Flown, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Insider, Business Insider and many others.