Maintaining a middle/upper middle class lifestyle for your kids is expensive. Few people can afford daycare, 5x college tuitions, etc. Extended families tend to be spread out and social networks aren’t what they once were.
Dudes online blather about paternity, divorce, etc. all nonsense and all irrelevant. Bad marriages and divorce are not new, although religious and conservative people try to imply that. The entire movement for prohibition in the early 20th century was driven by absent fathers who would drink their wages away and let the children starve in some hovel.
The only thing that’s “new” is women have the ability to choose birth control.
Most guys can suck up now-loveless marriage trivially if kids are fine (after kids come, this is pretty standard path for marriages), heck we can still enjoy sex greatly in such situation. Most women, not so much. I know it sounds sexist, trust me I would be very happy if this wasnt true but when I look/ask/listen around it is.
As an cca older guy at certain age the patterns start emerging left and right, and my own marriage can see some of it, just like most other marriages around us.
Some make it, some don't. When it fails its mostly mixture of personality resilience of both sides rather than some objective measure of (lack of) quality of relationship. Its easy to judge but please be kind to those who are going/went through, they may have been a better partner than ie you and still it wasnt enough to sustain it.
Also it’s often fear of stepdads. My mom dumped my dad so she could date a string of abusive assholes. It would give me pause before leaving a marriage that wasn’t utter misery.
It's not the life you hope for, but there's a lot of social messaging that that's just the way it is, it's what you signed up for, you would be selfish to leave, the grass won't be greener, and also it's probably your fault anyway for not being a better husband. The messaging to women in romcoms and the like is much more toward you deserve better, be brave, junk the loser, go get the life you want.
As a guy who was in a mediocre marriage like this for many years, I basically got my emotional needs met elsewhere: through work, family, friends, time and activities with my kids, etc.
I (man) was the one who pulled the trigger on my divorce but that followed years of conflict and withdrawing from both sides and ultimately you can point to specific milestones (who killed the bedroom, who opened a separate bank account first, who stepped out first, who wouldn't come back to counselling) but it's actually better for healing not to be preoccupied with the blame game and instead focus on where one's own growth opportunities are.
As in most matters. There are many studies about lesser sentences for women vs men who commit the same crimes.
Anything less than fifty percent is state sponsored kidnapping.
Vs. even if marriages were magically 100% secure - the costs of having kids in most modern societies have skyrocketed over the past half-ish century or so.