It’s by now common knowledge a profoundly high amount of marriages end in divorce in the United States.
Bearing that upsetting news in mind, we’d like to think each of those relationships meet their end for a worthy reason, full of movie-like passion and the strong convictions of both partners.
But a recent Reddit thread squashed those lofty hopes.
To bring us all back down to earth, Redditor KarysMR asked:
“Lawyers of Reddit, what is the pettiest reason you’ve ever seen for divorce?”
Many lawyers interpreted “petty” to mean “mind-bogglingly trivial.”
“Definitely the fridge Story!! A woman filed for divorce because her husband would eat everything he can find in their fridge whenever the wife was out for work.”
“So she came back to a basically empty fridge each night.”
“He also cheated on her but she was less angry about that. The fridge was what pushed her to the point she wanted a divorce.” — wrenisanecklace
“the husband kept putting wet/used towel on their bed.” — automind
“Wife wanted divorce like 2 months into marriage because the husband would squeeze the toothpaste from the top and not bottom.”
“She claims to have told him a millions times over to stop. Would have been easier to get 2 toothpastes i thought.” — Infamous-Offer6342
“Not a lawyer- but apparently my brother divorced his wife when McDonald’s forgot to put bbq sauce in with her chicken nuggets at the drive through and she asked him to go back and get some.”
“He didn’t and then I guess she started smashing up food and throwing it at him/out the window….. so yeah…. McDonalds how could you ruin a marriage 
…….” — WITCH_glitch_I-hex-u
“Not a lawyer: My Mom’s coworker divorced over dishes in the dishwasher.”
“The wife would get so frustrated over the husband (coworker) not rinsing dishes before he loads them in the dishwasher.”
“To compromise, they bought a super nice, top of the line dishwasher. Solves the problem, right?”
“She yelled about the dishes that night. He filed for divorce the next day.” — weberster
“Not a lawyer but this happened to my wife’s cousin.”
“Her husband came home one day asking her to give a higher financial contribution on the groceries, because she, as a lady, was using more toilet paper than him.”
“She took it as a joke and had a good laugh. He got mad, and asked for divorce.”
“Worth mentioning that his salary was 3 times higher than hers.” — Yashky
Many people witnessed bizarre breaking points.
“Nobody ever believes me about this one, but it’s true.”
“A man wanted a divorce from his wife because – and he gave this example as the ‘last straw’ – his wife ate those nasty pumpkin Halloween candies, like candy corn but pumpkin shaped.”
“He had been looking forward to them all day and when he got home, she had eaten them all. He snapped.”
“Swear on my life this story is true.” — Brkiri
“My father-in-law and mother-in-law’s breaking point was when he threw a breadcrumb at her from across the kitchen.”
“The divorce took 4 years to settle.” — ITS_JUST_LOW_T
One Redditor offered up another version of that story.
“My ex thinks I divorced him because my friends told me to.”
“What actually happened was I was bitching about him to a friend and she said ‘you know, he really is a passive aggressive piece of garbage. He does this all the time’.”
“And then I started thinking about how he really did pull that crap all the time and how I wasn’t actually depressed, I just hated living with him.”
“She opened my eyes, but I divorced him because he treated me like crap, not because my friend told me to.” — scaly_friends_4me
Other times, the divorce was prompted by a surprise discovery.
“I remember one episode of a TV show here in my country, similar to Jerry Springer, the woman didn’t know her husband used dentures until marrying and living together.”
“She said she couldn’t handle anymore, she was disgusted.”
“They both cried, she said a lot of ‘I’m sorry’ but she couldn’t go on. They were married for a few months.”
“Don’t know if it was true though.” — nerdy_latino
“The weirdest I’ve ever seen is a coworker of mine.”
“His wife saw a picture of him at a pool when he was in high school and really athletic. Toned, muscular, tan and so on.”
“Over the 10 years after high school he stopped lifting and lost his muscle tone and just became skinny.”
She told him she wanted him to get back to working out because she really liked the way he once looked and he said it was something he missed doing and agreed to get a gym membership.”
“He was going to the gym four days a week but was only really working out for two of them. On the days he didn’t work out he would sit in the sauna to get sweaty, watch Netflix and then go home.”
“When she asked about him going to the gym and accidentally let it slip that he was fudging workouts twice a week. She apparently found that to be a deal breaker and filed for divorce.” — SafewordisJohnCandy
“A woman came in wanting to divorce her husband. He had just gotten a new job and a pretty big raise.”
“It turned out that this new job of his also required that he work from home but he was working in an office before.”
“She was having an affair with their next-door neighbor and him being home more meant that she couldn’t cheat on her husband easily.”
“That was definitely a twist. I was expecting something like him being the one having the affair but nope!” — red_duke117
“A teacher I had in HS got divorced because his wife didnt like how much sex he had before they had been married.”
“To put in context how petty of a reason that was, they had been married for 12 yrs and had three kids together.”
“She had also met him a few years into his teaching career which didn’t start till he was 32.”
“But to say both sides of the argument, he did have a staggering large amount of sex, he was an Olympian and had been going to the Olympics to compete since he was 18.”
“He was the best teacher to ever have as a homeroom teacher as the stories he could tell were just surreal.” — TarvidD12
So there you have it.
Even if you find yourself in the throes of a dying marriage destined for failure for the least legitimate reason possible, you will not be alone.
I guess there’s some comfort in that, right?