kodesh:
I do not denying that there is a stigma attached to divorce in the frum community (although I do think you’re making it out to be much larger than it it really is). I just don’t think this is half as big of factor in our lower divorce rates as you do. I believe the primary factor is that we have a completely different attitude towards marriage, and life in general, than does the secular society around us. Actually, I believe that the main reasons our divorce rates our going up is because the attitudes (about marriage, about selflessness, about entitlement, about self-control, to name a few) of the secular society are slowly seeping into our minds and hearts. That is why our society’s divorce rate is coming closer and closer to the level of that of the secular world.
“I know personally first-hand of a few people who have stale and rotten marriages but are too scared to take the plunge.”
There could be many factors causing that fear besides for this stigma you keep blaming everything on. They could simply be too scared to start again, similar to someone who hates his job but isn’t willing quit and start from scratch. It could be that they have decided that the odds of ending up in a worse scenario than the one they’re in now is too high to be worth the risk. It could be they don’t want to go through the heartbreak and travail that a divorce so often entails. Or it could be that they don’t want their kids to have to go through this. Or any combination of the above.