That water’s as cold as our love.
"A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who demanded, 'Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?'. He held out his shoe and asked them whether it was not new and well made. 'Yet,' added he, 'none of you can tell where it pinches me."
— Plutarch in the first century AD, making this Older Than Feudalism
Situation where a marriage is threatened to be broken up over a suspiciously minor setback or argument, sometimes venting complaints about behavior which just surfaced. This can occur even after the spouses have jumped numerous hurdles in the relationship to be together, and usually smells of the inability of writers to do other plots or as cheap extension. From more capable writers, it's more of a Rage Breaking Point, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and unloaded years worth of pent-up frustration. Of course, it can also be Played for Laughs if the slight is ridiculously minor.
The archetypical example, which gives this trope its name, is the cliched argument over leaving the toilet seat up or down.
Slightly more tolerated for teenagers who break up, since you expect them to be overdramatic.
In Real Life, before the advent of no-fault divorce laws, it wasn't unknown for a couple who mutually wanted to separate to use these sorts of things so that one or both could claim mental suffering in order to have the legal justification for the divorce.
See also Minor Flaw, Major Breakup, Felony Misdemeanor, Rage Breaking Point, Disproportionate Retribution, Sex Changes Everything, Derailing Love Interests. Contrast Differing Priorities Breakup. If the reason is the pretext for a full-scale war between the two spouses, it is a Silly Reason for War. This trope is not about a divorce threat to somebody who by chance happens to be in the john.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Dr. STONE, Senku reluctantly agrees to marry village priestess Ruri in order to get the alcohol needed to make her medicine. Before he can leave with it, the other villagers say they need to party and drink the night away. Senku instead declares a divorce and runs off with the booze to make the medicine. Leaving the entire village baffled at what just happened.
Comedy
- George Carlin, during his performance "Back in Town"
, tells a fart joke about a person attempting to fart in a public place which they expect to be not bad, but turns out to be "a fart that could end a marriage".
Comic Books
- The Jam Urban Adventure: Gordie and Janet spend half an issue arguing over leaving milk and food out, putting the toilet seat down or up, and leaving the stove on.
- In the MAD parody of Mrs. Doubtfire, the judge grants the main character's wife a divorce because he left the toilet seat up.
- Ultimate X-Men (2001): Subverted. Jean does not take Wolverine back because he leaves the toilet seat up and smokes all over the place. But, as she kept talking, it is clear that the actual reason is that he infiltrated the X-Men to kill Charles Xavier. Although he reformed and joined the X-Men for real, Jean did not forgive nor forget.
Film
- On Kramer vs. Kramer, Joanna's decision to abandon Ted (and her child) is explained by her as "Leaving You to Find Myself". While Ted has one possible reason for her to divorce (he starts the movie as The Workaholic), she doesn't really ever elaborate within the film and much drama ensues from her apparent fickleness to just up and leave one day, and return a year later to battle for her son's custody.
Literature
- Magic Shop: In Juliet Dove, Queen of Love, Eris threatens to invoke this if Juliet defies her:
Eris: "You say nothing. Even so, I sense rebellion in you. So hear this, and hear it well: If you try to thwart me, I will destroy your family. Never forget that I am the goddess of discord. Strife is my art form. I have a thousand, thousand tiny ways to drive a wedge between two humans. You think your mother and father love each other? Let's see what happens after the hundredth argument about who misplaced the keys, or left the top off the toothpaste, or didn't put the milk back in the refrigerator. Those are just the seeds, of course. From such moments, properly nourished, I can raise a crop of bitter, blistering anger that no love can survive."
Live Action TV
- In one episode of Blossom, Blossom and Six got into the topic of divorce - why Blossom's mother isn't around, and Six says her parents divorced because of milk much to the formers incredulity, until Six elaborated that they kept arguing over whose turn it was to get the milk.
- Ross and Rachel from Friends. Since the series depended on them being separated in order to work, their break up was quick and difficult to understand — and divisive among fans as well, since most tend to take sides on this issue. From Rachel's point of view, she saw that their relationship was struggling, and so she asked for some space in the form of "a break" so they could deal with issues better... but from Ross's point of view she broke up with him (requested a break, which is often language that starts a breakup... and Ross had been divorced by his wife a year or so before), and the only reason she decided the break was over was because she saw that other people thought of Ross as desirable. Even after Rachel forgave him, she couldn't be with him because "she would know that he cheated on her with that other woman". And Ross, who acted out of both being hurt and past trauma, as well as doing what would be considered acceptable behavior for others (like Joey), and for whom the hookup literally meant nothing, staunchly refused to admit that he had done anything wrong, probably because Rachel was attempting to place all the blame solely upon him. This doesn't stop her from wanting him back, which makes all this pretext more useless. It doesn't stop Rachel from getting involved in the very situation Ross was worried about with her coworker, though, meaning that Ross felt further justified, and could not let go of that in order to allow the relationship to continue.
Ross: We were on a BREAK!
- An episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show had the main couple almost divorcing for some silly reason. They go so far as to get a divorce attorney, who hands them a form to fill out. When they try to put their reason on paper, they both find it so ridiculous that they make up. Apparently, that paper goes on to save their marriage many a time, always by making them realize how trivial their complaints are.
- Dr. Wilson from House had what seems to have been an example of this trope, given how he and his ex get along when they end up back together. The only difference the second time around is that House convinced Wilson to actually speak up instead of letting the irritation build up to Rage Breaking Point levels.
- Also, Cameron and Chase's divorce comes off a bit like this, as though the issue that initially caused their separation was fairly major, in their farewell episode it made it seem as if it was really again because of Cameron's inability to commit, an issue which had already been dealt with earlier.
- In Spin City, Mayor Winston and an ex-girlfriend from his college days had apparently been driven apart by an overly competitive tennis match.
- Played with How I Met Your Mother: Ted, Barney, and Robin come home to discover telltale signs of a fight between Lily and Marshall. While Robin makes the correct guess that the fight was over Lily's terrible spending habits preventing them from getting a decent loan for the couple's new apartment (which Marshall only found out about when they went in to get the loan), Ted and Barney assume it was because Lily left the lid off of the peanut butter jar. Which makes all the more hilarious when Ted hits redial on the house phone and discovers that the last person called was a divorce attorney. Subverted in that neither Lily nor Marshall want to get divorced: Lily only wanted to get divorced legally so that they could put the loan in Marshall's name and get a better rate; neither of them even considered breaking up their relationship. Marshall eventually nixes the plan, saying that even "divorce on paper" is too much for him; he treasures their marriage too much.
- This also pops up in season nine. Marshall makes a very big decision without consulting Lily but it is clearly something that a loving couple can work through. Then we find out that Marshall still has deep resentment and trust issues from seven years previously when Lily broke off their engagement and left for San Francisco to pursue an art career. They never really addressed it after Lily came back and they got back together. Over time it has festered with Marshall not trusting Lily and subconsciously trying to "win" in their marriage to punish Lily. It's lampshaded that if they do not deal with this properly, it will wreck their marriage sooner or later.
- Alex and Maggie broke off their engagement in Supergirl when Alex realized that she "was always going to want kids" in one episode, while Maggie was dead-set against it. While this can be a legitimate reason for a breakup, the show basically handled it as Alex deciding that she wanted to be a mother and then her and Maggie breaking up in the next scene, without the two of them even having any sort of serious discussion, couples-counseling, or otherwise seeing if there was any way to work things out between them. This was especially shocking given how many previous episodes had been devoted to the two of them finding a way to reconcile a serious difference in their relationship.
- Quantum Leap: One of Al's marriages ended when his wife cited his nightly snoring as emotional abuse.
Music
- Played for Laughs "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Albuquerque": Despite being Sickeningly Sweethearts to a degree that they share the same piece of mint-flavoured dental floss, one random night after getting married and having kids his wife says to him, "Sweetie pumpkin, do you want to join the Columbia Record Club?" Not ready for that kind of commitment, they broke up and he never saw her again. But that's just the way things go in Aaaaaaaaaaalbuquerque.
- In "Gift of the Magi 2: Return of the Magi" by Andrew Jackson Jihad, "The husband divorced his wife after she cut her hair because she was way less fuckable and that's just unforgivable." The song portrays this guy in a pretty negative light.
Mythology & Religion
- In The Bible:
- The Book of Esther starts with a party, where a king simply asks for his wife to make an appearance... and she says no. (Although there is the implication that when the king wanted her to appear before him wearing her crown, he meant only her crown). His advisers suggest that if the queen can so publicly snub her husband in front of the entire citizenry, every woman in the empire will feel free to do the same, so she's divorced/put to deathnote and the title character replaces her. The king also makes it an immutable law for a wife to respect her husband and for a husband to bear rule in his own household.
- In Matthew chapter 19, the Pharisees question Jesus if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason (which in their minds mean for any trivial thing a wife would do that might displease a husband, such as poor cooking). Jesus takes them back to Genesis to remind them that "what God has yoked together" as "one flesh", a man should not separate, and it was through the hardness of their hearts that Moses gave them the precept for writing a certificate of divorce. He goes on to say, as He had said earlier in His Sermon on the Mount, that a man who divorces his wife for any reason except for marital infidelity and marries another woman commits adultery, and that a man who marries a divorced wife commits adultery.
Newspaper Comics
- A Herman comic shows someone offering a judge a plate of his wife's cooking, and being told that, while it was certainly awful stuff, it's still not grounds for a divorce.
Radio
- A sketch in That Mitchell and Webb Sound has a woman and her husband half-heartedly arguing about his having an affair. Turns out she's really just itching to pick a fight because she hasn't got over the far worse trauma caused by him leaving the fridge door open a week earlier. She had to throw out almost a whole quiche!
- And don't forget the milk! All that milk!
- The same sketch was later adapted to television for That Mitchell and Webb Look (it doesn't go as far as a divorce — the man makes a heartfelt apology for leaving the fridge door open, and they make up. Then they joke about what a scamp he is for not using protection while having his affair).
Theatre
- In Mary Mary, Mary makes her ex-husband Bob recall that he started packing his bags one night when he got into bed with her and she said, "Okay, let's get those colored lights going." His excuse for having divorced her over this "very small straw" is that he had been having a bad day.
- The title of Barefoot in the Park comes from an argument (which leads to a threatened divorce), nominally about how Paul didn't want to take a barefoot walk in Central Park in the winter.
- In the French play Lapin Lapin, the older daughter of the family leaves her husband. Why? Because he told her during their breakfast "Pass me the salt".
Video Games
- Due to the completely random nature of Tomodachi Life, a player's Mii couple can wind up suddenly erupting in to a battle against each other for no reason other than the Random Number God declaring the Miis should fight. Even if a Mii's relationship with their spouse is at maximum, they will still fight. Though they can make up and stay together, if they don't, they will break up.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Cado got so obsessed with caring for his flock of Cuccos that it estranged him from his wife Rola.
Web Animation
- A Running Gag in hololive's EN branch is the Relationship Revolving Door status of IRyS and Baelz Hakos, where they seem to go from infatuation to dating to married to divorce and back to infatuation and dating in the span of a week, or at least however fast is needed for the joke of the day. This results in Toilet Seat Divorces on occasion, such as their initial Minecraft marriage falling apart within 24 hours because of Bae's substandard bento box lunches for IRyS, or another time when Bae files for divorce (and demands full child support for Mr. Squeaks) after IRyS wins a game of Yacht.
Webcomics
- Questionable Content: Mentioned in one strip where Faye starts laying into Angus for leaving the toilet seat up. It turns that that as it was dark and Faye didn't have her glasses, she didn't notice the missing seat and nearly fell in.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons
- In "A Milhouse Divided", Mr. and Mrs. Van Houten have a public breakup that's precipitated by one spouse losing a game of Pictionary, though this incident was really only the Rage Breaking Point for long-held deep grudges.
- In the original cut of the pilot episode, "Some Enchanted Evening", Marge receives slightly inconsiderate behaviour from Homer and the kids after expectations of a cheerful, wholesome family breakfast. Crushed, she calls a hotline and vents how unaffectionate a spouse Homer is, and is advised to read him the riot act and threaten a divorce unless he changes. The final episode fixes this by depicting Marge as clearly haggard and downbeat from the start, making clear she has been worn down for a long time already.
- An episode of Arthur has D.W. and Arthur imagining their parents getting a divorce over literally spilled milk.
- Not a divorce, but Gazpacho in Chowder had a falling-out with his mother over proper tooth-brushing technique.
- In the Futurama episode "Proposition Infinity," Kif breaks up with Amy, she having suddenly decided that his endearingly pathetic traits are actually annoying and he being unable to tolerate her All Girls Want Bad Boys tendency. Played with because she says that they don't have to get a divorce, because that alien ceremony they had in The Movie where she officially "joined his family?" Yeah, that was different than being married...somehow. All this just so that Amy and Bender could date for one episode, and then Amy and Kif instantly get back together.
- Deconstructed in The Loud House episode "Save the Date." Bobby breaks up with Lori when Lincoln hurts his sister's feelings despite Lori having nothing to do with it, but it becomes clear he doesn't want to when he has to do it again later in the episode, and he is just as overjoyed as Lori is when Lincoln publicly makes up with Ronnie Anne.
- The VeggieTales adaptation of The Book of Ester has the King asking his wife for a sandwich in the middle of the night, she refuses, and the rest is history.