You misunderstand. Life adversity that I am referring to means things like:
1. Loss of job/income
2. Betrayal by a close friend
3. Health crisis or accident
4. Loss of business
5. Public disgrace or humiliation
6. Death of a family member
7. Suffering crime or disaster or war
Things outside the relationship.
These are huge life events that create REAL adversity. Many people never face things on the above list until they are old, and by then deaths are to be expected.
But these are the things that happened after I married my first husband. He suffered 2, 4, and 5. I stayed by his side for years because of the seriousness of the adversity.
I suffered some of these adversities. I'm still here and people arround me knows my character. Be it my father or my good friends (most of whom are male). It's hard to confide issues to women. Just the way it is in a lot of cases.
Men in general are better judges of another man's character because we confide to each other... even more than to females - even those that are related to us. Just the way things are.
Everything you mentioned has happened to a lot of people.. layoffs... public humiliation of some sort (perhaps in a smaller scale like humiliation in high-school... but remember people have committed suicide over it so makes it just as dangerous; and given enough time every public everything looks silly in the long run); health crises; betrayal (uhmmm do I even need to mention divorce stats for men?)... the list is long, but men do suffer... as do women in a way..
May I broach the idea that you as a female didn't really know your male exhusband as well as you think you did due to the fact that you are female? How he would react to adversity, struggles, etc... perhaps if you were born as male, you might have had a better reading of the guy?
As a male, I know I am not good at reading emotions of people. I know that is a general male flaw and I will ask people for opinions. It's just how men and women are different (for the most part).