For me it was the opposite. As a married couple we had a house almost paid for. But then in the divorce we both had to get large mortgages again.

I bought out her half of the house and now have a mortgage as big as our initial starting price 20 years ago, that doesn’t get paid off until I’m like 80. So that didn’t work so well

Of course now I also have enough equity to buy a house in most of the country. So there’s definite upside