Good examples. It's been quite a while since I read the Silmarillion, but I think I remember being bitterly dissapointed that the Dark elf wasn't redemed by the love of the civilized elf-chick.
I've always loved the tragic tale of the ents and ent-wives, roamers and homers, wanderers and gardeners. Tolkein seems sometimes to be making a larger point about the nature of men and women-- or at least playing with the idea at the safe distance of another species-- I think he had some deep feelings about this. (I don't agree with the implied dichotomy-- I'm female, but I garden by pick-axing my lawn up and waiting for the weeds to flower-- they're invariably prettier than the petunias I could have planted. Female or no, I'm an ent, not an entwife.)
Tolkein's various tales of mariner's marriages strike a similar theme of wanderer misunderstood by his mate. Earandil and Elwing managed to defy this trend and have a happy marriage because she accepted his profession and passions, although they weren't together very much and he wasn't around when she was in trouble. I think there you have Tolkein's solution to a marriage of opposites who are compelled to pursue their separate quests. If he must become a sailor across uncharted seas, she can take the form of a sea-bird, pursuing her own journey with him on the sea and by herself on the shore. Not a bad formula. Both are transformed by their journey.
What destroyed the chance for a happy union between the ents and entwives was an unhappy, but inevitable consequence of any quest-- when one partner leaves: sea-voyage, wandering, or, in our modern world, a psychological withdrawal to pursue a demanding profession, the remaining partner is left without help or protection while the journey lasts. During that time, something might happen to them. The entwives were almost certainly destroyed by war; the ents were not by to help them or at least go down defending them. Elwing was very nearly massacred, taking the form of a white bird only, I think, by the intervention of the Valar. The entwives got no such help, as far as we know, so they died (though ent and entwives will probably be reunited at the end of the world).
In modern civilized times, the danger is more likely to be psychological. One partner is sucked under by career building: long, long hours and the consuming of all his/her attention by the great project that will establish him/her. The remaining partner may be fine alone, but in the face of isolation and depression there can be little help from the questing partner while he/she is questing.
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