Much like the OP, a priest met a young woman during a counseling session. They fell in love and were married.
He is now an Episcopol priest, or as a friend of theirs likes to call it, “Catholic Lite”.
I was a lay brother in a religious congregation for seven years up to the end of the Second Vatican Council. The Council ended a year before I was due to take final vows. During the council the religious congregation I was in started to relax the rules and daily observance in anticipation of “religious liberty” and the reforms being debated in Rome. Community life became more a “do as you please as you please” and the morning and evening meditation and other community observances became optional. The priests of the congregation started to live like parish priests while the lay brothers for the most part carried on in the old ways of regular observance. The old brothers seemed to be glad that there were near the end of their life and the young ones like me were wondering what we were letting ourselves in for in the future. The old certainties, observances and customs were fast being dismantled and disregarded. The rule that I had professed seven years ago and been content with was about to be changed. Rumours were rife that the Holy Mass itself was going to be changed which we did not believe at the time believing it to be have been practically canonized and irrevocably fixed for all times by Pope St. Pius V at the Council of Trent. Far from having a vision of a great renewal similar that that which followed in the wake of the Council of Trent when religious orders reformed, new ones founded and vocations increased, I could only see a confused and bewildering future that I was not prepared (or did not have the faith) to commit myself for life to what I could only see as my signature on a blank sheet. It was with great sorrow and tears that I left my religious order in the early hours of the morning before the community got up and on the day that my temporary vows expired. The Father Superior was a kind man and understood why I could not stay on and saw me off into the dark of the early morning. Thinking back it seems that it was the right thing to do. As sacristan with a great love of the Latin liturgy I could never have endured the excesses, banality and desacralizing of the Holy Mass in that period of liturgical experimentation which followed the implementation of the Novus Ordo Mass. If I had stayed on I would have had to endure it and participate in it which I would have hated.
My 10th grade Lit teacher (SJ school):
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Why did you (they) get into religious orders? For example, a genuine calling? Pushed into it by family?
As far as he could tell at the time, a genuine calling. -
How and why did you get out of religious orders?
Because he eventually realized it hadn’t been a genuine calling. How, by the usual process of talking with his superiors (in this case since he was SJ, both them and the local bishop) and requesting a permanent suspension of his duties as a priest. He later got married, but as he would explain to us, he’d met her later. -
Did you have a loss or alteration of faith when you left religious orders?
No. He’s still a Jesuit too, although now in the Tertiary Order (these live “in the world” rather than in community), and all his teaching life has taken place in Jesuit schools.
I also know several nuns who aren’t currently living in community because they’ve left it to take care of elderly parents, one whose order does not accept perpetual vows and which declined renewal at one point for the same reason as the above, three nun-priest marriages which asked to be let out when they realized they’d fallen in love (no crises of faith in any of the above as far as I can tell, they tend to be more involved in parish life than others) and one ex-priest who’s now a JW (evidently this one did have a change of faith), but I haven’t talked in detail about it with any of them.
OOT ETA: My father and his brothers attended the local SJ seminar - but that is true of 1/3 of Navarrese men their age, and an even higher proportion for men of my grandfather’s generation or beyond. Dad’s generation had 3 high schools available in the whole province and one happened to be the SJ seminar; it was also the oldest, and my family had attended it pretty much since it opened. Dad and two of his brothers got minor orders (deaconate), the eldest brother said he wasn’t interested and ended his HS studies in the other SJ school in the province. None of them ever joined the Order; during their last year of HS they were asked whether they were interested in the priesthood, said “no” and went on to continue their studies at other kinds of schools.
A couple of times I’ve been in Mass with Dad when the priest asked for assistance distributing Communion; we volunteered and he asked whether we knew what to do. “I have minor orders and she’s my daughter” got us a waiver on the detailed explanations other people would get.
I’ve known two former nuns pretty well – one an aunt, the other a woman I worked with. Both of them went into the convent right after high school and left a couple of years later. My aunt basically decided she didn’t want to live a nun’s life 24/7. My co-worker was, by her own admission, way too rambunctious for any kind of life in a religious community and was kindly booted out by her superiors.
Both of them stayed practicing Catholics, one became a teacher and the other a social worker.
In my novitiate we had young men of 17 who had come from the religious congregations own school. Some of them had been sexually active and were able to go to confession as and where they wanted. Once in the novitiate there was only one priest who was confessor and spiritual director for the novices so there was no more anonymity in the confessional. I think the celibacy got too much for some of them and a few of them gave up and left. The novice master used to say “better to take measure of yourself now before you are in vows.” As scripture says “let him that can take it, take it”. Our novice master did speak about temporary vocations whereby some people were called to religious life for a time but then destined to return to the world hopefully enriched and helped by the experience. I left after seven years as a lay brother because I could not adapt to the changes in the community life in the wake of Vatican II.
Sorry but I’m confused.
Had been, or were? If they’d previously been sexually active, that’s one confession.
And there was anonymity before? I’m reasonably sure that the immense majority of the priests I’ve had confession with knew perfectly well who I was. The others are priests who simply hadn’t met me - are you saying that those novices had previously been going through a list of the priests in town, making sure that they avoided any who might recognize them? Because otherwise what makes confession anonymous is the priest’s discretion, not his inability to recognize the person confessing.
What I am saying is that when some of the boys “had a fall from grace” and committed a sexual sin alone or with another student as sometimes happens with young men living together in institutions they could always go into the city to any parish and any priest for confession. It would be unlikely that the priest would know that they were pre novitiate candidates for a religious order. In those days there was always a grille and a curtain in the confessional. If I remember rightly in cannon law the penitent has the right to anonymity. I found this on one Catholic website “While the practice of face-to-face confession has become common in many places, the Church, for years, has believed in the right of the individual penitent to remain anonymous.” When you are in a community like a novitiate in a religious institution there is usually an appointed confessor other than the novice master. There are also extraordinary confessors available from time to time. A fall from grace by committing a sexual act like masturbation would be noted by your confessor and if repeated that person would probably be counselled that a life of chastity was not for him and he should leave the novitiate and eventually get married. This advice was given to somebody I knew which he followed.
I have 2 relatives who were RC nuns, that left. One was only there for a year, the other in a cloistered order, she had a breakdown after 15 years and left. I have another who is still a nun has been for about 70 years and has had several breakdowns; also a relative who was a priest, he has also had several breakdowns.
Why, I don’t know!
My maternal Gran had 13 children including many beautiful daughters who were of an age when WWII broke out. A nearby army base made her fear for her daughters, so she put the three most likely to swoon for the soldiers into a convent.
One Aunt left as soon as she was of age, the second one pursued the life for a few more years then exited. But the third one stayed all her life.
I remember a family row when I was quite young. We would be visiting my Gran when the penguin (full black and white habits, etc.), Aunts would arrive to visit. Watching us playing in the yard they liked to loudly pronounce what lovely nuns me and my sister would make! Whoa, set my mother off! Wherein she marched around loudly proclaiming that she anticipated her daughters having useful and productive lives, thank you very much! The penguin Aunties never said such a thing again!
My other strongest remembrance was running wild through the halls of the nunnery with my siblings and watching hockey with the extremely old nuns.
That Auntie stayed at that convent all of her life, and was eventually the Mother Superior!
My aunt entered the convent when we were young, maybe 11 (for me) or so. We had to go from calling her Aunt T, to calling her Sister M. It was a little tough on us. 
After a long career as a school principal, and having been transferred a lot, she ended up in Pittsburgh, our home town.
When my brother was killed, she took (well, tried to) take charge. And was adamant to the point of distraction, that we have Father R. do the service. She waxed poetic on his skills as a priest. We didn’t care; my brother had lived in San Francisco a long time, and none of us were currently living in Pittsburgh. So Father R. did the service.
Couple years later, could you see it coming, they both left their vocations, and married each other.
Back to calling her Aunt T, but it was/is creepy.
My first step mother had been a nun for about 30 years. I have no idea why she joined. I think she was 17 or 18 though. She left because her mother was very ill and needed help. While she was out she met and married my father (a huge mistake).
My father, being my father, cheated on her. She and my father divorced and got an annulment (his second). He got another wife.
She got a job, a boyfriend, and an apartment. She’s doing well, is very sweet, and still a devoted Catholic.
Unlike my father, she doesn’t preach to me about her Catholicism or my agnosticism. Also unlike my father, she doesn’t have a holier-than-thou attitude. She’s just a sweet and devoted lady who happens to love God with all her heart and doesn’t abuse her religion. She sends us cards for every single holiday (even St. Patrick’s day). I think she’s been out of the convent for about 20 years now.
It has been a long time since she came into my life and I still feel horrible that she met my father. If she hadn’t met him she might have returned to the convent or met an actual good guy. I can’t imagine how it must have been being with him after 30 years in a convent. It must have been a nasty shock.