Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesTom Cruise and Katie Holmes' marriage may have looked like the picture of perfection from the outside, but insiders say the couples' troubles were nothing new, stemming at least in part from Cruise's commitment to Scientology.
"She was never truly comfortable with the Scientology thing," a source close to Holmes told E! News. "It was something she accepted and put up with for many years because it was important to Tom, and for that reason, important to her. But over the past year, they had started to see things differently, and she was beginning to pull away."
"It wasn't that she was against Scientology," the source continued. "She wasn't at all. She definitely saw its benefit, but she also didn't want it to be her everything, and for Tom, in some ways, it was. She wanted more freedom to make her own decisions."
But it appears Scientology wasn't the couple's only area of conflict.
Another source, who was close with Holmes when she first started dating the Rock of Ages star, said Holmes' personality changed significantly during their marriage…and not in a good way.
"She gave up everything to be with him," the source said. "When she met him, she stopped seeing all her friends and being the normal girl that she was before. She truly adored him. She was overwhelmed by his fame when he first asked her out. He was a huge movie star and suddenly he was giving her attention, and right from the start he was enamored by her. She couldn't believe her luck. He made her feel like all she needed in her life was him."
"I saw her a few years into the relationship and she was not the same girl," the source continued. "Everything she had to say was ‘Tom this,' ‘Tom that.' It wasn't like she was in the first flush of love, when you can't stop talking about someone, it was past that point. It was as if he controlled her in a way just because she had barely anyone else in her life but him, and almost no one her own age. She listened to him so much that she didn't have her own opinion on things, it was weird. Maybe it was because she wanted me to believe she had given up her previous life and her friends for some perfect man, but it just didn't seem sincere."
Meanwhile, Holmes and Cruise managed to keep signs of a possible split under wraps—so much so that another source who spent time with Holmes recently said there was no way to tell that her divorce filing was coming.
"From what I have been told, no one on [a recent trip to China] had any idea anything was wrong," the source said. "She was absolutely normal in her demeanor. No one saw any signs at all. Katie seemed happy, upbeat, in a good mood...She was talking about Tom as if everything was normal. There were no red flags at all."