LURID ACCOUNTS shared on social media of wives exacting revenge on their cheating husbands have helped make dramatic – and occasionally excruciating – score-settling an increasingly common feature in marital splits in Britain, divorce lawyers say.
High-profile cases of celebrity spouses getting their own back in spectacular fashion have also helped normalise the practice, they believe. Sam Hall, a partner in family law at JMW solicitors, calculated that around one in seven of the cases involving allegations of infidelity which his firm handles each year now feature some act of catharsis by a wronged wife upon a cheating husband.
He said recent cases he had dealt with included a number of incidents of wives applying ultra-strong glue to intimate parts of their husbands’ anatomy as they slept. There were also examples of wives adept with a needle and thread sewing rotting seafood into furniture and even, in one case, into the lining of a motorcycle crash helmet.
One wife put her husband’s prized sports car up for sale online with an asking price of just £1 while others secreted particularly unpleasant smelling items in lavatory cisterns.
Others set out to embarrass their estranged spouse by sending packages to their new home address containing awkward items such as testing kits for sexually transmitted diseases.
Mr Hall said that while infidelity affected both men and women deeply, wives were more likely to be attracted to venting their feelings in a calculated fashion.
But he said there also appear to be generational differences in how they react upon finding out about alleged infidelity, with younger wives more likely to turn to the internet, either for inspiration or to share details of their revenge afterwards.
“In my experience, a bombshell event, such as the discovery of an affair, generates a far more passionate response than a divorce which occurs simply because a couple has grown apart over time,” he said.
“Whereas adultery might have deflated wives in previous generations, social media now provides women both with the means of uncovering infidelities and an outlet for publicising the emotions that they stir up.
“We have had cases in which women have not only attacked their husbands’ clothes and cars but have done a variety of things, such as hide seafood around the former marital home and use glue on their spouses as they lay sleeping.
“Some have even conceded that they felt they were following the lead of high-profile women who had engaged in similar behaviour.”
He added that while such incidents might seem amusing to others, they illustrate the depth of distress caused by infidelity.
“It’s a case of the heart rul- ing the head. However, in the vast majority of instances with which we have dealt, it’s the wife who is still able to be more controlled and more creative than the husband in showing how upset she is.
“Even so, I have seldom encountered marital scoresettling involving someone emptying a joint bank account, for example.
“Revenge appears to be something of a reflex and not a commercial process to the people concerned.”