Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/25/christmas_text_message_busted/
Divorce lawyer spots increase in Christmas 'text message bustings'
Hark the herald cellphone rings
Posted in Bootnotes, 25th December 2012 00:12 GMT
A top divorce lawyer has warned that adulterous couples are increasingly getting caught out over text messages and other electronic communication sent during the Christmas period.
"It is really very sad," Ayesha Vardag, dubbed Britain's top divorce lawyer by the Law Society, told The Telegraph.
"We find a lot is that there are a lot of text message 'bustings' on Christmas Day, usually because the husband leaves the phone around and the mistress is sending messages. It is amazing how many times that is what catches people out."
In the case of paramours, it's hard to keep in touch discreetly without alarming your partner, but Vardag theorizes that some might use technology self-sabotage and spill the beans accidentally on-purpose.
"I do wonder whether there is an element of people wanting to get caught because it is an easier way of dealing with it than saying that they want to leave," she said. "When people are discovered in adultery, rather than coming clean and saying that they are in a relationship, it tends to be through mobile phones and emails."
Plenty of divorce lawyers report seeing a spike in inquiries from the unhappily-married in New Year. Christmas is a time of enforced coexistence between family members, often lubricated with lashings of alcohol, and after a rough one many couples simply decide they've had enough.
But for those tempted to fight remember the wise words of Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol:
"But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time...as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely." ®