Firm News
Log Off, Love Longer
| Release Date: |
15 March 2004 |
New study shows rise in e-licit affairs
Britons believe conducting an illicit affair has never been easier thanks to a growth in the number of mobile phone and internet users, a new poll reveals.
Almost half of those (46%) questioned about their relationship habits claimed that the advent of emails, mobile texting and internet chat rooms has led to a massive rise in the number people being unfaithful to their partners, according to a study commissioned by divorce lawyers at top London law firm Mishcon de Reya.
Nearly a third of people (29%) admitted to using emails, text messaging and internet chat rooms to flirt with potential partners or nurture an affair. Of those, almost a quarter (22%) confessed to doing so every day while 62% admitted to doing so once a week.
And according to Sandra Davis, partner and head of Mishcon de Reya's Family Practice, the surge in availability of instant telecommunication channels is reflected in an equally dramatic increase in the volume of clients seeking to divorce on grounds of adultery.
While Mishcon's have a long-established matrimonial department that offers legal advice on a spectrum of family matters - ranging from financial settlements to divorce, ante-nuptial agreements to disputes concerning children - it is, in particular, the spate of adulterous incidents in recent years that have grown so alarmingly.
With the rise of covert communication, one in ten people questioned admitted they feared that e-flirting may be fuelling infidelity. So paranoid have people become that one in seven of them actually admitted to secretly scanning their partners’ emails and phone logs to check up on them.
And much to their dismay, one in five people said they had discovered a flirty message from an unknown source, while six per cent had found details of an impending secret liaison. Thirteen per cent of snoops admitted they had found secret texts that criticised them.
To Davis, the research comes as no surprise.
She said: “More and more cases that I am dealing with, in which infidelity is the key issue, now contain an element of mobile phone and internet use as part of illicit activity. The number of hotmail addresses in the UK is rising and they too are being used as a conduit for affairs on the worldwide web and away from the prying eyes of partners.
“It has been our experience that those of our clients who cite adultery as the cause of the breakdown of their marriage find, increasingly, that new forms of communication have been instrumental in the initial conception of infidelity."
All this points towards the fact that in modern Briton, to love longer people should log off.