Since I’ve been a practicing divorce lawyer in Madison County for over twenty years, I have seen just about every reason you can fathom for a marriage in Huntsville to break up. Since north Alabama is a mecca for technology I learned early on how using tech can break up a marriage. Obviously, we have the internet daters who are still married. Not satisfied with the selection in Madison County? You can go as far afield as you want when searching online. I’ve seen situations where the paramour is in another country and the parties have never met. It will still break up a marriage if your spouse finds out you have been sending pictures of yourself around the rocket city to your virtual lover in Nigeria.
- Facebooking to exes. Break up marriage material. You begin looking for the former flame and then you start confiding all the issues in your marriage. Maybe they are single or also have a marriage they are unhappy with and soon the remembrance of the love comes back to you. The grass is greener anywhere but Huntsville, Alabama, it seems to be to such. Eventually your spouse determines your hours spent on Facebook are not because you are playing Farmville.
- Pornographic problems. Looking at pornography online can certainly break up a marriage. I’ve seen it happen in a few different scenarios. One client I represented had the habit of viewing pornography when he was at work on a government computer. Turns out that didn’t just cost him his job, it cost him his marriage. I have seen even seen parties divested of visitation rights because their pornography use was so pervasive they wouldn’t stop when their children were present.
- Online shopping. Another habit of break up proportions. I had a client whose spouse had run up thousands of dollars in credit card debt from the home computer while he was at work. He had reportedly tried to monitor her spending but he didn’t account for the ease with which online shopping has made spending. The shopping, ordering, and delivering could be done without her ever leaving the house.
- Endless Internet surfing. The endless entertainment of being online can also cause a marriage to breakup. I’ve heard the same story over and over. “They spend more time on the computer than they do with me.” This could of course be due to any of the habits above. Or it could merely be a spouse who doesn’t want to hold conversation or spend time in activities with you and prefers the click of the keyboard and mouse to watching television beside you.
- Texting. The computer is not the only tool that spells disaster for marriage. Texting someone you met online is another one. It’s unfathomable to me how one can’t stop texting long enough to go out with their family. One client came to me because he had discovered dozens of texts from various men around Huntsville. He became suspicious after his wife was on the phone texting once they were all at home. She could only make up excuses for so long before he picked up the phone to see someone else’s appendage. Sexting, obviously, has a detrimental effect on a marriage. Another case I was involved in revolved around a texting incident when the family was on vacation in Florida. The offending spouse couldn’t stop texting her lover – taking breaks with her phone every few minutes. Needless to say, she was caught and the sunny skies of Florida couldn’t help these two.
I’ve been preparing on a workshop on habit busting- How to Divorce your Bad Habits. Any behavior that becomes triggered into automatic with cues is a habit. Looking at the list above all become habitual and eventually cause a rift in a marriage. It is rarely one time that causes the marriage to fail. Sometimes depending on the situation one time can be enough but if it is an isolated incident the parties can usually work it out. However, if you begin to habitually do any of the things above you can almost be sure you are treading in dangerous waters for your marriage.
