As an addendum to Marcus’s post about the alleged benefits of the economic downturn (or whatever it is), here’s another: Schadenfreude over the tribulations of “toxic wives” and their husbands, as described by Tara Winter Wilson in The Telegraph:
“You loser!” screamed Katie, aiming a vase at her husband. “You’ve destroyed my life,” she continued, hurling it. “Just look at my hair, look at my nails! You loser, you jerk, you nobody.”
Katie’s husband, Jack, whose property portfolio disintegrated in the financial crash, had just told his wife that she would have to cut back on her thrice-weekly visits to Nicky Clarke, the nail salon in Harvey Nichols, and the oxygen facials, chemical peels and seaweed wraps at Space NK.
Not only that, but they no longer had the money to pay for an army of bullied Eastern Europeans to wait on her hand and foot.
Worse was to come – the brow-lift would have to be cancelled; her black Amex card would have to be snipped in half; and there was no way, he told her, that he could carry on spending £28,000 a year on Henry’s school fees at Eton.
Chloe, too, would have to leave the marginally cheaper (only £25,000 pa) Wycombe Abbey immediately.
…..
According to Susie Ambrose, a marital psychotherapist and CEO of Seventy-Thirty, an upmarket introduction company that takes its name from the work versus free time balance, there has been an unprecedented demand from married women recently.”We are being targeted by women on the fence between leaving their husbands who are on the brink of losing their wealth, and wanting to meet someone extremely rich straight away,” she says.
But, hey: we’ve all been there, right?
I’ll have to take Ms. Wilson’s word for it that people like these actually exist.
The sad truth, of course, is that economically-related family difficulties are not limited to such people. The loss of a modest- or low-paying job can put terrible stresses on relations between spouses and their children. And that’s nothing to laugh at.