Technology is enabling more husbands and wives to conduct multiple affairs online, divorce lawyers have revealed.
Firms have noticed a rise in such infidelities – with some spouses conducting up to five affairs at a time, some almost entirely online.
Methods of communication range from text messaging and dating apps to social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook.
Divorce lawyers have seen a rise in cases involving partners having multiple affairs – many of which are conducted almost entirely online
Hall Brown Family Law saw such cases rise from less than 50 to 65 over a five-year period.
Abigail Lowther, an associate solicitor at the firm told the Sunday Telegraph her clients complained that technology was ‘putting temptation at their partners’ fingertips’.
While Joanne Edwards, a partner at Forsters, also noted the correlation between technology and infidelity.
‘Technology puts people within messaging distance of old or new flames and means that a spouse can be cheating when sitting in the same room with their husband and wife,’ she told the paper.
Methods of communication range from dating apps to social media media accounts and text messages
While technology may make having an affair easier, it also makes it easier to uncover infidelity, according to Joanna Pratt, partner at Thomson Snell & Passmore.
‘Technology has also made it easier for illicit relationships to be uncovered,’ she told the paper. ‘People forget to close or properly delete emails, text messages are sent or received but not deleted, and photographs can appear on Facebook which although they might appear on a totally unconnected person’s Facebook page, disclose to the whole world the nature of relationships,’ she said.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Tunbridge Wells was home to the most adulterers in the UK.
According to the Infidelity Index, 1,146 of its residents are having an affair – a whole 2.20 per cent of its population.
The Index, compiled by Illicit Encounters – the UK’s leading dating site for adulterers – mapped the location data of its 1.1 million members against each town’s adult population to find the most adulterous towns, cities, and London boroughs in the country.
Affluent Guildford retained second place with 1,303 adulterers – 2.1 percent of the population. Wrexham came in third with 1,027 adulterers – 1.89 percent of the town’s residents.