Given that it’s a sunny Monday, and you’re most likely cooped-up in a tiny, muggy office, we thought you could do with a dose of schadenfreude, and given this week’s feature on how to get over a break-up, we thought it would be apt to gather together some break-up stories that might put your past heartbreak in perspective:
Who caught who?
So your wife gets a second job, she’s out a lot working late, you get lonely, in your growing desperation you decide to visit a brothel (or maybe you visit them all the time – that isn’t clear). That’s half a Polish man’s divorce story. When he arrived at the brothel, working amongst the women was his wife of 14 years. He filed for divorce shortly after, though it is hard to tell who was more caught out in that story. Him for visiting the brothel or her for working there?
The girl who broke up with herself
In 2007 a video went viral purporting to document the break-up of an American couple. The video contained a string of emails sent to the boyfriend whilst he was backpacking around Europe, something his girlfriend at the time, appeared to have forgotten. The increasingly vitriolic emails suggest that Emma, the girlfriend, was under the impression ‘JD’ her erstwhile boyfriend was avoiding her. Eventually she delivers an emphatic ultimatum: Last chance… call me tonight with the best excuse of your life or I walk asshole. And, amazingly, things go downhill from there.
Happy brother-in-law day
Actress Mia Farrow and Woody Allen broke up after she discovered that Allen was having an affair with her adopted daughter Soon-Yi. A bitter custody battle followed during which Farrow claimed that Allen had molested their daughter Dylan, though a doctor late concluded that “either invented the story under the stress of living in a volatile and unhealthy home or that it was planted in her mind by her mother”. Soon-Yi married Allen in 1997. Satchel Ronan Farrow last year tweeted: “Happy Father’s day — or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.”
The most expensive divorce ever
Racehorse trainer Alec Wildenstien’s divorce from Jocelyn Wildenstein is widely credited as being the most expensive marriage breakdown in history. Overshadowed by his high achieving father, the art dealer and racehorse owner and breeder Daniel Wildenstien, Alec found solace in a relationship with Suisse socialite Jocelyn Périsset after the pair were introduced by a Saudi arms dealer during a hunting weekend at Wildenstien’s Kenyan ranch (just give yourself a moment to let that sentence sink in). The pair’s divorce from 1997 to 1999 revealed some incredible spending habits. The divorce eventually cost Alec an estimated £2bn. He soon remarried and but died at just 67 of prostate cancer in 2008. Jocelyn revealed in 2011 that he annual phone bill was around £40,000 per year.
