Manama A Saudi woman has filed for divorce after she discovered that her husband was a social networking chat addict with numerous women.
Surfing through her husband’s mobile phone, Maha, an IT teacher, stumbled upon several conversations he had while using Whatsapp, a chatting programme on smartphones and tablet computers.
When the husband arrived home, she confronted him and showed him a chat he had with one of his numerous women contacts and in which he proposed to her and said he wanted to marry her, local Arabic daily Okaz reported.
Attempts by the husband to explain the situation and to apologise were challenged by the angry wife who told him that she thought she had married a mature man and not a deceitful adolescent.
Refuting his explanations, she reminded him that he had been distant and arrogant in his behaviour lately and insisted on leaving him.
Maha eventually called her brother to pick her up and take her to her parents’ home before filing for divorce, the daily said.
Several divorce cases have been recorded in Gulf countries and elsewhere in relation to the surreptitious use of smartphones and social media networks.
Abdul Salam Darwish, Head of the Family Guidance and Reconciliation Section at the Dubai Courts Department, told Gulf News in May that phone misuses have given rise to “cyber infidelity”.
“We have had cases of wives claiming divorce because their husbands communicated with women on WhatsApp or BlackBerry Messenger and husbands filing for divorce because their wives interacted with men on Twitter or opened Face-book accounts or posted their photos without their permission,” Abdul Salam said.
