Woman Divorces Husband After Proving He Ignored Her Texts

A Taiwanese woman successfully divorced her husband after proving he ignored her text messages over six months, reported BBC Monday.

The woman, identified by her last name Lin, sent him various text messages on the messaging application Line. A feature on Line called “blue-ticking,” reading a message and not replying, gave the man away. A tick appeared whenever the man read one of his wife’s messages. He replied to almost none of her messages.

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One of the messages the Lin sent to her husband informed him she was in the hospital after a car accident, said Judge Kao, the judge in Hsinchu district’s family affairs court. She asked him why he read the message, but did not reply to it. He visited her once in the hospital. Two months later, he sent his wife a message informing her about their dog and telling her she received mail.

“The defendant did not inquire about the plaintiff, and the information sent by the plaintiff was read but not replied to. The couple’s marriage is beyond repair,” the court ruling stated. “It appears there’s very little interaction with the plaintiff; the defendant rarely replies to the plaintiff’s messages.”

The way men and women viewed texting as part of relationships is different.

“Male texting frequency was negatively associated with relationships satisfaction and stability scores for both partners while female texting frequency was positively associated with their own relationship stability scores,” said a 2013 study published in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy.

The study also found that women were more likely than men to use texting to steer the relationship, touching upon topics such as apologizing to their partner or work out differences in the relationship.

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The couple married in 2012. Lin was reported as being in her 50s and on her second marriage, while her husband is in his 40s. According to Judge Kao, after Lin moved into her husband’s home he shared with his mother, younger brother and sister-in law, his family was “unfriendly” towards her. She would pay most of the family’s bills because her husband had no steady income. Court filings also reported her husband’s family restricted aspects of her showers, such as how long she could remain in the shower and how high she could turn the water temperature.

“A normal couple shouldn’t treat each other like that. The Line messages were a very important piece of evidence,” Judge Kao said. “It shows the overall state of the marriage, that the two parties don’t have good communication.

Judge Kao also reported that Lin’s husband has not yet appeared at any court proceedings.