When the money goes, so does the toxic wife

Recession: When the money goes, so does the toxic wife

As the recession worsens, a lot of rich men are finding their gold-digging wives are taking to their heels

By Tara Winter Wilson

Some women are like businessmen - utterly ruthless, and seeing a rich man as their career path.

'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.

Such was the aggression and verbal and physical abuse that followed that Jack was left with cut lips and blood streaming from a broken nose.

Their eight-year-old child, not yet at boarding school, sat cowering in a corner and dialing 999. When they arrived, they had to restrain Katie forcibly from attacking her husband.

An extreme and isolated example of the global economic meltdown hitting the £1 million home? Sadly no. When the super-rich feel the pinch, inevitably, the Toxic Wife heads off.

The Toxic Wife, first identified in these pages almost two years ago, is a particular and terrifying species.

Not to be confused with the stay-at-home mother who selflessly devotes herself to the upbringing of her children, with all the housework and domestic chores that entails, the Toxic Wife is the woman who gives up work as soon as she marries, ostensibly to create a stable home environment for any offspring that might come along, but who then employs large numbers of staff to do all the domestic work she promised to undertake, leaving her with little to do all day except shop, lunch and luxuriate.

Having married her wealthy husband with his considerable salary uppermost in her mind, the Toxic Wife simply does not do "for richer, for poorer". Little Dorrit, she ain't.

Indeed, lawyers and financial advisers have reported a 50 per cent increase in the number of divorce inquiries since the financial markets collapsed in September.

A recent survey conducted by community website makefriendsonline revealed that a third of 10,000 respondents believe that financial hardship will cause a relationship to fail, while matrimonial law specialists Mishcon de Reya have reported up to 300 per cent more inquiries.

Numbers have risen significantly as couples seek to reach an agreement before the recession tightens its grip. But for the Toxic Wife, "agreement" is the last thing on her mind.

There are countless stories of them acting in the most bizarre and inhumane ways. For gold-diggers are materialistic to such an extent that they are emotionally detached from other people.

There's an inability to empathise with another human being. They certainly don't ''do'' conscience. Money, on the other hand, they both love and understand.

''I told my wife to stop this organic food malarkey,'' said Jeremy, a beleaguered hedge-fund manager, another man who fell for an extremely beautiful yet extravagant woman.

"She went ballistic. Organic Hass avocados cost £1.75 each and she wanted me to buy six of them! In the end, I just peeled off the labels that said they were certified organic and put them on ordinary avocados – she didn't notice the difference. I did the same with bananas…''

''So why did she walk out on you?'' I asked.

''She has a very high standard of living,'' he said. ''She's never taken the Tube or a bus; it's always taxis. And she likes to eat out a lot, at the best restaurants, and she likes to buy expensive gifts for people she wants to impress.

"As soon as the financial wobbles started, she must have joined some upmarket dating agency because somehow she's found another very rich man pretty damn fast.''

Another case is Sasha who, for the past few months, had been gloating about the £3.4 million chalet in Verbier her husband was about to exchange on, how she'd managed to hire a high-society interior decorator to do it up for a song (''more an anthem, actually", she'd giggled) and how much she was looking forward to a white, snowy Christmas there.

At the last minute, Husband pulled out of the deal. Never mind that he had lost his lucrative job in the City, she felt he had deliberately traumatised her and is suing him for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. '

'She's got the personality of an overindulged infant,'' he sighed, ''a spoilt brat who starts screaming the moment a toy is taken away.''

In the grown-up world that toy is money and what it can buy: status, power, glamour and arrogance. It also has a way of making these particular women precious. ''Because I'm worth it'' has become the catch-all legitimiser for any personal indulgence.

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.

Like a frog, the Toxic Wife needs to hop safely on to another lily pad, and a rich one, before leaving her husband. She won't stand on her own two feet. And finding a job is quite beneath her.

Yet Susie Ambrose thinks such women ''are like businessmen – utterly ruthless". The rich man is the career path, the meal ticket, and it doesn't matter how fat, old, balding or unattractive he is – it's solely about money.

''These particular women know how to fake love,'' adds Ambrose. ''They're actually very good at it.''

She now has a waiting-list for her life-coaching sessions – a course costs between £10,000 - £60,000 – on how to distinguish a gold-digger from a genuine woman.

Men, it seems, have got wise to the potential Toxic Wife and don't want to end up with someone who is going to bolt the moment they experience some financial bad luck.

For men, divorce is one of the most expensive trials in life – emotionally and financially. As the joke doing the rounds among City men goes: "This credit crunch is worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."

But this is no joke. I've seen at first hand how, as soon as money disappears, so does love.

Olivia and Richard had a set of beautiful and expensively conceived twins (we're talking around £30,000 worth of IVF treatments for the right gender – she joked how she would send them back if they were girls), a fabulous house, great holidays several times a year, two nannies and a lifestyle of which most of us lesser mortals could only fantasise.

How we laughed when Richard, with admiration in his voice, mentioned at a drinks party last year that he'd turned to his wife in the middle of the night and asked her if she'd still love him if he lost all his money.

''F--- no!'' had been her answer. Such a feisty, amusing (and obviously joky) response delighted him. But today he is scratching his head with abject dejection. She had meant it.

She left him the moment he lost his senior post at an investment bank and immediately hooked up with another rich man.

Worse, she took their boys with her and he rarely sees them because she has since moved to America to start afresh with her new, unsuspecting milch-cow.

As most of us are battening down the hatches and finding inventive ways to cope with the new austerity, some unfortunate men have not only lost their jobs, they are also having the scales ripped from their eyes.

The horrible truth has dawned: they married a woman who wanted them solely for their money.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/3527803/Recession-When-the-money-goes-so-does-the-toxic-wife.html

Parfois, les femmes méritent d'être giflées

James Bond (Sean Connery)

Sometimes women ought to be slapped (with an open hand, not with a closed fist)

Parfois, les femmes méritent d’être giflées (avec la main, pas un poing fermé)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FgMLROTqJ0&eurl=http://markymarksthoughts.blogspot.com/&feature=player_embedded

Marriage strike

I think that deep down, very, very much down ... we all are, don’t you think?

(:-)

Hope my men's right stuff is not making you too angry.

Try to keep it light hearted ... despite its dark subject matter.

There is a marriage strike on.

About 20 to 25% of men, of marriageable age, are refusing to "settle down", and tie themselves to the "little woman".

Many, but many, are conscious they are doing it because of feminism and all the male hostile laws: abortion, divorce, alimony, monopoly over children, affirmative action, etc., etc., etc.

Many of these young men are very angry and willing to say it: thank God for the Internet, man!

They can also be very funny; see these two: one American and one British:

        http://uzemandluzem.blogspot.com/

        http://eternalbachelor.blogspot.com/

Women respond to this "marriage strike" by resorting to … "shaming tactics": manipulation thy name is woman!

See the latest and smartest of these by Kay Hymowitz, a feminist who is actually able to … "listen" to men; what a novel idea, heh?

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_4_darwinist_dating.html

She is no Camille Paglia …

        I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful.

        Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of  concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue …

but ...

http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2008/09/camille-paglia-abortion-is-murder.html

(:-)

Gerard

"Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddies."

Gold Diggers' New Ugly Reality

It's entitled simply, "Desperately Seeking Sugar Daddies."

A sad snapshot of today's times offered in this past weekend's New York Post's Page Six Magazine.

Joshua David Stein laments the plight of young, buxom gold diggers these days, who find the digging tougher because the targets are fewer.

And suddenly these beauties are seeing an ugly reality: They're no longer hot because their equally shallow suitors simply no longer are there.

The very high-rolling bankers and brokers who sought these ladies out as arm-candy have themselves been elbowed out of their jobs.

And these women, some not much more than 23, elbowed out of $500 dinners and $8,000 shopping sprees as well.

They've gone from limo to loser faster than a triple-digit Dow swing.

But they aren't swinging — though they are desperately adjusting.

One talks about how she's broadened her hunt:

"You used to hear women say, I'd never date anyone who makes less than $1 million. You don't hear that anymore."

Oh, the inhumanity!

Women who judged their worth by the net worth of the equally plastic princes who used to wine and dine them until their plastic ran out.

One talks about a laid-off Lehman worker who suddenly never calls.

And another who spends long nights in New York's swankiest bars without fetching so much as a glance.

They lived their lives off others' dimes and now, the dimes have run out.

It's closing time, for them, and maybe an era.

And now these charmed beauties must consider the unthinkable: a job.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,457024,00.html

Chronique d'une mort annoncee

Le New York Times est le Deuxvoir american :

Times Slashes Dividends, Loses Ad Revenue and Readers; Bias Plays a Part

An article in Advertising Age reports that The New York Times slashed its quarterly stock dividend from 23 cents in the third quarter of 2007 to 6 cents for the same period of 2008.

America’s “newspaper of wretched” is in a steady - and, in some cases, steep - decline.

While many factors are involved, clearly, a lot of readers are fed up with the Times’ inveterate bias, highlighted in its coverage of the 2008 campaign.

With the [1] announcement of the dividend cut, shares of New York Times stock fell 6.64% to close at $5.34 on Friday.

In the past year, shares of The New York Times Co. have lost a staggering 66.8% of their value.

From October 2007 to October 2008, the paper’s ad revenue fell 16.2%. Most significantly and tellingly, readers continue to turn to other news sources.

Weekday circulation of The New York Times declined from 1.18 million in 1993 to 1.06 million in 2007. This year, circulation is expected to drop below 1 million. The steepest loss of readers was in the New York City market, where circulation plummeted from 757,184 in 1993 to 501,302 last year - a drop of over 25%.

The loss of ad revenue over the past year can in part be attributed to the economy. But what about the decline in readership over a 15-year period, while the population continued to grow?

Disgust at The New York Times’ palpable bias is a factor. As time goes by, The Times has swung further and further to the left - not just in editorials and commentary, but also in what purports to be news coverage. The way The Times became an unofficial adjunct of the Obama campaign is just the most recent, egregious example of how, standing its motto on its head, the paper makes the news fit its agenda.

What’s bad for The New York Times is good for America. May its fortunes continue to decline.

http://boycottnyt.com/times-slashes-dividends-loses-ad-revenue-and-readers-bias-plays-a-part/

Women are like 3 year olds

Women will only be interested in men's rights if it benefits them.

For example, you may see second wives getting involved because some of their husband's money is going to the first wife.

Women are egocentric in their feelings and want more and more until men place some kind of limit on them.

They are children in adults' bodies.

As one of my wise friends says which I have mentioned here before:

"Women are like 3 year olds with the entire legal system behind them."

http://uzemandluzem.blogspot.com/