Small issues in marriage can return partners to singlehood

SOMETIMES it's the small things such as a stray hair or a dog that cause those who have vowed "until death do us part'' to decide to return to the single life.

Examples aren't hard to find in Shanghai, where the divorce rate reached 39 percent last year, which earned the city a No. 2 ranking for splitting up among cities on the mainland, with 38,000 couples divorced.

A total of 12,096 couples divorced between January and April, while 41,282 couples tied the knot at the city's marriage registration offices.

A local woman has been living with a Samoyed dog since she was a teenager, the Shanghai Evening Post reported yesterday. Her mother gave her the dog, who feared her daughter felt lonely growing up in a single-parent family.

Every time she went on a date with a local man, she brought her dog. When the man proposed, she asked that the dog be allowed to sleep on the bed with her after she got married. He agreed without realizing the consequences, the newspaper said.

Every time he tried to go to bed, the dog barked at him and tried to attack him. The situation lasted for a month. The man complained, but the woman wouldn't give in. The man then told his mother, who quarreled with the mother of the woman. They got a divorce.

In another case, a man surnamed Jiang fell in love with a girl during a matchmaking event. They got married early this year. But problems soon emerged, the newspaper said.

Jiang lived alone at an apartment before he married. After the woman moved in, he felt uncomfortable every time he saw hair on the floor.

"I became irritable and thought it was extremely dirty and disorderly every time I saw long hair on the floor," Jiang said, insisting he had no phobia.

He picked up the hair, and asked his wife to clean up after combing. The woman agreed, but forgot sometimes. Quarrels broke out. The woman said she could not understand. One weekend, after Jiang saw a hair in the bathroom again, he could no longer bear it. The woman asked for a divorce. "I cannot ensure that no hair will fall onto the floor the next second," she said.

The marriage lasted for half a year.

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