THE total number of divorce registrations is generally less than one-third of marriage registrations in a given year in Shenzhen. But in April this year, divorces recorded in the city shot up to reach 84 percent of marriages, oeeee.com reported Wednesday.

A woman surnamed Lei said that she and her husband had reached an agreement on divorce on the eve of the Spring Festival this year. However, relevant formalities were delayed until now due to the epidemic.

During the first half of April, Lei logged onto the online system of the civil affairs bureau every day to try to make an appointment. To her surprise, reservations for divorce services at each office across the city were fully booked.

What distresses Lei is that she can’t go through the formalities of a legal divorce without making an appointment in advance. She is worried about the risk of changes in the agreement already negotiated with her husband.

Another couple, Wang Xue and Yang Lei, were parting ways due to some needless sentiments. Wang and Yang met each other in December last year and got married in January 2020.

While the epidemic was raging, they were not living in the same city and were on good terms with each other. But when they started living together again in early March, things began to go south. “She kept questioning my love for her. It’s like an endless loop,” Yang said.

Despite the frustration, they did not rush to divorce, but tried to reconcile each other’s feelings through the intervention of a marriage counselor.

While the epidemic might help couples cool down and avoid a potentially emotional divorce, it can also be a hidden time bomb for some, according to the report.

Yang Fang, 48, has been a housewife since she got married. During the epidemic, both she and her husband stayed at home and had more time to spend together. But Yang found that her husband was always glued to his mobile phone and seldom talked to her.

After a few upsetting talks, Yang decided to have a look at her husband’s phone, only to find that he had been cheating on her for 10 years. The affair was the final straw, and Yang made an appointment for divorce at the end of April.

Long Jingxiao is a marriage and family counselor at the marriage registry in Futian District. During the COVID-19 outbreak, she mediated the divorce claims for several couples.

“Don’t see the epidemic as a disaster. Think about what went wrong. It can be solved by finding problems at this time so that the marriage can last,” said Long.

(Zhang Yu)