Victoria was seven months pregnant with her third child when she took her two young children and left her husband. For three weeks, she stayed with her parents wondering what to do about a marriage that had disintegrated to the extent that she and her husband Craig no longer talked. ‘Some evenings, we’d barely say more than a few words to each other,’ says Victoria, 38, a full-time mother. ‘When Craig came home at night, he’d have something to eat, then he’d open up his laptop to respond to work emails. I fooled myself that because we were in the same room we were still being together. But as the months passed I felt hurt and rejected that he’d spend hours emailing colleagues, but hardly say a word to me.

Facebook is cited in one in five divorces, according to lawyers, while a survey by website Divorce Online found that the phrase ‘mobile phone’ occurred in one in eight divorces citing unreasonable behaviour. ‘I call it being “together alone”，’ says relationship therapist Douglas Weiss.

‘These days, people are on their mobiles at dinner; they spend hours on the computer or watching TV; and they are more connected to their Facebook friends than to the person they promised to love and cherish until death do them part. ‘Technology is interrupting our relationships and allowing us to avoid each other. It has become a way of avoiding real relationships and intimacy. ‘Thirty years ago, men would stay late at the office or hide behind their newspaper. Now they can hide behind a phone or laptop.’

Research shows we spend almost half our waking hours online, on the phone or watching TV, with 80 minutes a day spent on text messaging, social networking and emailing. Psychotherapist and relationship expert Paula Hall, from counselling charity Relate, says technology doesn’t have to result in an affair for it to do damage.