Homewrecker

A homewrecker (sometimes styled as home wrecker or home-wrecker) is a person, object or activity that causes or comes close to causing the breakup of a marriage (or similar partnership). The homewrecker is said to have taken one of the spouses away from the marriage, thus "wrecking" the marital home.

Most commonly, the label "homewrecker" is applied to a person having an affair with someone else's spouse or domestic partner; it can also refer to other forces that are destructive to a marital relationship and tied only to one party to that relationship.

When "homewrecker" is used to describe a person, it is applied to someone who breaks up a pre-existing relationship by having an affair with one of its partners. It may be applied more often when the person actually intends to cause the break-up in order to replace the prior partner permanently.

Less frequently, other intense and/or time-consuming pursuits of a partner lead to broken relationships and are labeled "homewreckers"; alcoholism, for example, has long been identified as a homewrecker. More common examples are drug addiction, gambling addiction, domestic violence, e.g. child abuse and control freak personality.

Other common targets for homewrecker labeling are intense pursuit of a career, devotion to a hobby, or running a business. The time commitment to these and similar activities can rend normal home life asunder and earn the name "homewrecker".

Immersive Internet-based social applications and pornography are also becoming more commonly labelled as homewreckers, especially when they share the social and sexual aspects of having an affair.

Family members can act as homewreckers by alienating one partner, identifying weaknesses in one partner, and/or exacerbating minor disagreements into major issues.

Usage is disputed in situations where the relationship was in trouble even without the affair. For example, in a faltering marriage, an estranged husband may have an affair, and the wife may emotionally blame the alleged homewrecker for the breakup of the marriage, even though the affair itself was partly the result of stresses that pre-dated it. Nevertheless, even in such cases, the affair can be a major additional stressor and make the relationship unsalvageable.

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Wikipedia