Woman files for divorce due to the consulting profession of her husband

In one of the strangest divorce cases in recent times, Shruthi – working as a software engineer in Gurgaon filed for divorce from her husband Abhishek because of the impact his consulting profession had on their personal life. This news has created a great deal of interest and unrest among management consultants in India. We contacted Shuthi to find out details about her shocking decision. Though she was reluctant to share details initially, she opened up after a lot of persuasion. This is what she had to say about this divorce: “Yes it is true. I have filed for divorce. And it is purely because of the fact that his consulting profession adversely affected our personal life. It is not an impulsive decision. I have given it a lot of thought and felt there is no other option.” We asked her to elaborate and she continued: “My husband works at one of the big 4 management consulting firms. It is common for him to put in long hours at work and I was quite ok with that. But then suddenly things took an unexpected turn. It all started on November 25th, 2006. It was our daughter Priyanka’s second birthday. We had arranged for a small celebration at our place. In the middle of the celebration, Abhishek opened his laptop and started with a 20 minute presentation that he had prepared on Priyanka. It was titled: ‘Roadmap 2050 – opportunities and threats’. He had analysed the strengths and weaknesses of our 2 year old kid, presented the different career opportunities available to her, laid down the uncertainties, possibilities in the future, and made detailed bar graphs, pie charts portraying various facts and figures. He had also done an analysis using the Porter’s 5 forces model: Threat of neighbours’ children, threat of television, bargaining power of Priyanka’s friends in successfully distracting her, threat of stalkers etc. He had used several frameworks, matrices (like BCG matrix) etc. Finally he concluded with 4 possible career choices as recommendations which were quite obvious even in the beginning. The people present at the function were puzzled and even frustrated to some extent. But I did not take it seriously. I just dismissed it as Abhishek’s attempt at being innovative and funny at the party. But I was terribly wrong. A few days later after he returned home from office late in the night, he showed me another powerpoint presentation, with great excitement, which contained the vision and mission statement for Priyanka, financial analysis related to her educational and other expenditure, NPV, IRR of Priyanka etc. I was starting to get a little uncomfortable. Gradually this started becoming increasingly frequent. He spent most of the time at home talking and behaving like a consultant. He started boring me with conversations about articles and reports like ‘A consulting guide to consultants’, ’A marketing guide to marketers’, ’A banking guide to bankers’. I tried my best to accept this behavior as an ‘occupational hazard’ and move on but it was becoming very difficult. He never used to take any decisions. He just used to state the obvious facts, give the different options which were anyway obvious and apparent right from the beginning. The final decision had to be made by me. For instance, even when we had to decide on a kindergarten school for Priyanka, he gave a list of recommendations and the onus was on me to choose the right school. Even for a weekend dinner at some restaurant, he would give me a list of options for food which was anyway available on the menu card and I would have to decide the order. Finally I approached a psychiatrist and my worst fears came true. Abhishek was diagnosed with FART syndrome which is an occupational hazard common amongst consultants. He was enrolled in a rehabilitation programme but it had no effect. So I had no option but to take this extreme step.”

We wish Abhishek a speedy recovery.

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