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@nymag The term “alpine divorce,” which comes from an 1893 short story about a husband who plans to push his wife off a mountain in the Alps, has become a social-media catchall to describe any time a man, whether out of malice or idiocy, leaves his girlfriend or wife in the wilderness. TikToks of women sharing their personal anecdotes started going viral after an Austrian climber was found guilty of manslaughter for leaving his girlfriend at the top of the country’s highest mountain, where she died of hypothermia. During the trial, an ex-girlfriend took the stand to say he had also once left her on the same mountain. Women were horrified. Was this man simply reckless or a psychopath who got off some twisted form of wilderness torture? Since then, “alpine divorce” has become a Me Too–style hashtag used in explainer videos and first-person confessionals where women talk about being left in canyons with twisted ankles and injured knees or abandoned on hikes in foreign countries. Some have expressed shock that such a nightmarish trend even exists and is prevalent enough to have a name. The idea that on top of everything else, women need to worry about being ditched by their boyfriends on a secluded trail or pushed off the edge of a lookpoint sounds too cartoonishly evil to be true. But the reality is, the person most likely to harm a woman isn’t a wild animal or a stranger lurking in the woods; it’s the person sleeping next to them at night. At the link in our bio, read Angelina Chapin on the phenomenon of the “alpine divorce” and how it’s tapped into the rage women feel at being abandoned in other situations, too. Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photo: Getty
