Tomorrow is most popular day of the year for Sheffield people looking to have an affair

Dubbed Blue Wednesday, January 4 sees more couples looking for an affair than any other day of the year, as spending time with their partner over Christmas highlighted the cracks in their relationship.

This is also the busiest week of the year for affairs, with IllicitEncounters.com, the UK's leading dating website for married people, forecasting a 35% year-on-year rise in registrations

70% of over 400 people surveyed said that being cooped up with their significant other over the festive period left them feeling suffocated and desperate for change.

Many unhappy wives and husbands have committed to making splitting up from their partner their top New Year's resolution

2017 may have only just begun, but divorce lawyers across the country are braced for their busiest day of the year, as Wednesday 4 January is officially the biggest day of the year for affairs.

The date sees more couples race to extramarital dating websites in search of an affair than any other day of the year, after an overdose of Christmas, the New Year, and most importantly, each other, hammered home the final nail in their marriage's coffin.

In a survey of over 400 people who signed up to the site this year so far, 70% claimed that being cooped up with their significant other over the Christmas period left them feeling suffocated, irritable and desperate for change.

That, mixed in with the dreaded trifecta of heading back to work, dark days, and the miserable weather, has left husbands and wives across the country less likely to put up with the flaws in their relationship, instead relishing the opportunity to truly ring in the new year in style; with a saucy and salacious affair.

And there's no better time to do it either, as many unhappy wives and husbands make their top New Year's resolution to split and move on from their troubled relationship.

Christian Grant, the site’s spokesperson, explains why Wednesday 4th, and indeed January, is proving to be incredibly popular for affair-seekers.

“For all that Christmas does to bring families together, it inadvertently tears them apart. The festive period is the only time of the year that couples are forced to be together. And it’s that word – forced – that’s key, as the time spent together over the festive period only heightens difficulties in their relationship that had been previously subdued simply by virtue of the fact that couples spend enough time apart during the week - due to work amongst other things - to just about keep it all glued together.

This is supported by the fact that over a third (33%) of respondents said that the festive period made them realise that they had married the wrong person, while 65% said that their partner had changed significantly from the person they were when they first married them.

Grant adds: “Christmas isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. We’re all severely poorer, a little bit fatter, and more likely to be at our wits’ end with our partner than any other time of the year.

“We also get caught up in the ‘new year, new me’ mentality – we’re arguably more motivated to make a change to our lives at the start of the year than any other point during it, so what you see is a large amount of people joining purely on impulse without much thought; it’s a ‘now or never’ mentality.”