How fans of woo-woo risk taking their eye off the ball

Reports claim that a top footballer's marriage fell apart due to his wife's predilection for crystals. Charlotte Cripps recalls diving into the spiritual realm, at the cost of her relationships

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Can a predilection for the ultra-spiritual or the woo-woo really ruin your relationship? Recent reports allege that this is what it did in the marriage of Manchester United centre-back Matthijs de Ligt, who is divorcing his wife AnneKee Molenaar after only a year. The Dutch outlet DenD has claimed that Molenaar’s penchant for posting “exaggerated spiri-wiri content” on her Instagram - along with her thoughts on gemstones, crystals and herbal remedies - drove him away.

Molenaar’s story resonated with me on different levels - I’ve also gone head first into new-age spirituality, and it’s come at the cost of my relationships. More than 20 years ago, I swapped substances for self-help books when I first entered recovery for alcoholism. It was hardly surprising. I needed to fill a huge gap in my life and learn to believe in something greater than myself. It alienated my old friends, who quickly got sick of me talking about Deepak Chopra’s views on the soul’s journey, but I soon balanced out. Many years later, though, new-age spirituality began to impact my romantic life.

It started when I began meditating and visualising my perfect life - which meant holding a vivid snapshot of it in my mind so that it would somehow become imprinted on me. I had to keep my positive vibrations high by maintaining a state of joy, gratitude and expectancy, all in order to trick my brain into thinking I had already achieved my goal. All of this was based on the “law of attraction”, a concept brought to global attention by the self-help book