Donald Trump might be wreaking havoc with all the traditions of United States presidential politics but that's apparently nothing compared with what's happening on the home front, where planning to vote for the Republican candidate is increasingly becoming a relationship ender.

The US media, mainstream and social, have suddenly honed in on stories about couples who can no longer tolerate the other's political preference. In some cases, it's leading to sexual friction: "If there were a sexual position called the Trump, it would be the one where you don't have any because you're too angry from fighting about Trump," writes Mandy Stadtmiller, who documents her marriage in her regular New York magazine column Unwifeable.

For other couples nothing short of divorce will deal with the irreparable rift that Trump has brought into relationships that once could work things through.

In mid-August the New York Times reported that Dr Kerry Maguire had told her husband of 20 years: "If you vote for Trump, I will divorce you and move to Canada."