Tombstone teeth killed my marriage

Elen Fein instructed millions of women on how to find their ideal man and keep him - and earned a fortune in the process.

So it was hard not to feel a degree of schadenfreude when the marriage of the author of The Rules collapsed.

Now the reason for her split from husband of 16 years has emerged - her "gigantic" teeth.

The disclosure comes in a lawsuit filed in New York by the woman who advised others to capture Mr Right by refusing to return his phone calls and playing hard to get.

Fein, 46, is suing society dentist Larry Rosenthal, saying that cosmetic surgery on her teeth left her with a smile so unattractive "my marriage disintegrated". She says her dental problems drove her husband away.

In a complaint filed with the New York Office of Professional Discipline, which handles medical grievances, Fein says routine dental work eight years ago left her with "life-altering" injuries.

"I wake up every morning with teeth and jaw pain," she says, adding that the dentist "deliberately altered my bite by the placement of oversized veneers on my teeth,'' making them "gigantic''. Fein, who co-wrote The Rules with Sherrie Schneider in 1995, admits she was always self-conscious about her teeth "because I didn't have the prettiest smile''. She decided to do something about it after watching herself on TV. But months after her second book, The Rules Of Marriage, was finished, it was revealed that her husband Paul Feingertz had left her.

The Rules told women to refuse a Saturday night date if a man called before Wednesday; the sequel claimed marriages could work if the wife kept an air of mystery.

Until now Fein has never explained what went wrong with her marriage four years ago. She does admit that "of course there were other issues" in the divorce, but says "all the complications" from her teeth "were the things that led to the divorce".

Dentist Larry Rosenthal has issued a statement calling the complaint " baseless" and blaming her problems on earlier work by other dentists.