Egypt records sharp rise in divorce rate

Nadia abou el-Magd, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: October 22. 2009 11:54PM UAE / October 22. 2009 7:54PM GMT

Medhat Abdel Hadi, a therapist says pre-marriage counselling could help. Victoria Hazou for The National

CAIRO // Growing numbers of young Egyptian couples are turning to marriage counsellors amid a sharp rise in divorce rates and more men and women over 30 failing to tie the knot.

While more than 200,000 Egyptians married during Eid al Fitr last month, statistics released recently revealed that 84,430 couples divorced in 2008, an increase of 8.4 per over the previous year. Gen Abu Bakr el Gendy, director of the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, also said there are now 13 million Egyptians aged 30 and over who have never been married.

Female social gatherings in Egypt would not be complete without mothers and daughters eagerly discussing the subject of marriage. But the delay in entering wedlock, especially for women, is a growing concern in this largely conservative society.

Adel Madani, a marriage counsellor, recently told the Egyptian state TV programme, Saidaty, meaning My Lady, that most marital problems revolve around jealousy, extramarital affairs — mainly from husbands, physical and verbal abuse against wives, fights over financial issues and relations with the in-laws.

Gaidaa, an IT manager in her early 40s, is separated from her husband after almost 15 years of marriage because “we grew very apart”.

“He cares about any woman but me,” she said. “He has no sense of responsibility towards me or our two daughters.” She said she did not consult a counsellor as “loss of hope in him [is] beyond counselling or repair”.

“We are not getting divorced, because he wants me to leave our apartment to him, and I don’t want to burden my family with my daughters,” she added.

But for others having marital problems, they are no longer complaining only to their friends but are seeking counselling, which is no longer the taboo it used to be.

Nadine, an executive secretary in her thirties, said that her marriage got much better after seeing a marriage counsellor despite initial reluctance from her husband. “The counsellor guided us to live with our differences and accept each other better, and stop trying to change each other,” she said.

Ahmed Okasha, a renowned psychiatrist, said 45 per cent of divorces in Egypt occur in the first 5-7 years of marriage. “If marriage is easy, divorce is easier,” he said. “The real difficult test is the continuity of marriage, which requires emotional maturity and the ability to forgive one’s partner.

Heba Kotb, a well-known sexologist, said when she opened her clinic almost eight years ago she considered herself lucky if she had three or four cases a week. Now, she is booked until the end of 2009 with young couples.

The conservative Muslim, who wears a headscarf, goes on Egyptian television once a week to talk frankly about sex. She believes 80 per cent of divorces in the Arab world are due to sexual problems brought on by ignorance and societal pressure.

“I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, I’m a sexologist, I believe in specialisation and those who come to my clinic, are having sexual issues or problems, which are behind most marital problems,” Mrs Kotb said during a recent interview at her clinic.

“Many women know nothing about their bodies, not to mention sex, and they were raised to believe sex is for men and a dirty thing. How do I talk about these issues? Very seriously. I put on a mask-like face and make sure I speak in the right tone of voice.”

Mrs Kotb also does it by talking about sex in an Islamic light, arguing that the faith is in favour of pleasure for both men and women, with one important condition – that it be only in the context of marriage.

The 42-year-old, who is married with three daughters, is a graduate of medical school in Egypt, studied sexology at Maimonides University in Florida, and combined it with her own knowledge of her religion to produce a dissertation titled “Sexuality in Islam”.

Mrs Kotb, surprisingly, has avoided censure by conservatives for her frank discussions of sexuality, which may be due to her obvious religiosity and references to Islam.

Others, like the therapist Medhat Abdel Hadi, 46, believe they could reduce divorce rates and help produce good marriages, though pre-marriage counselling. He has set up a Facebook group to encourage people to speak about the problems and issues facing couples before it “eats our happiness”.

He has been giving lectures at cultural centres and talked on television about the issues and how to choose life partners.

Such media appearances, for him and other psychiatrists are believed to have helped break the taboo of seeking outside help for marital problems.

“I want to open a pre-marriage school to try to help the couple to see if they are compatible and give them a realistic view about marriage and how to solve their problems,” Mr Hadi said, speaking at his clinic. “Our youth really need marriage education.”

In a recent letter to a social problem page in the Al-Ahram Mail, the largest state-owned daily newspaper, an unidentified woman, who said she was 27, wrote: “Sir, I’m very scared that I would die alone, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life by myself, as men in their thirties don’t like to marry women in my age.”

In response, the journalist Khairy Ramdan said: “I will pray for you and all women and men your age to get married.

“However, you are still young, even if you reached or exceeded 30, you and your female friends shouldn’t associate happiness with marriage only. Many women complain that they have lost their happiness because of marriage,” he continued.“Marriage is like a besieged citadel, those outside want to enter it, while those inside are looking for a way out,” he added.


nmagd@thenational.ae