The first question that a person is asked when he starts to think of a partner is the famous” Well what do you really want in your man?”.If you ask the same person the question twice in a month you might get two answers.
“She’s the one!” he points to his mother as they walked by a wonderful looking twenty something girl, all he got was a glimpse and what looked like a smile, but then again who cares, she is drop dead gorgeous he thought to himself, and with a teenagers attitude. Just the thing to kick me back into the fast lane thinks the 27 year old US Grad engineer. I need some action in my life and she spells action.
Little did he know that he was not even on her radar system, her mind was with her boyfriend and lover for 2 years, he promised her they would get engaged soon.
There are 4 major players in the Marriage set-up or success/ Failure process: The Girl, The Boy, The Parents, The community( Friends are from he community also).Sooner or later parents and children have the clash with all teh ingredients that either separates them or end up with grandchildren in a year or two and a happy home.
What parents want( Then & Now): A guy that will be a Man by all its meanings, A Man that will take good care of our child, A Girl that will become our loving daughter, A Girl that will handle my son with love and tenderness thinks the mother, A Man that will be gentle to my baby girl and never hurt her unless he wants me to come and shove his face down the toilet bowl thinks the over possessive father. I can go on for ever with what parents want, but its all there and more.
What a Girl wanted-back then: A loving, nurturing, handsome, cheerful, caring,family kind of man( not the family guy),Money isn’t everything, well just a little bit, A man who will love her till the day they part, a person she can talk to, share dreams with, enjoy a lazy friday/sunday with, play with, take her breath away, a man who will learn everything with her, a man who will respect her family, a person with high ambitions… and all the other goodies, basically Mr.Perfect.
What a guy wanted-back then: A beautiful, gorgeous, envy of all, loving, virgin. A sweet person, a care taker, a great cook, a very low tuned individual, not a
outspoken rude girl, a shy girl, never a in-your face kind of girl, a very well brought up girl with family traditions, a girl that respects me, a much younger girl than me so I can program her, a virgin with no experience whatsoever in life, a girl that has never known a guy in her life, a blind cat preferably.
What a girl wants today: A very outgoing, been around kind of guy, the player in todays market, a handsome guy, great financial backgrounds, a lot of money with some girls, normal money with others( depending on the level and ambitions of this particular girl), A person that has been to places, a man that has had his share of girls and fun, a heartbreaker, a smoker, a stoner, a drinker, a party animal, a cool cat, a person that would not mind me traveling alone with girls and boys, a very relaxed and almost no or very low jealousy levels, A man that will take me places, A man that wants to have fun. Do you see the ingredients, very true statements of many real females. I can understand that this is not the whole population, but just go and ask questions and see what you get, then dare go under the skin and ask some more.
What a guy wants today: Exactly what he wanted back then, but not a girl he knew, how can I be with the girl I have dated, what will she do after we are married, maybe she will cheat on me? just like she got to know me she will know someone else,oh, and yes a virgin. On a different level they might have changed on the shy level, they do want her shy, but outgoing is important these days, the culture has changed, and he wants to go out as couples, even single friends…its cool. He wants a family girl, Some hunt down rich girls so they won’t torture him between pay days, Some below their standard so he has the upper hand, and everything she sees is a miracle..lol, true. He pretends to want her for her mind,when she stands up to his level of thinking, he is petrified! sadly today girls are becoming more educated than shallow boys.
What does the community wants: I never got that one, community will cast a spell on a successful marriage and will die to get the latest gossip off a successful
relationship” did you hear about Suha and Ahmed? I heard she caught him on the phone with his ex-girlfriend” Gossip loves broken homes, or actually breaking homes. The sad thing is they do that to better themselves, they had a sad story, so why should a nice girl be cinderella? she should suffer like me. So in the end I never cared what community wanted, I have proof.
The numbers don’t lie: I have witnessed on a personal level the difference between people getting married in court and the ones getting divorced.
The line for people getting married is like people standing in line waiting at a boring Rocky the 15th movie, and the ones getting divorced are the ones waiting in line for the new blockbuster movie Hangover! its that bad, the courts have put drastic measures to block this Exodus of people from Marry-Land, but with little benefits. Take a look at this 2007 figure;
33 Saudi women get divorced daily. The high court in Jeddah reported last year divorce rates in the Red Sea city had jumped by 60 percent over the previous two years while it reached 39 percent in the capital Riyadh.
In a symposium held late last year in Kuwait, a study presented by Dr. Abdulaziz Alahmed estimates the divorce rate in Kuwait at over 25% while in Qatar at 38%. In the UAE, the rate amounted to 46%.
So my point is the times have changed, the reasoning has been altered and people need to know what they want in a relationship before they join captain jack sparrow the pirate on a deserted island, or is t deserted? could be more population of divorcees than married people soon.
What’s you’re take on the subject? Who is to blame? the media? the families? the western style living in a muslim world?
me@mamdoohalradadi.com
September 10th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Hi,
well put!
That’s so true, at least in most of our cities. But I am not quit sure that this is the case in most of our tiny villages, where there life style is very minimal (no media , absence of exposure). In there u ll find another kind of dramas, when cousins are tied together from the day they were born and young girls are sold to the highest better.
Therefore we can take out the “media” and the “western life style living” from the nominees of whose to be blamed. They are the spices that shapes the problem but defiantly not the root cause. Of course this is if we were looking to what’s damn wrong with our marriages, without limiting our vision to our gangster desires. no fense.
In my limited sight, I would say it is: “our culture”. We all seem to believe that marriage is a compulsory deal. where guys can take multiple deals as long as he can afford them.
That’s the main reason why do guys see girls as a an object (has got to be pretty) . Would you buy something normal??? So send your mom for an inspection to check out all the possible items.
Later the guy can test stupidity level, that’s driven from the definition of “man” in the Arab world. Otherwise how can he be on top, sorry if I am being offensive. Is this really what manhood is all about “control”. the dumper girls ,are easier to manage.
Since that the guy is paying her bills, she has got to be the perfect maid . Is not it lame!!!
Therefore girls will sell them selves to rich guys to buy them nice stuf also the rich one will come with less burden (cuase he can afford dishwasher, maid ….etc).
Imagine a life sentenced prisoner, all he would be looking for is a more tolerant warden. The life sentence resembles our rules where girls are not allowed to so many things and the warden is the legal guardian (father . husband) like that she is a criminal. Where else in the world girls are discriminated from their freedom of choice .What else she can ask for? Where a glimpse is all there is to make a life commitment.
There are also many similarity aspects between “What Men & Women really want in the Arab world” and “what young teenagers really want in the rest of the world”. No wonder with all the separation and forbidding talk with or even about the other gender. Nothing in our educational system and without any contact experiences what do you expect.
I do not want to say I have seen it all, but my parents are divorced. They got married again and divorced once more. My father had his share with other 3 wives but he is somehow single as we speak. My mom refused not to take a part in this action movie, so she got another divorce of her own. Also one of my aunties and 3 of my uncles got divorced, the rest are miserably suffering. Should I continue. All that and I am still 24 YO.
Yet my family are still convinced that all of my sisters and our beloved father (LOL) should marry in the exact same way they did. Not even a miracle will force them to look back and analyze where it went wrong. This is a sample of our society, it is not like that they cannot see there is something wrong.
So if we believed in finding a fix, at least we should be first targeting our stupid traditions rest will come along by time gradually. My only hope is a miracle, if I ever believed in one.
In short our marriages is pretty (girl) penny (guy) deal (contract).
Sorry, for taking so long and for my simple writing (I was always bad in literature). But i quite enjoyed reading yours.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Hi, Thank you for your pouring of the matter on this wall. Great writing and deep, deep words of experiencing this situation.I hear you loud and clear,I have been married and divorced 2 times, so i speak of experience to a certain extent. My mother and father Allah bless them are still married, so I was never influenced by them, it was all my growing up with many confusions which still haunt me till today. We live and learn. Your words relay to me that you feel it is a traditions problem, I am with you on that, but let me ask you one thing, do you think you and the younger generation will continue with this tradition? or people in my age group who have suffered the pains of separating from their children and breaking a home will care about that, I do not think so( in my case) I never did play to any set of rules passed on to me, just like my father and I guess his father.
It remains a mystery, even though the chances of a marriage surviving and weathering out all the attacks that community, media and other traditional ideology, I have faith.
Thank you for your wise and well written words, I hope to see you more often to share with us your ideas, best wishes and most of all Have a great one!
September 15th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Hey, I do not want to sound cheesy but many thanks for cheering me up
& I can tell from your writing that you are a wisely sophisticated individual. Now that have been said lets dig into the matter, LOL. Due to my IT background I kinda tend to analyze things as I live, so I will pour more. May you bare with me.
When you ask somebody why would you marry? Or what marriage really is? All we get are very superficial answers, especially if you asked the younger generations. Hence, the main problem is our concept about marriage.
Of course media & education plays a significant role in shaping those wrong concepts around the globe (as it if a fairytale), but a single experience or incident for anyone (or even in anyone’s surrounding) could be an eye-opener. Therefore when someone reaches 30 most probably their concept is well crystallized.
Alright then, one of the most important marriage’s columns is compatibility, is not it?.O.K. Do you think that if someone is in his 30 would be able to identify the other compatible half? or would they just provide some materialistic only properties about the one to be, in the same exact fashion as the younger generation? Surely you would tell me it depends; now my question is on what?
I am not blaming traditions though it plays a major role here. Lets go to what you have said earlier “would a guy marry a girl he knew before??” Those people are from my generation, they might say “Oh! Well ,we are oPen minded” but how would they pick their significant half? When it comes to marriage they would follow almost the same traditions their parents had set before.
So in this stage it does not really matter if we have got the right concept as long as we are still practicing the wrong mechanism!! If we worked out our processes as a whole it will drive the vision and that is only my opinion.
A proposed solution that dose not contradict with our Islamic & family values might be, few compulsory courses to attend to be able to get married and maybe a profile about the other party along with an awareness campaign.Or am i only dreaming? i have got to stop watching movies. As far as I know we have already applied the genetically test thing.
In Kuwait, there is such a course.Here I have been tolled that Tariq Alswuidan provides couples with insights in terms of what they have got in common & what they should work on and wihter that they might click…etc.
I know that such ways will not directly affect our divorce rate right away but it would help driving a vivid healthy culture.
Just to set the record clear .Ummm, I might be wrong (oh how I hope I am) cause I have no experience (never been in a relation, not even a boyfriend or anything like it). I am following the say “it is better to be safe than sorry”( aow!!! that sounded awful), but unfortunately this is the picture I have got from my first class seat up there. So whom ever might be reading this, share your views even if it is totaly different than mine. Btw you have got a very interesting blog masha2 allah, plz keep it up.
September 16th, 2009 at 12:48 am
Sorry out of the subject.
I always feel like I have got to express my feelings to any divorced parent, do not worry (no guilt, no shame, not your fault) & what you did was right. I really mean it.
Maybe your children are still young but believe me deeply they will never blame their parents for getting divorced, even if they complained the contrary.
It is not that difficult for a child to live in separation vice versa it sharpens their character (from my experience & also my best friend). Believe me the pain of seeing or even sensing parents struggling together is many times harder than when you miss your parent due to physical separation, which has became easy to overcome in our modern society.
Hope it might comfort a dad’s pain.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Thank you doodi for your very interesting heart poured injection of new ideas. What i can see is a very analytical individual giving her best shot at a social dilemma we are facing. I think with people like you and the way you think we are sure to hit a target someday.
Well you see from what I gather on experience in marriage and from what you are saying that you have had no experience on the issue totally is the following wonderful isight; If two totally different people one with experience and one without(only insight & analysis) you seem to move the ball in the right direction,sooner or later!
I never said when I wrote this piece that I have found the solution, but I wanted to stir up minds and et them involved or thinking, to basically engage the people in a problem we are facing.
What happens after this is the chain reaction you and me start across the field of our community, people do meet people, and people do talk about subjects, we could have started them talking and asking themselves what to do?
As for your dreaming part, keep dreaming and keep watching and keep reading thats where I can see you get your amazing insight on the subject, really keep it up. I like the idea of compulsory courses! perhaps we can have them sort of mixed but not really mixed in the final stages, after screening individuals with highly educated and keen people, they get to stage 3 where they are facing each other(boys and girls) in a face to face debate of the minds, then you can cherry pick and move on with the next group until in the end you can get a rough idea of this person you might want to marry!
Thats a wild idea doodi….keep us informed please, and as always thank you for your kind notes, and always remember without you this blog will vanish!