"Out of paradise son of the country" .. Why some Egyptians prefer to marry a foreigner?

Farida Ahmed

Egyptians in general suffer from a package of economic and political problems, and the obvious impact of these problems is the decline in marriage indicators. Some believe that foreign nationality has become one of the specifications of the "Knight of Dreams" in some Egyptian girls finally.

Spinster and marriage refused
The number of Egyptian marriages with a foreign (non-Arab) spouse reached 2,485 in the period from 2013 to 2017, a number that cannot be considered a phenomenon but given the marriage contracts in that period it must be considered and treated as an indicator of social life and marriage preferences between In 2017, marriage contracts fell 2.8 percent from a year earlier, according to CAPMAS data.

The rate of delayed marriage among females in the age group of 35 years and above increased to 472 thousand females, 3.3% of the total number of females in that age group, during 2017, compared to 687 thousand males, or 4.5% of the total number of males in the age group referred to. In 2018, the rate of spinsterhood among young people rose to 15 million, according to the Prime Minister's Information Center.

Why foreign?
At the same time, social media pages and comments from some young women urged to marry a foreigner. "I married a foreigner and shared work at home instead of serving the Egyptian man and his family, especially since he would not make a cup of tea."

A study by the National Center for Social and Criminal Research revealed some young men and women look at marriage and the reasons for its delay in Egypt, including the Egyptian man's fear of taking responsibility, self-love and his sense of refusal to give anything moral or material to another person, even if he is a partner, and loss of confidence in sex The other is the result of past experiences, the establishment of illegal relationships outside marriage, and the fear of losing freedom.

Salma Sharif tells Al Jazeera Net that she married 5 years ago to an American young man after he became Muslim, explaining, "I had a previous position in refusing to marry in general because of the experiences of my friends and relatives. Women do not bear a double burden on men, the couple work outside the home, however, the woman bears on her own all the requirements of the home and take into account the children, until I realized that this is the nature of the Egyptian man: lack of appreciation and non-participation, regardless of the level of intellectual and social.

Salma did not feel comfortable in marrying a foreigner, saying, "Religion was a barrier at the beginning, but I passed it after I became Muslim and talked to him a lot about Islam. My foreign language, I think all this has been achieved, and my husband always takes care of me and appreciates me. "

Special features
Some personality traits are common in almost all Egyptian men, such as the need for control, the inability to admit mistakes, the tendency to boycott, and the pretense of an "open mind," which makes some women prefer to marry a foreigner, according to Stepfeed. .

The report points out that some Egyptian men take on control of a woman's life with multiple motives, starting with the father, and then the brother or other male family member, then the husband.

Nor are they able to admit when they do something wrong because they fear becoming less capable, all of this stems from the fact that men attach great importance from the day of their birth, and are preferred over their sisters in many Egyptian families.

"I was engaged to my colleague at work," Nourhan Adam told Al Jazeera Net.

`` Although he was impressed by the writings of some colleagues and wrote about women's freedom and their role in society, when our marriage approached, he asked me to leave my work to devote attention to him and the house, and there is no need to mingle with colleagues, that position was like the straw that broke the camel's back and broke the sermon. ''

Norhan met her current husband, an American, saying, "After a year of breaking the engagement, I met my husband several times with my friends while working in advertising. I found him quite in contrast to his open mind. With him to America, I feel very satisfied, especially since I find it a successful relationship and a real equality between the parties and completely far from the prosecution. "

Samar Jalal, who has been married to a British for seven years, says, "I am the only girl and I have two brothers. I had control and control of my life and my thinking all the time from my brothers and all the family members. Samar asserts that during her marriage she never felt that she was a dependent or less important person than her husband.

Successful individual experiences
"It is unfair to set the standard of nationality of one of the spouses as a reason for the stability of the marriage," said Sint Khairy, a marital relations adviser. "The public cultures imposed by the surrounding environment may vary. Disseminate our impressions of a whole people through our personal experiences, which are controlled by many data. "

Basant added, `` Marrying a foreign person is an exciting and different idea.Most of us are raised to admire the Western culture, so it makes the connection of a person belonging to that culture a special marriage.If we consider that these cases represent successful marriages, it is because the two parties succeeded in making the effort and giving to the success of the marriage. ''

As for the failed marriage experiences that push young men and women to marry from outside their countries, Basant says, “We must take into account the violent societal changes that have pushed both sides to flee their culture, which human beings tend to be calm, such as lack of responsibility and lack of respect for the other. In the end, we cannot describe the phenomenon.