With more and more couples expressing their dissatisfaction with the married state, is the ancient institution of marriage still valid in today's society, ask Reham El-Adawi and Soha Hesham Veteran author Anis Mansour once said that "it is too difficult for two persons with different backgrounds and identities to live together forever." And today, as many couples look upon marriage as an ancient institution that fails to synchronise with their lives, it seems that more and more people are beginning to agree with him. Boredom, one of the problems that has traditionally afflicted those married for a long time, is now beginning to affect newly married couples, and it is one of the most dangerous factors threatening many new marriages. "My marriage is suffering from monotony and daily routine, even though it was based on love," said 27-year-old Nihal Essam, who has been married for only three years. Monotony in itself may not be a problem, she adds, though it can lead to major predicaments later. While some married couples are too busy with work or careers to work on their domestic problems, Essam, who works as a sales manager at one of the leading hotels in Egypt, is determined not to let monotony defeat her marriage, countering it by continuously planning new activities with her husband. For 27-year-old housewife Rasha Nael, who married after a classical romance, while love may wane in any marriage given the nature of the institution, relationships can be refreshed and should be if they are to be sustained. Nael's husband works abroad and spends only three weeks with his wife every three months. The couple has been married for four years, and while Nael says that "it's hard to spend so much time apart," she also admits that her husband's prolonged absences mean that she is all the more eager to see him return home. "My marriage is not threatened by monotony, but any marriage requires effort from both partners if it is to survive," she says. Yet, Nael may be one of the lucky ones: more and more couples today are experiencing difficulties in marriage, to the extent that they are choosing to end their married lives together rather than work on solving them. For the wife, any problems in the marriage can be laid at the husband's door, since he sometimes does too little to build the relationship, being busy building his career. This was the experience of 30-year-old single mother who works as an engineer, her former husband focussed on his career throughout their two and half years of married life to the exclusion of all else. Problems began to appear in the first year of marriage, and she felt her husband was not willing to work on the relationship, meaning that divorce was the only solution after failed attempts at solving their problems. "Despite the fact that the marriage was based on love, our emotional lives changed completely after the first year of marriage," she says, who regards marriage as a condition that requires enormous effort if it is to work. "I'm not ready to embark on the experience again," she adds. Psychologists agree that marriage requires work from both partners, as well as flexibility if it is to survive the changes that inevitably take place in a couple's lives. According to Ismail Youssef, head of the psychiatry department at the Faculty of Medicine at the Suez Canal University, the psychological expectations of past generations give little guidance to today's young people, who may be less patient in dealing with the obstacles and challenges facing modern marriage. Working women these days are also often financially independent of their husbands, and this means that financial reasons alone are not enough to keep a marriage together. However, Youssef says, there are things that any couple can do in order to keep the fizz in their marriage. "Taking a vacation from each other can help in overcoming monotony," he says, adding that since constant attachment can increase feelings of boredom, it is better for each partner to retain and develop his or her interests apart from the other. Nevertheless, single people today may increasingly be boycotting marriage because of such fears, not wanting to be caught in a monotonous marriage or experience a failed one that ends in divorce. As one single woman commented, "I see a lot of failed marriages around me, which puts me off getting married myself. I also see many apparently happy marriages that aren't as happy as they appear to be." Marriage experts consider feelings of monotony in marriage to have partly internal and partly external reasons. Daily routines can turn a marriage into a constricting pattern, generating boredom and irritation between the partners. Living with another person on a long-term basis can also reveal unsuspected habits in a marriage partner. Yet, while such external considerations can lead to unhappy marriages, they are probably still as nothing when compared to internal ones. These include a lack of communication between the partners, unexpressed affection, the absence of appreciation, an unfulfilling sex life and a lack of feelings of togetherness. According to one international marriage expert, Pastor Adewale writing in his book A Hot and Sizzling Marriage, there are four basic types of marriage. There is the Type D "veteran marriage", in which the couple experiences emotional divorce and mental separation, together with possible bitterness and resentment; the Type C "combatant marriage", which includes couples who were once in love but are now experiencing marriages full of fighting, embarrassment and lack of sexual fulfilment; and the Type B "monotonous marriage", which is dull, lacking in communication and can be marked by feelings of loneliness. Couples caught in a Type B marriage may try to escape by travelling alone without their partners. Then there is the Type A marriage, described as "hot and sizzling", which is full of love, kindness and care. This is a healthy marriage marked by feelings of companionship. According to one still-unmarried 41-year-old Egyptian man, who commented on condition of anonymity, he would not get married unless he could be guaranteed a Type A marriage. Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly, sociologist Hoda Zakaria said that the cause of monotony in marriage can lie in feelings of possessiveness. "After they get married, many people stop trying to get to know each other, feeling that they are already committed to each other, as if they owned each other," she explains. For Zakaria, many newly married couples only really understand the married state after the first year of marriage. "After the first year of marriage, couples start to get accustomed to daily routines. They expect certain things from their partners, and discussion becomes rarer." Even couples who were unconventionally and wildly romantic before they got married can easily enter an ordinary routine after one year of marriage. This all goes to show that "monotony can slip into anyone's life unless efforts are made to keep it fresh," she says. Couples need to know the differences between men's and women's expectations of marriage, Zakaria says. Inequalities in the relationship between the man and the woman in a marriage can also lead to tensions. "If the husband is working all day long, meeting people and taking care of his career, and the wife is staying at home doing nothing except the housework, then this can create a 'negative energy' because the relationship is not adequate for the wife," she says. Friends and relatives should aim to provide support for newlyweds, she adds. Couples need to renew and keep their marriage fresh by sharing activities like housework, playing games with each other, doing nice things for each other, as they used to do when they first met, even dating each other all over again. There are many things a couple can do to keep a marriage alive, Zakaria says, adding that discovering what they are may vary from couple to couple and be a matter of trial and error.
