Egyptians' traditional disdain of divorce contrasts with the rising number of couples splitting up, Sahar El-Bahr writes Egyptian proverbs insist it is better for a woman to be married to a useless man than to be living alone. And while new findings indicate that recently 75,000 couples have obtained divorce, what studies tend to ignore is the backdrop to divorce, and the difficulties women wishing to split from their husbands undergo. "The process of obtaining divorce is very difficult," said Mona, an unemployed divorcee with two children. "Because getting married is costly, parents who have already spent much of their savings on their daughters' weddings will think twice before supporting a change of mind, regardless of the pain their girls are going through." This is especially true, said Mona, who preferred to withhold her full name, when there are children, and therefore more mouths to feed. The obstacles Mona faced to getting a divorce, however, pale before the tragedies she underwent as a married woman. She was beaten, insulted and betrayed, both physically and virtually as her ex-husband maintained Internet-based relationships. Thousands of pounds were spent on fees to her lawyer, who had to file five separate cases and work for four years before obtaining any results. Mona's advice for married women who are thinking of getting divorced is the following: "Unless your parents support you financially and psychologically, or unless you are capable of supporting yourself and your children and own your own flat, don't even think of getting divorced, or life can be very hard, especially when there are children." While the governmental Central Body for Mobilisation and Statistics (CBMS) found that 75,000 divorce cases have been ruled on by Egyptian courts in 2006-2007, the survey found that in 45,000 cases the reason behind the divorce was the Internet. In these cases, either the man or the woman, but usually the former, would spend hours before a computer paying no attention to their loved one, and at times going as far as starting virtual relationships with other surfers. Nahla El-Sayed, professor at the Faculty of Social Community Services at Helwan University, believes that the growth of divorce rates is related to inflation, which tightens the budget of families to the point that they are barely able to meet their basic needs, and therefore leaving no money for recreation. "Families need to communicate in order to stay strong, but unfortunately economic-instigated depressions mean that silence is getting the better of people," El-Sayed told Al-Ahram Weekly. She added that even habits such as yearly trips to summer resorts have been cancelled in the thousands because of the recent wave of inflation. In addition, many Egyptians have stopped visiting relatives because of traffic jams and because paying respects means buying gifts on special occasions -- gifts which many can no longer afford. It is a reality today that millions have no choice but to stay home, seeking entertainment either from TV or from the Internet. "In doing so, families barely talk to each other any more and their feelings are numbed," El-Sayed said. "Certainly husbands prefer computers to TV, and in their quest to escape their economic and marital problems, at least 50 per cent of them have instigated extra-marital, albeit virtual relationships with women over the Internet." And while to some it is unclear whether virtual affairs really do constitute unfaithfulness, El-Sayed holds the position that they certainly do. "This is a new strange dilemma in our society, which is unacceptable ethically, socially and religiously," she told the Weekly. And while computers provide a good scapegoat for growing rates of divorce, the real reason could in fact, according to El-Sayed, be that many women today receive good wages in excess of those of their husbands. Independent and able to support themselves and their children financially, women are now more likely to initiate divorce proceedings, particularly in cases where their husbands expect them to invest all their earnings in the house. "When I realised that my husband depended on my money to cover not only the expenses of the house and children, but also to pay for his cigarettes and shisha, I decided immediately to get divorce," Firyal Gomaa, who works as a domestic cleaner, told the Weekly. "It's better for me to save that money and invest it in my children and my own needs." Moreover, the CBMS survey noted that most of the divorce cases took place among newly married couples, which El-Sayed attributed to the fact that it is simply easier to take the decision in the first five years of the marriage. And while there are those who are celebrating the change, others bemoan it as a disease brought on Egyptians by modernisation. "Overall, the values of society have changed, mainly because wives no longer believe in the value of the family and they are incapable of shouldering the responsibilities of marriage," said Amal Mahmoud, mother of three married girls. "In the past, girls were brought up on values. The most important value of all that they should keep in mind when getting married is that they should endure anything and everything to protect their families from collapsing, because without their husbands they are weak like a bird with broken wings. Women should obey their husbands, no matter what." El-Sayed agrees that the strong ties of the wives with the family have weakened due to the fact that the role of mothers has shrunk in importance, because while women are working they depend on maids for cleaning and cooking, and on private teachers for helping their children revise. Besides, being a wife and mother can no longer take centre stage in a woman's life, given that she more often than not has several other responsibilities to shoulder too. It is tough to gauge, though, quite what is harder -- to live with a bad marriage or to overcome divorce. Psychiatrist Nasser El-Maghrabi said that there is no doubt that divorce is a psychological disaster. "Divorce amounts to a certificate of failure for a couple, though both the husband and wife most likely believe they have exerted all the possible efforts to pass the exam. It is the most important exam in life, because it means the collapse of a family," he told the Weekly. According to El-Maghrabi the main psychological symptom of divorce is depression. Women are twice as likely to experience depression more than men. He added that the degree of the symptoms varies, depending on personality, the nature of the problems accompanying the divorce, the degree of faith, the support of family, and the age of the divorcees. Depression is likely to be exacerbated if a woman is responsible for her young children. El-Maghrabi believes the symptoms of depression among recently-divorced women include crying bouts, weight-gain, a loss of concentration and hope in the future, as well as a sapping in enthusiasm and motivation, a lack of sleep and feelings of guilt. Physical symptoms include headache, nervous stomach pain, difficulty in breathing and pain in bones and muscles. The psychiatrist stresses the need to think things through, and to come to terms with the fact that every relationship as well as the responsibility to keep it strong is two-sided. "What adds to the suffering of a divorced woman is that the society still believes that she is guilty and accuses her of damaging her family. Unfortunately divorce is still viewed by many as shameful and disgraceful primarily for women," El-Maghrabi regrets. Behind closed doors many married couples suffer lives that qualify as tragedies. "Sometime divorce is a blessing. Most of my patients are married women having problems in their lives. Sometimes being divorced is better than living with a violent, abusing, miserable or annoying husband."
