Saudi Divorce Rate Rising

If you’re a lawyer looking for work, you may want to apply to the bar in Saudi Arabia. So often, we think of Islamic countries as being so different from the United States. And let’s face it, they are. But as odd as it may seem, divorce is on the rise in Saudi Arabia, so much so that one Saudi attorney says law firms are so busy with divorce cases, they have to turn away clients.

A report in the Khaleej Times says that 62 percent of marriages in the western region of the country end in divorce. That number is oddly similar to the number of American marriages that fail. The two biggest issues in Saudi Arabia, it seems, are that couples marry too young and that the nation is a patriarchy, pure and simple.

One couple mentioned in the story got married when the man was 21 and the woman was 18. They had only met once. That Saudi lawyer the story quoted went on to say that some Saudi fathers tell their sons it’s okay to leave their wives for other women.

It’s interesting that in one way or another, there are lots of places around the world where no one seems to take marriage all that seriously. We like to think that it’s a bond you enter into very solemnly. But it seems like a fair share of Saudi marriages don’t start out that way. And even here in the U.S., as time goes on and the divorce rate stays so high, you wonder how seriously people really take it.

It’s all well and good to be able to move on from a marriage after it ends — to move into that next phase of your life in a mentally and emotionally positive way. But what if more people looked a little harder before they leaped? Religion and long-held social attitudes might prevent that from happening in Saudi Arabia. But it doesn’t have to be that way here.

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