How many young men and women are waiting patiently to get married? How many of them will be able to survive marriage and get through the ups and downs that come with tying the knot? Around 240,000 divorces take place in the Kingdom every year. This is a scary figure that makes us wonder which way Saudis families are heading. This figure also shows why many young men do not want to get married. We need to set up specialized centers to study such issues. Marriage in our country takes place on the basis of certain social traditions and norms that do not take modern social norms into consideration. One of the reasons why marriages fail is because they are not based on logical grounds but on social traditions that are unsuitable for both spouses. However, despite this, husbands and wives accept these traditions and decide to proceed with getting married. This is how a marriage happens. A young man will ask his mother to find him a young woman with certain qualities. The mother will search for the girl that she thinks is suitable for her son; this is regardless of whether she has the qualities he wants. Girls, on the other hand, do not tend to inquire about the psychological and mental state of the young man who proposes to them. They just settle for as little information as there is about their future husband. They also trust their parents' choice and believe that their parents have selected the most suitable husband for them. So we have an aspiring young man and woman who want to start a small family and make their dreams come true. Until now, everything looks perfect and it seems that the couple will have a beautiful life together. They start getting ready for the wedding. The young man will take a loan from the bank to pay for the wedding and other expenses while the young woman will go on a shopping spree. Following the wedding, they go on a honeymoon and then return to reality. The real journey starts now. They have to discover the true personalities of one another and deal with the problems they face and see if they can put up with each other. We do not have a strategy to build a happy home. In our country, the bride and the bridegroom often do not know one another and have never met before. All of a sudden, they sign a marriage contract and are pronounced husband and wife. They have to discover one another after marriage. How can this young couple bear the difficulties of life? We cannot find an answer to this question because we do not have specialized centers that study these issues. There are five things that will destroy Saudi families. The first is the difference in educational levels between husbands and wives. The second is the way they are raised. By that I mean the young man has been raised with masculine values and he will not be ready to make concessions because that is not masculine. Moreover, the young man might have been raised in a troubled home and might have gone through difficult experiences, which will reflect negatively on his wife and children later. Eventually, his wife will hate him and will refuse to live with him but by then it will be too late. The third is that the husband and wife might fall victim to complicated social traditions and norms that they cannot escape from. If they agree to respect these traditions, they will pay a hefty price and destroy their home with their own hands. The fourth is parental authority over the sons. Some parents control their sons and interfere in their marital life. The fifth is financial capability; not having enough money or getting involved in too much debt threatens the stability of a family and makes children go astray. Building a strong family is important for our society. We need to build it right and base it on modern day changes. The only way to do this is through civil society institutions that conduct profound studies on marriage trends, social traditions and norms and common marital problems, etc. We have to make sure that a husband and a wife are compatible and that neither one of them has psychological, health or social problems. We need intensive programs that help future husbands and wives get to know each other more closely before building their homes.
