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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Monkey: [QB] I think that half of the problem is the vastly different attitudes towards marriage in the British and Egyptian cultures. I'm sure lots of Egyptians do marry for love, but it seems that a lot of the time this is secondary to that person ticking all the right boxes and being able to provide a nice lifestyle. I'm sorry if I've got the wrong impression and I sound like an ar$e, but that's just how it seems to me. Here in the UK, the foundation of a marriage is love. This is expected. It's implicit. It's in your wedding vows. The fiance and fiancee go home and tell their family they're getting married. Their family don't ask about the earning potential of the groom nor the fertility of the bride (or vice versa). Don't get me wrong - they want to know, but they can't say it. It's sooooo rude. There isn't immediate concern over how the wedding will be paid for. What they want to be sure of is that the person their child marrying is a good one (same as Egyptian here, but...) and equally that their child will love and be loved. I don't imagine any father in England being content for his son in law to take a second wife, no matter how honourable the reason. Implicit to loving his wife, a man is expected to be faithful to her. Again, it's in his wedding vows. To take another wife is being unfaithful on a permanent basis. It would be utterly inconceivable to the majority of people here. It is like watching your husband having a lifelong affair. And there are some women who do this - look at Jackie Onasis - she put up wit her husbands having countless mistresses. But she was a career wife from what I can gather. I believe it would be a lot easier to turn a blind eye if your marriage had foundations other than love. If you had other priorities you put above love, such as him being a good provider, good social standing etc. then so long as he's still ticking those boxes, you might be able to sustain that blow in a society where this was deemed acceptable. Here Sarah would be faced with a double whammy (even if she lived in Egypt - she must retain a family and friends here, after all). Not only would her husband have betrayed her (and make no bones about it, that's what he's done), but it will potentially alienate her from her friends and family at home. Not only has she got to persuade herself it's ok, but she's going to have to persuade all of them too. Never going to happen. He gets to have his cake and eat it and on top of the humiliation of him doing that, she will be judged by everyone at home. If what I've said is offensive I'm sorry. I'm not justifying the way we think or putting down the way I perceive Egyptians to do things. I'm just saying they are very different and it takes more than five minutes to rewrite what has been learnt over the course of a lifetime. It's easier for me to sympathise with a Brit because I can relate to her way of thinking. That doesn't mean it's any more right than anyone else's. It just means it's the only one I know. Maybe we've got it all wrong. Love doesn't always conquer all and how many people come unstuck thinking it does? Maybe it is better to put the practicalities first... Maybe it's a more solid foundation to marriage than whim and fancy - who knows. Love can be fickle, after all. The point, and it took a while to get to it, is surely this would have been discussed before marriage? And I bet he promised faithfully it would never, ever cross his mind. At the end of the day, even if founded on love, marriage is a contract. This would, I'm sure, have been a pretty vital term. Without fidelity, where are you? And if he's broken this term, what more? What are you left with except a piece of paper full of broken promises? [/QB][/QUOTE]
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