Saudi Gazette report

MANY girls who have passed the acceptable age for marriage resort to marriage mediators to help them find a husband and get married. Marriage mediators are known to have good connections with many families and people in society, Al-Riyadh daily reported. The problem lies in the fact that how can one tell if a marriage mediator is trustworthy and will deliver on her promises.

Zainab Al-Soulan, a family counselor, said marriage mediators should not be trusted completely as some of them might recommend men who are not good citizens. Many of the mediators care only about earning their commission; therefore, they will try to find any man although knowing that this man might be the wrong choice for any woman.

“My advice to any woman who wants to get married and find “Mr. Right” is to go the wisest person in her family and ask for help and this person will surely find her the right man. However, if the woman does not have this option, she can use the help of a marriage mediator. The most important thing, though, is not to take the mediator’s choice of man for granted and she should double-check for herself about the suitor and his family background by asking around,” she explained.

Nowadays, some websites offer chat rooms where men and women can get online and talk and take it from there. All women who want to start a family on the right foot should stay clear of these websites and never resort to them because the results can be disastrous in certain cases, she warned.

Marriage plays an important role in building a strong society with strong foundation; therefore, choosing the right man as lifetime partner should not be a hasty process. Unfortunately, many of the mediators focus only on how much a man owns and ignore or overlook the ethical and moral part of the man’s character and his family upbringing.

Laila Rustam, a family counselor, said most families in Al-Ahsa City still follow the same old marriage traditions. Most marriages take place through relatives and friends.

“I have never met a woman who got married through a marriage mediator in Al-Ahsa. In fact, there are only a few mediators here and people do not rely on their services a lot when it comes to marriage. Most mediators here charge up to SR500,” she said, calling upon women who resort to mediators to double-check their backgrounds as some of them work for gangs or extort women. They take photos of a woman then blackmail her.

Masouma Al-Abdulreda, a family counselor, agreed that most of the marriages that are a result of marriage mediation end up in divorce and in some cases catastrophically. She urged young men and women to avoid using the service of such mediators and better go through the same traditional methods.

Abbas Al-Mayouf, a social activist, ran a survey on his Facebook page about marriage through mediators. The results came out in favor of traditional ways as 86 percent of participants described marriage through a mediator as a foolproof way for a failed marriage.

Unmarried women

Mona Al-Bagshi, a social activist, said high dowries and would-be bridegrooms’ unrealistic standards have caused many women to miss the train of marriage.

A large number of families demand a high dowry when a suitor asks their daughter’s hand in marriage. Many young men today, on the other hand, look for certain qualities in a wife such as beauty, and emphasize on it.

Those men seem to be oblivious to the fact that beauty is not as important as good personality and ethics.