Saudi Marriage Counseling Call

Does gender apartheid have consequences for marital relations?

A leading Saudi religious figure has called for holding compulsory special workshops on matrimony for all young men and women about to get married...

“We have noted that several young men and women are not good at the art of living with their spouses, and this often results in the failure to interact with them positively, especially in the beginning. This often leads to a divorce in the first year of their married life,” he said. “It is obvious that they need a counselling workshop that should last at least five days. An evaluation test is needed at the end of the workshop,” he said...

According to reports, the Gulf countries now have some of the highest divorce rates in the world, and activists have been pushing for promoting campaigns and introducing new requirements, such as the mandatory counselling workshops, to help reverse the tendency.