Manama: A Saudi couple has failed to save their marriage after their passionate love for the beautiful game degenerated into the ugly side of football.
The husband and wife were reportedly watching a football match between two of the most popular teams in the Saudi top league on television at their home.
However, as they supported different teams and allowed themselves to comment on the players and the game, they started developing arguments and making observations that descended into insults.
Whenever the husband criticised or insulted the players of the opposing team, his wife responded by abusing the players of the other team, local daily Al Madina reported on Sunday.
The exchange of insults turned physical and the husband and wife hit and kicked each other, prompting the wife to file for divorce.
The case was cited among the most peculiar divorce situations encountered in Saudi Arabia in recent times, the daily said.
In another case, a woman wanted to test her husband’s love for her and calmly told him she wanted a divorce.
The husband, even though he was shocked by her unexpected decision, said that he would grant her the divorce.
When the couple sat before the judge, the wife said that there was no ground for the divorce and that she simply wanted to test her husband’s love for her.
The judge explained to her there were much simpler ways to know her husband’s feelings for her and refused to grant the divorce, sending the couple to a marriage counseling committee, the daily said.
According to a committee member, around 80 per cent of the divorce-filing cases that reach them were caused by differences between the husbands and wives over the use of social media and the interference of relatives in the couples’ lives.
Saudi Arabia has one of the highest social media penetration rates in the Arab world.
Another reason cited by the couples was attempts by husbands to take over their wives’ salaries and complaints that the women who had jobs had great difficulties reconciling between their professional and domestic arrangements.
“In about 63 per cent of the cases we receive, the woman has a job,” the committee member, based in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, said.
According to a local marriage contractor, up to 80 per cent of the divorce cases in Saudi Arabia are initiated by women, mostly within one year of marriage.
“The women start the procedures and insist on the divorce often for trivial issues,” the marriage contractor said. “These are mainly snoring, the look of the husband inside the house and the lack of romance as a result of the influence of dramas and media on the impressionable minds of young wives,” he said.
Divorce is permitted in Islam, but only as a last resort when all possibilities for reconciliation have been explored and it is no longer possible for the marriage to continue.
