Why not ask Why? Foreigner Women Marrying UAE Nationals

There is so much that can be said on this topic I hardly know where to start.

I suppose I should mention that my marriage to a UAE national was recently brought up as an insinuation that I as an expatriate had intentionally rebelled against the UAE government. A rather shallow and pointless accusation, but none-the less it got me thinking.

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding biracial marriages here. You’ve got a number of girls coming from poorer European countries, whose sole aim is to marry a local man simply because it’ll give them stability; residence visa, local passport possibilities, financial security, etc. And there are certainly a number of national men who wouldn’t mind paying such a price to have a hot blonde at their side. Hell, I know one who openly offered such a ‘package’ to a Bulgarian girl as her visa was about to expire; she took it. But I’ll admit it, that’s not necessarily the norm.

Hot blondes are more fun when there’s no attachment; as a hot blonde and a former wife I can assure you, it’s true.

Then there are those who actually fall in love with a local man; get married and create a wonderfully respectful and respected family.

And you have the ones like me; those of us who didn’t marry for love really, or finance, or nationality; those of us who really didn’t see nationality as a factor but still didn’t marry for any traditional reasoning.

No matter what the motivation for the marriage is, it’s defiantly discouraged by the government. There is a HUGE difference between discouraged & illegal; I might point out for personal purposes.

When was the last time someone asked why? Why are National men discouraged from marrying foreign women and vice versa? And if you think it doesn’t work both ways you’re mistaken. National women with foreign husbands are fighting hand and foot for what is rightfully theirs these days; financial support, citizenship for their children.

The answer to ‘why’ isn’t that hard to find. It took me a total of about 30 seconds to find this newspaper article on Google. It’s because the national women are finding themselves ‘spinsters,’ as Khaleej Times put it, at increasing rates. Of course this is alongside a rather interesting statement concerning divorce rates that is surely biased as it doesn’t give numbers on local/local divorce in the same year to compare with and at best, is contradictive to the ratio stating that the number of national/foreign divorces is less than half the sum of marriages in 2004. This is KT, remember; could you ask for any better?

Regardless of the discouragement, and regardless of the numbers, more and more national men are opting to marry foreign women. I’m neither for or against this; I can see both sides.

The UAE government is trying to hold on to its culture; as foreign influence is spinning out of control here. They’re trying to solve the ‘spinster’ problem, while blindly ignoring the double standards placed on local women wanting to take foreign husbands; a small change of course, may just solve a bigger portion of the problem than they realize.

The UAE women traditionally want more expensive weddings, more lush surroundings, not to mention have more traditional red-tape than a national man today is willing or can afford to take on. And again, from what I’ve been told, it’s almost expected that a man’s mother-in-law interferes in a national marriage. This is a generalization that I’m sure a lot of national men are now making; one that’s most certainly influencing the decision to marry a foreigner.

But let’s not forget that foreign women are, in many cases casual acquaintances of national men at work or in school, making them easier for the men to develop feelings; love for. You really can’t blame or discriminate against a person in this situation if society is forcing this to happen.

I’m also pretty sure that if divorce rates are truly higher in marriages where one side is foreign, its tradition based on shame that disallows divorce to take place in local only marriages. I know a number of women who are perpetually suffering both physically & mentally because of this shame and still can’t and won’t bear the idea of divorce; even if it may be better for husband and wife, as well as any children.

I don’t like the generalization that all national women are too expensive or too high maintenance. And at the same time, I don’t like the idea that foreign/local marriages are corrupting society; as one infamous Sharjah Sheikha would have you believe. Both, in my opinion are racism at its best.

I married a local. I divorced him. Despite popular opinion it wasn’t because he was local; it wasn’t because our cultural differences were so great we couldn’t make it work. Neither my marriage nor my divorce had anything to do with race; or rebelling against the government.

**If you can’t see the joke in my statement about blondes, you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog.