To many men, marrying a taller woman is a social taboo. It is considered damaging to their pride. Some families still don’t allow their sons to marry taller women. A woman who is taller than her husband cannot pass by others without receiving snide comments.
For some men, on the other hand, marrying a taller woman is not a problem, as long as there is mutual understanding between the couple.
Some of these couples never consider it a problem as long as they are happy together. They are hurt only when they hear negative comments. Others do not even care about the comments, because they know couples like them are rare in Saudi society.
Some women suffer from this problem after marriage because their husbands lack self-confidence, which reflects on their relationship. In front of people, these men want to show that they are in control.
Men think that they might lose control of their wives if they are taller than they are. They also believe that women usually look for protection in a man, physical protection in particular. Perhaps because women are perceived as being weaker than men, a woman with a short husband might not give the impression that she is protected.
However, there are no statistics to paint a clearer picture of this problem.
Ahmed Al-Jifri is a Saudi employee in his 30s. His family initially opposed his marriage to a woman who was clearly taller than him. Nevertheless, they got married.
“My family opposed my marriage, because my wife was a few inches taller than me, but eventually we married. We received a lot of negative comments from our family and friends,” said Ahmed. He added that people should not judge a person by his height or weight, and that his wife is a very good person. He is able to protect her, and that is what women always look for according to him.
“It doesn’t make sense not to marry someone because of her height; the important thing is that she is a good woman and that she is the perfect wife. We are happy with each other,” Ahmed said.
Seham Mahjoub is an Egyptian woman married to a Saudi who is shorter than her.
“When we married, I was 17 years old and we had the same height. Yet I kept growing, so I became taller than my husband,” she said. “I hear comments that my personality is stronger than his because I’m taller. I do not know why people make a link between the height and personality.”
Mahjoub added that she never became upset when she heard negative comments, because she knew it was rare for people to see a man married to a woman taller than him. “The funniest comment I ever heard was when a woman thought that my husband was my son. The woman apologized and said to me that she thought so because of the difference in height,” she said.
Samira Al-Hassan, a Jordanian, married a man shorter than her despite her family’s negative reaction. She now believes that the difference in height has had an effect on her husband. “Before our marriage, it wasn’t a huge problem for me, but later I started to realize that my family’s objection had been logical,” she said.
According to Al-Hassan, her husband lacks confidence because he is short. He deliberately shouts at her in front of others to show them that he is strong “My husband always tells people stories about how strong he is. Most of these stories are fake or half-truths,” said Al-Hassan.
