At 42, Amani had almost given up hope of finding a husband. Then she met Ali, an architect who is five years her senior. It was love at first sight and six months after their first encounter, they got married. Instead of the lavish wedding she had always dreamed of having, Amani settled for a small, quiet ceremony with only her mother and sisters attending. None of the couple’s friends were invited as Ali wished to keep the marriage a well-guarded secret. He feared his first wife and mother of his three children would find out that he was taking a second wife and cause a scene at the wedding. Amani acquiesced to his decision.

“I was totally blinded by love,” she told Al-Monitor. “Besides, I didn’t want to be a home-wrecker. If his first wife had learned we were getting married, she would probably have insisted on getting a divorce,” she said.

Today, two years later, Amani and Ali’s marriage is on the rocks. “When we first got married, we spent a lot of time together. He told his first wife that his job required him to travel for several days each week. But we’ve been quarreling a lot lately and I hardly see him anymore. He has even threatened to divorce me,” Amani said.

Their story is not uncommon in Egypt. According to a study by the National Center for Sociological and Criminological Research, 70% of second marriages end in divorce and 25% of Egyptian husbands remarry within the first three years of their first marriage. The statistics, dating back several years, are questionable given that the bulk of the second marriages are urfi marriages that are neither registered nor recognized by the government. Such informal marriages simply require the couple to sign a handwritten document (with or without witnesses) and are a way of getting around religious constraints on extramarital or premarital sex.