“I cannot imagine myself marrying someone I don’t know or someone whom my father chooses for me. I want to marry a man of my choice — someone I might work with or have met,” said Dana Abdul Majeed, a 27-year-old banker. “Many men have tried to propose to me through their mothers, but I end up rejecting them because I don’t want to marry a man who asks his mother to choose a bride for him,” she added.

Many young women view arranged marriages as old-fashioned, a custom they do not want to follow. “We’re born in a much more developed era and we’re nothing like our mothers and grandmothers. For example, I don’t want to be a housewife. I want to work and earn a living,” said Hasnaa Esaam, a 23-year-old college student.

“I don’t look down on the older generation, I just think that they were born in a different time and had different aspirations,” she added.

When someone rejects an arranged marriage, then people misconstrue this to mean something else, said Rania Hejazi, a 26-year-old lecturer. “Whenever I tell my family that I don’t want to be involved in an arranged marriage, I get a nasty look … they think I have someone in mind or I’m in a relationship with a man,” she said.

But turning down an arranged marriage doesn’t mean what they think. “That doesn’t have to be the case because I’m in the process of getting engaged to my best friend’s brother who I once saw at her house; I immediately felt the chemistry,” she said.

Marrying cousins is also frowned upon by many. “My cousin is like a brother to me, I cannot imagine myself marrying him … even though I was told that both our parents decided on that years ago,” said an 18-year-old college student who asked for her name not to be published. “How can I marry a man whom I share childhood memories with? I used to play football with him up until I was 12. This is just impossible because I will always look at him as a kid,” she added.

Young Saudi men also share the same views. “I strongly disagree with marrying a woman that my mom sees at a wedding or restaurant, for instance. I want to pick my own wife because, after all, I will be the one living with her, not my mother,” said Abdul Malik Abed, a 29-year-old marketing manager.

“I tried listening to my mother and proposed to her friend’s daughter. However, I later found out she wasn’t what I felt a wife should be. When I told my mother she got angry and tried to force me into marrying her because she didn’t want to lose her friend,” he added.

Many mothers force their opinions on their sons. “When I came back from studying in the US, I asked my mother to choose a bride for me. She asked me what I would want her to look like and I was surprised by the question, knowing that I was looking for marriage, not a model for a photo shoot,” said Hasan Darweesh, a 32-year-old banker.

“I then told her that I like dark-complexioned girls with curly hair. She said that she will start searching immediately, and nine proposals later I realized that all the women I went and saw were fair skinned with straight hair. I asked my mother why this was and she said that I will thank her later when she is old and still beautiful,” he added.

According to Sarah Hussain, a 25-year-old housewife, the key for a successful arranged marriage is to have a long engagement and a chance for both to get to know each other. “The only thing that convinced me to agree to an arranged marriage is that my family agreed to allow me to have a one-year engagement in which I could talk to him and get to know him,” she said.

“I believe that was a brilliant idea; I got the chance to fall in love with him before my wedding,” she added.