Cairo  - Youssef Kamal's friends like to tease him by telling him he is not really married, even though he has been with his wife for 13 years and has had two children by her.

"They say that unless we live under the same roof and yell at each other every day, we're not really married in their eyes," he told the German Press Agency dpa.

But Kamal says that since he and his wife began living separately eight years ago, they have had "a perfect, healthy marriage."

Government statistics released last week found that the divorce rate in Egypt has increased by 8 per cent in the last two years. Some 83,000 Egyptian couples divorce each year, Egyptian statistics authorities say.

Kamal and his wife do not want to be among them.

"We still love each other. We both still want the family we planned before we got married," he said.

Though they were both from Egyptian families, they were both raised abroad. They settled together in Cairo to raise a family, but as the years went by, Kamal said, his wife became "more religious."

"She stopped wanting to go to parties," he said. "She seemed to stop tolerating my more bohemian attitude toward life."

And so Kamal and his wife, like a growing number of Egyptians, resorted to a "weekend marriage."

The setup has helped them maintain the marriage, he said. And the pair now enjoys "a weekly honeymoon," as he described it.

It is a novel arrangement in the country. Though many Muslim men in the country maintain two or more apartments to house multiple wives, it was formerly unheard of for a man with only one wife to live apart from her without being estranged from her.

Few in the country could afford the luxury. But a growing number of Egyptian couples in their late 30s and early 40s who hold two well-paid jobs are doing the same.

Amal Abdel-Salam, 41, is a well-paid executive at one of Egypt's largest telecommunications companies. She married two years ago.

"I work nearly all day long," she told dpa. "I knew I could hardly find anytime to be a good wife, who can take care of her house and her husband. But I had also invested a lot in my job, and was not ready to give it up."

So when her husband suggested they live separately, Abdel-Salam agreed.

"It was the magic solution," she said. "I was able to keep my love and my career."

She was surprised when her husband proposed the idea. She had been engaged to be married several times before. None of the men she had known before had accepted that she might work long hours and come home late. The idea that she might live on her own was completely unthinkable to her previous fiancees.

Her husband, 42-year-old Amr Naguib, had been married before.

"I learned a lot from my first marriage. I wanted to make sure my new marriage lasted forever," he said.

"I now realize that I do not need a wife who cooks and washes. I often eat at the office and take my clothes to be laundered. I only need to know that I have someone who cares for me, no matter where we live," he told dpa.

The daily stresses of life in Cairo had taken their toll on his past marriage, he said.

"Drained people cannot offer support to each other," he said. "Our normal day starts with getting stuck in traffic for hours before we reach work. Simple personal errands require facing down bureaucracy."

"During my previous marriage, all our lives were consumed with trivial stuff, leaving no space for the real essence of the marriage," he said.

Murad Abdallah, 35, has been trying to convince his fiancée, Maha, to marry him but to live under two roofs.

He said he became worried when his married friends told him, half in jest, that "in every house, there is a postponed divorce."

"I have been shocked by the number of people getting divorced around me, even after a great love story," he said.

And so when one of his friends, who has been married for two years, suggested the idea, Abdallah seized on it as a way to ensure marital success.

"I discussed the matter with my fiancee, but she is reluctant. She believes that a real marriage is when two people live under one roof. I am trying to convince her that a real marriage is the one that lasts," he said. (dpa)