Pakistani actress Saman Ansari appeared as a guest on Ahmad Ali Butt's podcast 'Excuse Me’, where she got candid about her personal life, son, and first marriage, which ended up in a divorce after 16 long years.
Here is what she revealed, "It lasted for 16 years lekin kuch missing tha usme. Unko shyad kisi aur cheez ki zarorat thi apne life mei. Phir woh, mera beta 6 saal ka tha, khatam hoh gayi. (Something was missing in the marriage. He maybe needed something else in his life. Everything ended when my son was hardly 6-years-old.)
Ansari said she was in Canada for higher studies when her marriage was fixed by her family elders.
“I was studying in Canada, but then I moved to the U.S. after marriage, we lived there. Then for two years, I was back in Canada, because he [her ex-husband] got a job there. My son was also born there, but then we moved back to the U.S.”
“But it wasn’t working out, so it ended, after 16 years”, she added.
She also emphasized that divorce has never been accepted in Pakistani culture and expressed hesitation in going back to her parents, fearing it may bring shame to them if she visited.
“So as per a rule in Canada, my son had to stay with his father and continue going to the same school as he was already in. And I was fine with it. But then I didn’t want to come to Pakistan because of the stigma, and the pressure and remarks. I didn’t want to put my parents through it. So I asked them and moved to Dubai instead after the divorce.”
In an earlier interview, Ansari disclosed that she got married for the second time when her son, Ayaan, was around 12.
She shared that fellow actor Nadia Afgan played Cupid for her and her now-husband, who proposed to her on their very first meeting over a cup of coffee in Boston.