Friday March 29th, 2024
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8 Relationship Misconceptions in Egypt

Enter the Egyptian dating scene, where some really absurd ideas and expectations of the opposite sex. Guy thinks girl is a delicate pure flower. Girl thinks guy is personal chauffeur. Disaster ensues.

Staff Writer

8 Relationship Misconceptions in Egypt

Everyone knows that walking down the Nile corniche will end with you swimming in a sea of 7alabessa drinking and hand-holding couples. Cairo is no stranger to puppy love. It seems on every street corner you will find a couple nestled together close enough for it to be somewhat intimate, but with enough distance for it to not be 3eib. Despite that, divorce rates in Egypt are skyrocketing. It seems, for some reason, that relationships here hardly ever last, yet everybody is in one. So why is it that most Egyptian relationships are doomed, you ask? The problem with most couples is that both parties enter the relationship with misconceptions of what they should expect from their future partner. Here are but a few examples of the common misunderstandings freshly-in-love Egyptians have.

It seems Egyptian men are very fond of the idea of purity. They are under the impression that every girl they date has not only never been touched by another man, she’s also never thought of being touched by another man. She has never had a sexual thought in her life until he came along like a knight in shining armor and introduced her to the magical world of everything sexual. 

Another delusion men have is that their partners have no male friends. They believe that men and women cannot be friends, they can only coexist if there is something either emotional or physical between them. Therefore, their girlfriends have obviously never had any friends from the opposite sex. In fact, they’ve never even come in contact with another male creature. 

They also have this belief that women have a different vocabulary than men when it comes to swearing. And by different I mean non-existent. It is unfathomable for most Egyptian men to have their girlfriends swear. They seem to think that the only thing that comes out of a woman’s mouth is butterflies and rainbows. 

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. According to Egyptian men, this statement is not applicable to women. To them, women are frail, innocent creatures who will cringe at the sound of inappropriateness. 

 
But men are not the only ones at fault when it comes to relationships. The ladies of Egypt award men too much power over them. They think that once they are committed to someone, that automatically means they need their permission for everything. They seem to confuse the idea of a boyfriend with that of a parent. 
 
Driving in Egypt is never easy, especially for women. Not for women in relationships, though. Most of them will depend on their boyfriends driving them around, again mistaking the entire concept of a partner for a driver. 

One of the biggest mistakes girls make when entering a relationship is thinking that he is “the one”. With the idea of ta3nees weighing over every single Egyptian woman’s head, they will jump at any opportunity to say ‘I do’. Or in this case, to say the fat7a

I love you. Three words every girl dreams of hearing and every boy dreads saying. Seeing as how there is no differentiation between ‘love’ and ‘like’ in the Egyptian language, the word ba7ebak/ba7ebik is thrown around causally without any regard to its meaning.