علاقات عن بعد | الدحيح

Hey Salma, my love, I just arrived. Glad you made it safely, dear. I don't know how I traveled and left this beauty.

Raafat, about that, you're away from town and we can't be together anymore. I don't like to be with distant men. I had a feeling this would happen.

That's why I wanted to suggest that we. . .

go LDR. Why LDR? I just made a CBC, what's with the tests?

It's not a test, sweetheart, LDR means Long Distance Relationship. A remote relationship. Listen, Raafat, If you being abroad will change you like that, then I want to remind you that you know I'm a well-behaved girl, and I wear a Spanish-style hijab even in front of my father.

I won't accept any foul play. What did you understand? I meant to stay together and talk everyday.

I see. . .

but still, Raafat, you know I can get proposals and you're in the way. What proposals? You're merely a prop.

Again? Didn't we agree on no body-shaming? And by the way just so you know, MrSultan's the butcher son, Khamis, wants to propose and marry me.

I don't know if this is real or a plot twist in a Ramadan series. Tell me more creative reasons. Not, Mr who's son.

. . Look Raafat, I didn't want to tell you this when you're away, but I need a man by my side, a man to take care of me, take me out, feed me, get me gifts.

. . and sometimes cheat on me.

Not just you, I also want someone to take care of me, take me out, and cheat on me sometimes too. Really? You too?

We have lots in common. -What do we do now? -Sadly, we'll have to break up, Salma.

What a shame. Hey Salma, Mr Sultan wasn't looking for a. .

. groom? for his daughter of course.

Hello my dear viewers, welcome to a new episode of ElDaheeh. -What? -ElDaheeh.

That's the romantic version of it. You don't know how I am when I'm in love, I love remotely. "Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water.

. . scanning the horizon.

. . for the tiny ship.

Now I wait for Henry. " Were you in a relationship in Arsenal, Abo Hmeed? "Each moment that I wait feels like a year.

. . an eternity.

. . Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass.

. . Through each moment I can see infinite moments.

. . lined up.

. . waiting.

. . Why has he gone where I cannot follow?

" That's the author Audrey Niffenegger's expression for the protagonist of her novel "The Time Traveler's wife". The protagonist is talking about her relationship with her husband, Henry, who has a genetic disease that makes him travel through time randomly, he leaves suddenly without her knowing when he'll be back, she is the one responsible for managing their long distance relationship. If you thought about it, you'll find it quite familiar, it's like our long distance relationships.

But in the protagonist's case, the distance was time not place. When two people in a relationship are geographically separated, without seeing each other regularly, these relationships have different circumstances than close relationships that show you how modern man is tiresome, where in the last 50 years, he changed the relationship form that has been ongoing for 5000 years. That ancient old age man used to marry from his tribe and neighbors, or even the same family like Ancient Egyptians.

But no, the man went to work in Kuwait and the woman works in Dubai and the man is getting his Masters in the US. . .

What happened? When it was within the family like Ancient Egyptians and Romans, was to reproduce or make alliances, this family marries from that family to form an alliance, one gives the other wheat if the flood ruins its malt, and the other shares the meat. In addition to these practical aspects, marriage had a sentimental one that made both live together in love, amity, and romance.

Man decided to dump these practical aspects, and liked the idea of romantic love. He made tons of money from it too, songs, movies, romantic novels that are best sellers, poetry books and gatherings in Sawy's Cultural Wheel, and ElDaheeh episodes, why not? By time, this romantic love wasn't just a motive, or a step towards marriage, but rather a goal, something we're trying to reach, not necessarily for marriage, alliance, wheat, or malt.

It became normal that two people are together but don't see each other. Although this was a new form of relationships, it actually occurred to Plato before, he saw that this love brings one closer to idealism, to not see your lover but love him. They even call it platonic love.

You'll ask me, what's platonic love, Abo Hmeed? Is it a True Love? that makes us forgive and forget?

In that case, we need to ask Coldplay for reference. The definition of platonic love is it being a strong relationship between two people where there's no sexual attraction. Or it's there but suppressed.

Okay Plato, if that's what you say. Let me tell you, that distance in relationships is as old as transportation. But it differs in modern awareness.

Back in the day, a man needed a woman and vice versa, where any woman was qualified to be a partner, but now a man wants someone who listens to rap music, watches European movies, and with a strong personality but weak when he wants her weak, or he could want her strong too, she also better reads for Tolstoy, supports him, got his back, and can cook. It's not just Tolstoy. Also romantic but not clingy, and romantic only with him and when he wants her to be romantic.

But the woman needs a man who's tough on the outside and soft on the inside, crunchy from the outside, and juicy on the inside, watches, loves, and supports Tarkovsky's movies, and doesn't cry unless he's with her, or when she wants him to be vulnerable with her, or wants him to cry to someone else because she believes men don't cry. That's what it's about. The choices are a lot, the expectations are higher, and Russian names involved, That's what went downhill.

It was easier back then. The first one to say yes, you live and die with. We can see people on the internet in a couple of days, different kinds, more than what our ancestors met all their lives.

You may say, we know prefer to be with the right person even if he lives far away, better than being with someone close by but our minds don't align. 75% of university students went into long distance relationships. In a statistic to know how couples met each other, done from 1995 to 2017, where back then, people met their partners from acquaintances, or work, or university, they were geographically-close relationships.

But in 2017, 39% of couples met online, algorithms became the main median for marriage. The "People You May Know" is the modern matchmaker. Hence, many relationships became long distance ones.

We may presume that remote relationships are easier with fewer responsibilities, but the opposite is what's true. Imagine that the success rate of long distance relationship is only 58%. If you're getting in a remote relationship, there's a 50% chance of failure it's like heads or tails, continue or break up.

Abo Hmeed, what does this have to do with me? Isn't long distance for people who live abroad and travel? I don't travel.

I'm in town in Menya ElQmah. Let me tell you a very sad fact, my friend. Studies consider that couples who meet once or twice a week as long distance.

What? That's 75% of relationships in Egypt! Exactly, that's the surprise.

It's like these long distance relationship are that way considering they don't have physical intimacy. They're not living together. Which is almost how our relationships are.

Our dating or engagement period is considered long distance, and marriage is like a reunion. A big percentage of married men travel for work or military service, these relationships have special circumstances that make holding on harder and the chances of breaking up higher. They're not the romantic scenarios that we know, this is different.

Let's take an example. Two met, whether online or somewhere, and they fell in love, then they parted ways, he traveled for work and she got in Assuit's dentistry school, or each one of them lived in his town away from one another, that's when they have to decide, whether to continue or to have their time together as a good memory and they go in their separate ways. That's the decision phase.

If they continued, they throw an engagement party or dates, the Egypt ones, blind ones too, spend every possible moment together, and agree on their means of communication; calls, chat, or visits. Then the one that's going away leaves, and the parting phase comes, where he travels abroad, or lives somewhere else, working out a place to live, or preparing travel papers, that's when the couple go in denial. -What?

-Denial. I mean yes sure, he applied for a visa and got it, his plane is tomorrow, and he packed everything, and weighed the bags and is checking in, but I think we won't be apart. Statistically, in this phase they'll send each other average of 340 texts per week, and spend 8 hours on calls or video chats, and talk as if nothing changed.

Technology makes us see each other and talk, geographical distance doesn't matter as much as communication. Until a phase comes that I call it Realization, when they want to see each other, they can't. And that there is a huge difference because phone isn't like reality, and that's when excitement kicks in, the relationship keeps getting torn and repaired, torn and each one tries to repair it to what it was, until people start to change.

I'm in a different place, being exposed to different things, so I change to keep up. The other person is in another country, meets new people and also starts to change. By time, each one of them feels more independent from the other, and the relationship starts to tear apart.

Statistics say that usually these relationships end after 4. 5 months. Why?

because they face these issues for the first time and feelings that make them question whether they rushed, and if they suit each other or not. Imagine in the middle of these feelings, one of them does a normal thing, like uploading a photo on Instagram, or talk about work colleagues. .

. Wait a second! Busy, not free, got things to do.

. . and now you're having fun without me too.

A phase then kicks in known as jealousy, that activate a full-on feeling of insecurity, and the need to own the other partner. Jealousy is important in relationships, because it means that a partner cares about the other, and that losing him would cause damage. But a huge amount of jealousy, however logical because I don't see that person so it's natural to feel jealous, and that I'm insecure because that person can have his needs met by someone else.

And with this huge jealousy, and situations escalating, and without good communication the relationship sadly falls apart. And of course being apart increases FOMO, a kind of fear, Fear Of Missing Out, and it's being anxious about missing something because it's happening somewhere far. So you start to analyze every text your partner sends you, and every call that he doesn't answer.

And escalate things that could have been resolved by seeing the other partner and deal with it in real life. Researchers found that in long distance relationships, couples communicate more through internet, but having a regular face to face interaction is a deal breaker in having both partners feel satisfied and committed, and regain the trust. When someone says something while looking in your eyes, it hits different than texts.

Distance also decreases satisfaction, and the level of trust between them. Same happens in the opposite way. Distance generates less amounts of safety and trust, distance generates tension, so it's common to find misunderstandings and fights, and partners get easily upset from each other and fight over silly things, and anxiety paints them imaginary situations that hurt them.

The problem is that anxiety is the enemy of happy relationships. The moments of silence in a call that's supposedly normal, we can sit together and be silent, these moments in these calls in long distance relationships can trigger one of the partners' anxiety, are our conversations over? are topics over?

do we no longer have something to talk about? did our interests change? Let me tell you something about long distance, it's a type of relationships that puts on you the responsibility of a relationship without its rewards.

These responsibilities include keeping up, making phone calls, checking in if something happens, staying in touch and showing care. All that without intimacy, without seeing each other, without the joy of presence, without the company. -What?

-Company. That's why our relationship may seem long distance, but since there's company, which is from my side, so it's long distance for me but short distance for you. You just get me with a click.

How is there no company, Abo Hmeed? We chat, upload Instagram stories, send pictures, send voice notes, FaceTime, and we're present. And some studies say, Abo Hmeed, that if one wants to tell someone something the probability of saying it in texts is higher than calls.

Chat makes us control what we say, and think well before we say anything, filter our words and unsend the message if the person is offline. We can be perfect in the chat without showing the anxiety, and our insecurities, more than reality. There are also emojis to express our emotions, and stickers to escape any topic we don't like.

Well well, look at you all smart and getting studies, why don't you come here present instead of me? come here, take my watch, and I stay home. .

. What do you know? What's wrong, my friend, you became materialistic.

We said a million times, only watch ElDaheeh and not the competitors. Let me tell you that what you said about chats is true, or partially true. But the problem of chats that there's always a difference between what we mean, what we actually deliver, and what the other person understands.

One would say, fine Abo Hmeed, we'll call on Messenger, I read in a study that the first thing you forget about a person is his voice. Voice, Abo Hmeed, reflects the essence and tone of the personality, and holds many messages and meanings within. If you heard an angry foreigner, there's no need to understand what he says, but you can mostly tell what he's feeling.

It's different to tell your kids about their grandpa than hearing his voice. In an article in 2012, published in Evolution&Human Behavior mag. titled "Instant Messages vs.

Speech", researchers found that hearing our loved ones' voices decreases levels of cortisol, which is a stress indicator, it also increases oxytocin, the hormone of connection, love, and happiness. Researchers found that auditory signals are the ones producing hormonal effects. It's not the content of speech.

If you said I hate you, it's the same as I love you. Performance, Abo Hmeed. .

. Performance. Oh just wow.

. . You're doing just fine now.

. . come finish the episode instead of me, take the watch and finish it, what do you say?

And I go stay home and sleep on that bed. Let me ask you something, am I a fence? am I?

why do you insist on jumping over me? Let me tell you my theory. Do you know when you're talking to a family member on the phone while you're away, and they get you to hear your cat or dog or a baby, they don't recognize your voice, as if they don't hear you.

And if it's video call, then it's as if they don't see you. That's because when we talk on the phone, calls or phones process our voices, and turn them from sound energy to electromagnetic energy, in a frequency of 300-3000 Hz. Our real voice has way less frequency.

A girl's voice is 165-255 Hz, while a guy's is 85-155 Hz. So our voice frequency is less than the phones' frequency, and there's something called Harmonic Series, that compensates the missing frequency of the original sound. So this gives the impression on the other side of the call that they're hearing the original voice but they're not.

Maybe that's why animals and babies don't recognize it as human voice. So yes you hear your loved one's voice on the phone, that delivers real information, but you're desire to hear your beloved voice that you know isn't fulfilled. Let me tell you that long distance relationships are new, and its chemistry isn't the same as the close one that aligns with human's chemistry and biology.

Dr Sherry Turkle from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of "Computers and the Human Spirit", says that compassion is your ability to feel the other person's emotions and thoughts, which is easy to be found in face to face conversations, the direct conversations where we exchange eye contact and body language, all the signals that we understood throughout our human history. While unfortunately, it makes me sad, that calls alone aren't enough, which makes relationships tasteless. Specially in this age, opportunities are limited for two people in the same place, so it became hard to form the normal traditional relationships that both work in the same place, get paid well and are happy.

Now one has to work in Dubai to earn a certain living, and go back to somewhere for Masters and she needs to visit her family in god knows where, and build her career in Europe. It became hard for all these people to have opportunities and simultaneously have human relationships similar to them in the same place, and stay in that place for long periods of time. Sadly my friend, this is so sad in our age.

Also we, like animals, are affected by olfactory signals, we need to smell the people we love. This is something that technology doesn't offer. We can see and hear, but we can't touch or smell.

We have pheromones that our bodies produce, chemical substances like hormones but outside the body that we know the smell of our loved ones by. The sense of taste is mainly connected to smell and vision, if you smelled something you like and saw something eye-pleasing, this stimulates the same place that stimulates salivary glands, your mouth runs. When you see a cute dog or a beautiful baby, you say 'Oh I want to eat it', that's your mouth running.

This is called Cute Aggression. The smell of the one you love literally gets your mouth running, and stimulates the feeling of eating or biting. We just have a mind that tells us we can't bite someone so we don't.

One would tell me, sorry, Abo Hmeed, you want to tell us to leave our homes and how we earn a living to stay with the ones we love? I'm glad I provoked you, I can now be rested about your romance. My friend, this show doesn't tell you to do anything at all.

This show only does one thing, get your horizons broadened. Your horizons are broad? Great, you're benefiting.

But getting into long distance relationships, or not doing it, that's up to you, I'm just letting you know, broadening your horizons. Even if you loved Wonder Woman in your imagination, not my issue, even if you lived and died single, if you're happy then I'm happy. I just let you know and broaden the bands of your horizon.

I want you to know the difference that distance makes, and that it's different circumstances. Researches say that the first 4 months are the hardest in the relationship, and according to data, if you managed to pass the first 8 months and the relationship is working, then what follows is easier. It's just the distance circumstances makes partners exert doubled efforts, and need to built strong foundation in the relationship.

Because when we live far from each other, we work on other factors in a relationship other than physical connection, we don't assume they know what's wrong or what's on our minds, because simply they don't see us. So we have to do whatever a couple can do to stay together, communication by talking, and accept the fact that the other person can live without us. So we exert efforts to be people chosen by the other's free will, not because they need to choose us.

When we're apart, we go through the feeling of loneliness, we feel the value of the ones away, we feel the agony of missing, -the sweetness of longing. . .

-What? The sweetness of longing, it has a sweet side, to miss someone, to long for someone, it has a sweet side. And we feel happy when after the missing and longing there's reunion, and having lots of stories to share.

It's not as easy as having judgments, distance is bad and closeness is good, there's no such thing. These judgments are on the dining table, like and don't like. But everything is relational, the world has circumstances that we try to adapt to it, and try to have as much advantages although we have tons of disadvantages.

In a study done by researchers from Ohio University, they found that third of the people in LDR, then moved back together and made up the distance with reunion, ended up breaking up during the first 3 months of reunion. But. .

. the pheromones, Abo Hmeed! It seems like the pheromones agonized by longing, love, and reunion, turned out to be a bad smell.

Some people feel like remote relationships offer independence, innocence, and nobility, something platonic. And these things vanish when we're close again. The closeness erases all the imaginary ideals that we built in our heads about our partner while being away without real communication and acceptance.

Because meeting someone in front of you, you find out how they can be sometimes unflattering and bad, and the pheromones you were waiting for were a bad smell. The disagreements after a reunion aren't just more recurrent, they're also harder to solve, which can go back to low communication during the time away. Sometimes the issue is in our relationship with ourselves, As long as the one we love is away, we live in fear and uncertainty, will we stay together or not?

But when we are together again, and are sure we're together, we think we misunderstood them, that's not the person I loved in my head. But the problem isn't them, it's our relationship with ourselves. The feelings of the partner could not be how we see ourselves, you see yourself nice in things that they see are bad, and you doubt yourself, that this person who loves me isn't seeing me for who I am and thinks I'm someone else.

I see who I am. No my friend, you're nice and your partner sees it, but sometimes one's idea of himself is a little harsh. .

. imposter syndrome. People around you don't have a bad taste, you're nice.

. . or you have nice qualities.

But, my friend, it's hard to accept love if we aren't convinced that we deserve it. I want you to see this reunion as a sign, that this person loves you. Because they found in you what they didn't find in others and what you might not see in yourself, or didn't get the chance to see it in you.

But you, my friend, deserve love. One more important thing, an advice to conclude the episode with, that we need to trust more in the ones who love us. And at the end, I want to tell you that I love you, my friend.

Abo Hmeed, you're playing me, you only love me for the subscribe. No, my friend, no. .

. I love you because you watch the old episodes and the new ones, look at the sources and subscribe on YouTube too. See, reasons not just one.

Let's have a reunion, my friend. Let me tell you the opinion of the friend, Mohamed Khamis, on the long distance relationships, when he described it with his saying, 'No matter how many qualities my phone has, I will never fall in love with a phone. ' When I talk with my love on the phone I'm not talking to her, I'm talking to the phone.

I'm in a relationship with the phone. I'd like to say that I have a clear stand on the long distance relationships, I'm against it, and not because of all what we said but because it consumes the bundle. And it feels like there are more important things to consume the bundle.

. . You know.