I am the kind of woman that no matter how many times my boyfriend tells me that he loves me, I still want to hear it more and more. And no matter how much he shows affection and love, and how much he takes care of me, I still have this weird need of hearing him say it, the magical word: Love you.
Even when he does so, I like to emphasize on what he means by loving me and explore the dimensions of his love and analyse it in every possible way. Do you love me for my body or for my mind? I ask him over and over again – which can be a very tricky question that I am, myself, not sure what I want the answer to be.
In school, they taught us to cherish the platonic love through Arabic old poems. In Arabic it is more of virginic-love (7ob 3ozri) – exuse my translation – and is not related to Plato as in English. What is interesting is that while checking out wikipedia’s page of platonic love, there seem to be some question mark on the nature of platonic love that is highlighted at a point of time where homosexuality was at the center of the Greek culture.
Jamil Buthaynah the Jahili Arabic poet (pre-Islam poet), and where his name got attached with Buthayna the woman he loved and flirted with in his poem. He got famous for his love for Buthaynah and his platonic poems describing her beauty and his love for her. Now with the Plato vague link to homosexuality, it makes me wonder about Jamil’s love for Buthayna, and why was it platonic at an erra of time pre-Islam where sex was not considered to be a bad thing in Arabia?
So because of some cultural infleuences and school teaching, I have always considered a platonic love a good thing, and always wanted a man to love me for my mind. At least that is what I have been trying to convince myself with and stating in public while discussing it with other people. In truth, what I really want, is a man, who LOVES me for my body. I don’t want a man to tell me that I am smart or intellectual. I want one who would tell me: You are BEAUTIFUL.
No matter how shallow this might sound, what makes me happy is to have someone who loves me for my looks. (I am a woman and don’t have to explain myself).
But then, I want my man to love me for the person I am as well, and thus, I carry on with my questions to my boyfriend: What if I go through a sex change operation and end up with a man’s body? Would you still love me?
Ofcourse he CANT answer no. He has to love me as a whole, and now trying to manuver at the deep end of things, my body should not be the base of our love! We all know the our bodies detoriorate with time, which means that if our love is based on bodies, then it would detoriorate with time as well (No?), and we don’t want that either, do we?
Technically if I am to do the sex change operation and become a man, do I really want my boyfriend to still be attracted to me? Doesn’t that make him slightly bi-sexual? and I don’t want him to be that? or it would be okay as long as he keeps on loving me no matter the sex of my body? or are love and sexual attraction two different concepts that are not related to each other?
Then again, thinking about it rationally. I don’t think that it is fair to ask him to keep his love for me if am I to change my sex. He loves me now the way I am, and if I changed, then I become a different person, and he doesn’t have to love a different person? On the other hand, we change every single minute, and in 10 years, I would be a different person! If we are to commit into a marriage, he should commit to love me no matter how much I change! (even if I became a dracula?).
Actually what I really want to is the kind of love in the movie P.S. I love you. The guy loved his woman unconditionally, and while being in his death bed, he planned everything to help her go through the transition of losing him, and in which included her to get to date and have sex with other men so that she would carry on with her life. He wrote to her: You were my entire life, but I am just a beautiful phase of yours.
I wonder how many Arab men are ready to let their wives more on with their lives when they pass away? How many young widowed women stay single for the rest of their lives for the sake of their dead husbands? whom if they really loved them, would want them to move on.
It is good to acknowledge an unconditional love, but also it is good to know the importance of sex appeal in our love. It is what the fire of our love needs, and I accept it.
Regards,
Haya
Fadi Zaghmout فادي زغموت 
Why ask the question only for Arabs? Why don’t you ask it for any Male in the world, or for that matter, any female in the world.The beauty of the movie is that it’s actually fiction!There are men who mourn their dead wives a life time, and there are others who cheat while their wife is still alive! Same goes for women!Lets not restrict hate to Arab Men! We’re not all assholes you know 🙂
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Watched the movie, loved it, then i realized that it is fiction. cause nowadays the term “Unconditional love” rarely exists:(
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So is Haya your own female alter ego or your boyfriend’s ?!!
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I ask those questions to my fiancé all the time 🙂I guess it is because women always need reassurance of love , (men don’t need it as much), so it is all about asking the same question in different ways … how much do you love me ? why do you love me ? would you still love me if this or that happens .. normal women stuff 🙂I think that a partner is supposed to love the looks and mind of his partner , otherwise it is not fair for both to be together , when one is in a relationship , he deserves to feel loved , desired, sexy and appreciated for his mind, principles and the way of living ..As for the widows question , you reminded me of my grandfather , btw he is not an Arab (Serbian 100%) , the last thing he asked his wife before he died is Not to get married , he was in his late 70’s and she was in her early 70’s But that is kind of cute, coz it made her feel, that she is still a women that someone would want to marry .. at least in his eyes .
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Living in America taught me that love is sex, and without sex there is no love.To love someone is to have sex with them, if you don’t have sex that means it is not love.Yes, you might admire someone if they are intellectual and everything but all the intellect goes down the drain if there is no sex involved.Admiration is not love, sex is.So there you have it boys and girls LOVE = SEX.
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dudes, obviously you don’t know the difference between physical attraction and true love???, maybe you should start watching romantic movies or something!
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Sex and love have an overlap, but they are not equivalent. I believe in loving someone’s soul, but your sexual attraction for the person you love may range from 0 (if you’re straight and the person you love is the same gender as you) to 100%. I have desired people sexually that I would most likely never love, and I have loved people I have no sexual attraction to either. The tricky part is to find someone you both love and lust.
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An interesting topic to ponder. I have had my good share thinking about those topics, and I have reached what some might consider unconventional answers!!Considering things from an open-relationships perspective, things would seem much simpler [although for most people much complex]!!First, the mind and the body should not be separated. This is a common mistake. The question: “Do you love my mind or my body?” is a misleading question, because a mind and a body come in one package, inseparable from each other. Thinking of your partner as two separate entities, a mind and a body, is damaging to the relationship.I, personally, don’t believe that there is something like “Platonic love”… While love and sex are two different concepts, they do overlap. Love should be boundless… Or as some people say: The limit is the sky. If sex is off the limit, then thats not love.Also, the concept of “unconditional love” is a flawed and DISGUSTING concept!! Looking at “unconditional love” from a shallow perspective might make it seem nice, but in truth a deeper look would reveal the ugly head of unconditional love. It rips relationships of their meaning!!I believe love is renewable, like a fountain. Some people have a “love” and they use it till the end of their lives. But I see things in a different way. I see that everyday -if not every minute- a person should create a new love… Don’t use the old love until it wears, but love again and again!Every time you or your partner change, a new love forms, different from the love you had before!! So at the end of the road, you might fall in love with the same person a thousand times, each time a new love is created different than the love before it… This new love can sometimes be stronger than the love before it, or lesser than the love before it… If the change in personality is so immense, it might mean that the love stops from renewal.One important thing to consider: No one changes with a reason, or without psychological context of affinity. For example, no one decides to make a sex change operation over-night!! So Haya (or otherwise) would not change her gender without a psychological need for this change.. She would have certain personality traits that leads to that change… Its not gonna happen out of the blue!! This context of change is critical to whether the love would continue or not… If she just changed without context, she might seem like a totally new person… But when the person she loves goes through every step of the way towards this change, he might have a different perception of the change, and may be more understanding!!So Haya, don’t think about things changing out of the blue… Think about context!
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Forget the word sex it has a very bad connotation on the human ear, let us just stick to the love word since it is the indispensible one. To love someone is to make love to them, orally or by copulation it doesn’t really matter. When you make love show your love, your performance shows how much you love the other person. If you do a shoddy hap hazardous job it means that you don’t love the person and you are only trying to fulfill your selfish needs. It is fully understandable that no one can perform at his/her optimal level each and every time there is love involved, nevertheless one must strive to always try to mutate and most importantly be creative. It isn’t easy to perfect your love making, my wife will probably be the first one to testify about how much of a bad lover truly yours is, still, it doesn’t deter me from educating myself and dare to say retrain myself to do better. Failure is not an option when it comes to making love; abstinence is much better route than doing a lousy job. So there you have it, to love the person is to love them head to toe, and to mutually satisfy one another on as needed basis, this is the ultimate love that beats any other forms of phony & brotherly and platonic and what have you misnomers.
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Qwaider, I didn’t restrict hate to anyone. It is just that I know how our society prefers widowed women not to get married again. Anonymous1, don’t you think that such love like in the movie can exist in real life? I do :). I loved the movie. Natahsa, how cute is your grandmother :). I think it is selfish to ask your partner to stay single after you leave this life. You are right, it is women stuff, love should be fueled and fed each day 🙂Hatem, interesting point of view, but love is not sex. Maybe love between partners cannot be complete without sex or else it would be another kind of love. teacherlady, you put it very well. ‘The tricky part is to find someone you both love and lust.’It explains men who cheat on their wives and claim to still love them, right? 🙂
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DM, ‘I believe love is renewable, like a fountain.’I have never thought you carry this romantic part in you :).hehehe, have you been reading Paulo Colho? The way you described love and changing each moment, falling back in love thousands of times, it reminded me of Paulo’s style, which I adore! and which sounds so wise and right. I guess maybe it is the person’s choice of committing to loving his partner and accept new changes with open arms. I still think there is a seperation between mind and body. Like the character of the person and his body and how much it is related to sexual attraction. Like for instance you feel more attracted to you partner when he/she loses weight, or wear something more sexually appealing while still maintaining the same character. know what I mean? Hatem, you here are talking about sex while calling it love?!!
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<>“have you been reading Paulo Colho?”<> – No, not really… Thats purely from my personal pondering…. But I think its obvious that anyone can understand this on his own… Most people are blinded by other people’s bad choices – they learn from a bad example if I may say!!<>“I have never thought you carry this romantic part in you :)”<> – Why not! Well, maybe i did not discuss relationships in depth on my blog – although there are some good posts!!Well, you know that I am a Hedonist, and I believe that all human work has the ultimate purpose of our happiness… Science and philosophy are all slaves to the ultimate purpose of our happiness… And isn’t romance\love the thing that make us most happy?!
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DM, :), I guess it is my fault, I have always percieved you very smart with a dark edge. Maybe it is due to a pervious post of view about drinking and your continuous declaration of being satanic (eventhough I know that your definition of satanism is different than the mainstream one).It is good to see this part of you. Maybe you would enjoy read Paulo after all :). Give it a try. I agree, our ultimate goal is happiness. Maybe I am a hedonist after all too 🙂
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The reason I am a satanist is love! Without love there is no Satan! Satan represents all that is human, and love is the thing that makes us human… Otherwise we are only objects!!I understand that misconceptions and false stereotypes happen… But the way I see it, many religions repress human emotions… But satanism is the religion that celebrates human emotions, because we understand that they are the most important things…
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DM, interesting intake on satanism. Love is the most important gift, and human emotions should be celebrated, if that is satanism, then I am, if others call it another name, then I am 🙂It is good to see this side of you. Take care…
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You’re welcome! I am glad to hear feedback from you… Maybe I failed to explain those things with clarity, although I made a few good posts about them… But I might as well speak more of those…
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just a small note … Jamil Buthayna lived after Islam not before … in the Umayyad era to be exact … check your references …and as for the idea of the movie or the book … i still havent read or seen it …but all in all … i think ur last point is a basic principle in life … and its not sth to debate …be well
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* جميل بثينة شاعر أموي لا جاهلي. وحتى في الجاهلية لم يكن الحياة الجنسية بتلك التحرر، لاسيما لدى النساء.ربما لم تكن العوائق دينية لكن بقي لمبدأ المرأة الحرة العفيفة أهمية كبرى لدى المرأة نفسها…
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Isam, Karma, they list him under the pre-islamic era on the wiki page, and I remember him to be a jahili from school days, but I may be wrong, do you have any online resources?Karma, there is a book that I read named ‘Nozhet al albab’, you can find it in the downtown, it talks about how spread sex was at the jahili times and even after Islam. It worths reading.
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well he is classified under Umayyad Poets in Wikipedia Arabic … but take this from me and be sure .. he is umayyad … 3antara ebn Shadad was a preislamic poet and he wrote a genre similar to 3othre genre …
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لا أنفي وجود شيء من التحرر .كان – وسيكون- ذلك موجود في أي عصر.وكتب التراث مملوءة بالحكايا، الغث منها والسمين لكن بالنظر للصورةالأكبر، السمة العامة للعصر، والمرأة ذاتها ومكانتها الحياتية لا يمكن القول بأنه كان أمرا عاديا..* جميل أموي قطعا لا مجازا، لا مصادر معلوماتية لدي على الشبكة.فقط كتب ورقية.افترض انه لابد من ورود ذكره بين طيات موقع الوراق بمكتبتهم الضخمةalwaraq.comهناك الشعر، ستجدينه مدرجا بالتأكيد تحت الشعر الأموي في موقع أدبadab.com
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i find this to be a completely amazing idea. i was looking for info for a review i’m doing for my islam class on a contriversial book called TOWELHEAD. like the title or not, it doesn’t matter. this post follows one of the themes in the novel so well that i don’t think i could write my paper without it. this question of eternal love though is not singularly associate to arabs though. it is a univeral arguement that more people should take seriously. yes, love me for my mind. love me because i’m funny and fun and charming and pleasant. but pamper me with the thought that i am a person before i am a personality.
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