Thank you

Submitted by Abubit (United Kingdom), Oct 31, 2016 at 06:52

I'm leaving a note to express my thanks to the author for this post about Egyptian men. My experience is a first one but you could say I was lucky to have read the warning signs very early on.

I am from Europe and encountered an Egyptian man who returned to Egypt. We continued our rapport online but I treated our connection as a friendship. I was never attracted to him. Even though I'd explained to him many times that I only liked him as a friend, it was clear he was desperate to force a relationship with me.

Besides tiresomely sending romantic endearments that I was very uncomfortable with and constantly calling me each day (particularly at times I was unavailable, even though I told him multiple times not to), he was trying to paint Egypt as a nirvana, claiming it was the best place to live while where I reside was the worst [talk about respecting the roots of someone you claim to 'love'!], in an effort to persuade me to move there and live with him, despite my telling him I had absolutely no interest in relocating anywhere. He too used the assertion that if I worked there as an English teacher, I'd be 'rich' [I don't want to teach, if at all, let alone English; my discipline and interests lie elsewhere]. He also let me know quite regularly he was from a wealthy family, which really wasn't my concern. Given my previous experience with African men generally and some other aspects of his claims that admittedly didn't add up, I had my natural doubts about the veracity of his words.

Nonetheless, he never listened to me nor acknowledged the feelings I continually made known to him. For example, whenever I would say I liked him only as a friend, he'd dismiss it/laugh it off as a simple 'always adding a condition on the end'. More seriously, de'd constantly micro-manage my behaviour towards him: he'd always question my lack of returning endearments, ask why I never called him back immediately (barraging me with 'sad' emoticons) and inculpate me for mistakes that were clearly down to his inattentiveness. Overall, he carried on this forced, unrequited and oblique 'romance' until I had to firmly rebuke him for his behaviour. After that, he mysteriously stopped talking to me. So much for that 'friendship' about the person you 'care about', if you were only speaking to that person in the hope of getting a relationship out of her to make yourself happy. Personally, it's disrespectfully inconsiderate to force a person into a situation they're not agreeable with and totally ignore their wants and desires.

I guess I have to thank my aforementioned African man experience for my greater shrewdness and caution in this scenario. In hindsight, I believe he was desperate to effect a relationship as in his culture, it's a stigma to not have a spouse and family after a certain age and so he was 'in a hurry' to get a woman and have children with her to keep up with his own relatives and friends who'd already 'succeeded' in that regard. This is true for the culture of many African countries generally. While it's disappointing he reacted the way he did and broke off all contact, at the same time it's fortunate, especially if this post and its thread are anything to go by. If at all I'd entered a relationship with him, I don't think I would've been able to tolerate such egocentric, immature and neurotic behaviour. I'm not a fan of possessive, clingy people, as such behaviour can lead to even graver, more destructive actions that ruin the life and livelihood of the partner. Again, I speak from experience.

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