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The 16 Stages Of A Lebanese Romance
When you’re single in Beirut, you’re constantly aware of just how single you are. Then, once you get a glimmer of hope in the form of a hazy glance from across the bar in Mar Mikhael, your worldview instantly fills with detrimental potential. Here are the stages of a Lebanese romance, as based on science.
1. Becoming aware of their existence
You’re sitting at a bar with your friends, feeling as lonely as Melania Trump. Suddenly, without warning, your eyes lock with someone across the bar – which, at this point, means you’re basically engaged.
2. Research
You go home after a night of drinking and inhaling a burger at 4 AM. You start messaging your friends asking if anyone knows the mysterious person you locked eyes with at the bar. One of your friends knows them: “Ken ma3 khayye bi internship min 5 years, ktir mahdoum w mratab“. It’s time to get to work.
3. Utilizing your random friend who knows them
You’re not that close with the one friend who went to university with the bedroom-eyed bar guy, but today, you are. You message them relentlessly saying you want to meet up and go for drinks again and you *coincidentally* suggest that you meet at the same bar where your eyes first met. You go, sit at the bar instead of on a table, and wait. If he shows up, then next up comes…
4. Courting
You’ll keep exchanging sultry looks for the night until your friend *pretends* to go to the bathroom. He takes this opportunity as his only chance. He’ll sit next to you, ask you if you want a drink and will probably try to get you drunk enough to enhance his looks in your drunk-goggles. His first-liner is “3am beze3jik shi? ” and you have fallen in love at fifth gin tonic. He asks for your number and you give it to him. You check his WhatsApp picture to make sure it’s not a gym selfie. It is not. Wedding bells ring in the distance.
5. More research
Now it’s time for the serious research. Who is he, really? You figure out what school he went to, what university, you try to calculate his exact age based on this information. His WhatsApp name only has his first name and the first initial of his last, so you go to Facebook to figure out the rest. With one quick search and the help of a few CIA agents in the form of best friends, you’ve figured out his name, his father’s name, his father’s father’s name, and the fact that his dog died just last year. You’ve never been a dog person, but now you are.
6. Dating
A few days later, Mr. Mysterious asks you out on a date. You go. You don’t really have an appetite but you order food anyway because you don’t want to seem like one of those people who doesn’t eat. You nibble on your small dish and drink your first-date anxieties away. He spends the whole time talking about himself and checking his phone, surely bad signs. He consistently asks you: “Leh ma 3am tkhabreene 3an halik? ” Maybe because every time I say something you mumble an “uhuh”, and then your eyes wander off to the restaurant’s decor? But you overlook it because you finally have a chance of being with someone and that’s more important than a healthy interpersonal relationship, right?
7. Meeting the friends
The next time you go out, he brings a couple of his guy friends along. They smoke too much, drink too much, talk too much, and say ‘bro’ too much. But somehow, with the desperate-colored glasses on, it’s fine.
8. Meeting the family…kind of
He brings his real bro out to the beach with you. This basically means he’s testing the waters to see if you’ll get along with his family, but not family as significant as his parents.
9. Discovering the negative
After two weeks, your rose-tinted glasses start to lose a little tint. He got too drunk at the beach in the comfort of his brother’s presence and was really rude to the waiters and mentioned some questionable opinions he has about women. You justify it by saying that he was drunk and whoever said that drunken words were sober thoughts was drunk too, probably.
10. Overcoming the negative
He’s a little embarrassed at his Loco Beach behavior. So the next week is all positive.
11. First Insta-pic
One day you get a Whatsapp message: “shu bhot caption?” and the day has come. ‘@MrMysterious1982 tagged you in a photo’ and you are officially in Insta-love.
12. Breakup
The Insta-love was short lived. You break up after a fight about him being rude to waiters, and he hits you with that, “Ana 3ande meet shaghle 3a rasse w ma fiyye ethammal ba3ed tenkeed menik“.
13. Deleting of first Insta-pic
You look back at the Insta-pic to zoom in to different parts of the picture that you hadn’t zoomed into before when you stared at it for 35-45 hours. The picture is nowhere to be found. Cheap move bro.
14. Crying
Cue all the ‘I’m going to die alone’ thoughts. You also have a newfound obsession and profound understanding of Nancy Ajram’s ‘Inta Eih’.
15. Drinking
Back to the bottle to fill the void.
16. Going out to become aware of a new person’s existence
This time, you go to the bar just beside the one where you met your newfound ex Insta-love. You sit at a table in plain sight of the whole place with the same girlfriends, and wait for the next hazy-eyed glance.
1. Becoming aware of their existence
You’re sitting at a bar with your friends, feeling as lonely as Melania Trump. Suddenly, without warning, your eyes lock with someone across the bar – which, at this point, means you’re basically engaged.
2. Research
You go home after a night of drinking and inhaling a burger at 4 AM. You start messaging your friends asking if anyone knows the mysterious person you locked eyes with at the bar. One of your friends knows them: “Ken ma3 khayye bi internship min 5 years, ktir mahdoum w mratab“. It’s time to get to work.
3. Utilizing your random friend who knows them
You’re not that close with the one friend who went to university with the bedroom-eyed bar guy, but today, you are. You message them relentlessly saying you want to meet up and go for drinks again and you *coincidentally* suggest that you meet at the same bar where your eyes first met. You go, sit at the bar instead of on a table, and wait. If he shows up, then next up comes…
4. Courting
You’ll keep exchanging sultry looks for the night until your friend *pretends* to go to the bathroom. He takes this opportunity as his only chance. He’ll sit next to you, ask you if you want a drink and will probably try to get you drunk enough to enhance his looks in your drunk-goggles. His first-liner is “3am beze3jik shi? ” and you have fallen in love at fifth gin tonic. He asks for your number and you give it to him. You check his WhatsApp picture to make sure it’s not a gym selfie. It is not. Wedding bells ring in the distance.
5. More research
Now it’s time for the serious research. Who is he, really? You figure out what school he went to, what university, you try to calculate his exact age based on this information. His WhatsApp name only has his first name and the first initial of his last, so you go to Facebook to figure out the rest. With one quick search and the help of a few CIA agents in the form of best friends, you’ve figured out his name, his father’s name, his father’s father’s name, and the fact that his dog died just last year. You’ve never been a dog person, but now you are.
6. Dating
A few days later, Mr. Mysterious asks you out on a date. You go. You don’t really have an appetite but you order food anyway because you don’t want to seem like one of those people who doesn’t eat. You nibble on your small dish and drink your first-date anxieties away. He spends the whole time talking about himself and checking his phone, surely bad signs. He consistently asks you: “Leh ma 3am tkhabreene 3an halik? ” Maybe because every time I say something you mumble an “uhuh”, and then your eyes wander off to the restaurant’s decor? But you overlook it because you finally have a chance of being with someone and that’s more important than a healthy interpersonal relationship, right?
7. Meeting the friends
The next time you go out, he brings a couple of his guy friends along. They smoke too much, drink too much, talk too much, and say ‘bro’ too much. But somehow, with the desperate-colored glasses on, it’s fine.
8. Meeting the family…kind of
He brings his real bro out to the beach with you. This basically means he’s testing the waters to see if you’ll get along with his family, but not family as significant as his parents.
9. Discovering the negative
After two weeks, your rose-tinted glasses start to lose a little tint. He got too drunk at the beach in the comfort of his brother’s presence and was really rude to the waiters and mentioned some questionable opinions he has about women. You justify it by saying that he was drunk and whoever said that drunken words were sober thoughts was drunk too, probably.
10. Overcoming the negative
He’s a little embarrassed at his Loco Beach behavior. So the next week is all positive.
11. First Insta-pic
One day you get a Whatsapp message: “shu bhot caption?” and the day has come. ‘@MrMysterious1982 tagged you in a photo’ and you are officially in Insta-love.
12. Breakup
The Insta-love was short lived. You break up after a fight about him being rude to waiters, and he hits you with that, “Ana 3ande meet shaghle 3a rasse w ma fiyye ethammal ba3ed tenkeed menik“.
13. Deleting of first Insta-pic
You look back at the Insta-pic to zoom in to different parts of the picture that you hadn’t zoomed into before when you stared at it for 35-45 hours. The picture is nowhere to be found. Cheap move bro.
14. Crying
Cue all the ‘I’m going to die alone’ thoughts. You also have a newfound obsession and profound understanding of Nancy Ajram’s ‘Inta Eih’.
15. Drinking
Back to the bottle to fill the void.
16. Going out to become aware of a new person’s existence
This time, you go to the bar just beside the one where you met your newfound ex Insta-love. You sit at a table in plain sight of the whole place with the same girlfriends, and wait for the next hazy-eyed glance.
