DARDACHA is our weekly debate session which takes place every Monday at 18:15. Last Monday, the topic was about love and relationships which began with a presentation by Majda about the article ‘Millennials have taken the heartbreak out of the long distance relationship‘ (link). The participants were asked to reflect and discuss the following four main points:
- What is love for you?
- Did you live real relationships and how was it?
- Did you live virtual relationships and how did you feel about it?
- Do you speak to your parents about love?
At the very beginning of the discussion, a huge number of the participants were hesitant to discuss the topic and avoided to share their own experiences.
Love, for some exists and for others not. 4 out of 25 participants stated that they do not believe in something called love. One female participant added that if love was not mentioned in books and in cinema, she would have never believe that it exists.
The majority spoke about living multiple relationships either beginning as real and ending up as virtual because of the distance or vice versa. The great majority of our participants preferred
An interesting number of participants, expressed about the difficultly of tackling love and relationship issues with their parents. Some expressed that they never heard their parents express love to each other. And they never heard ‘I love you’ from their parents as well. The word and the feeling itself is suppressed in the Moroccan society and considered shameful. One participant said ‘When I fall in love with a woman, I am never able to tell her that I love her, I cannot, I try to express the feeling using other methods like showing that I care about what she did during the day or what her plans are’.
Towards the end of the debate, each participant was given a piece of paper and were asked to discreetly and anonymously answer by yes or no to whether they had a sexual relationship. 10 answered yes and 15 answered by no.
Our participants later on the week expressed the need for more deep discussion of this kind. At Connect Institute, they feel safe to discuss and express their feelings and opinions.
