Deconstructing love: lessons learned & hacks discovered

By Saadia Khan

Love evokes different emotions for different people depending on the environment they grow up in and the spaces they inhabit. As a result, our individual & collective love language may vary across cultural, national, and ethnic boundaries, yet love's universality is undeniable.

I decided to delve into the topic of love in season 13 of Immigrantly , my weekly podcast. I saw it as an explorative journey to talk about everything love-related, from managing anxiety in a relationship to the concept of love vs. arranged marriages and other taboos to sexual empowerment & self-love. I knew that inquiry into love would require me to look inwards & expose personal emotions in unprecedented ways – ways that would make anyone want to hide behind the metaphorical door. But I fought that impulse and leaned into what became an incredible journey of learning and unlearning various aspects of love. Expectedly, some topics resonated more than others. I was especially taken by the conversations around self-pleasure, self-love, dating, and arranged marriage.

For anyone who grapples with thoughts & questions on love, I have some observations and advice to share. They are nascent but nonetheless important musings, inspired by discussions with certain Season 13 guests as well as by my own inter-relational and self-experiences.

Self-Pleasure

'Sex' and discussions around it can be taboo no matter where you reside. Some cultures are more constricted than others. For example, conversations about sex are more prohibited in Eastern cultures than the Western cultures. Pakistan is no exception. In Pakistan, sex is only permissible after marriage, primarily as a tool for procreation. It is not meant for self-pleasure. Some people, mainly men but women too, engage in pre-marital sex for self-pleasure, but no one talks about or acknowledges it. So, when I moved to the U.S., I thought the approach to sexuality and sexual pleasure would be more progressive in some ways. Unfortunately, I didn't find American society as sexually liberating as expected. Sure, people talked more openly about their experiences with sex, and the body wasn't as hidden from public view. Yet, I found that women approached sexual pleasure through the male gaze and did not prioritize self-pleasure. People still struggle to understand their bodies as vessels for sexual emancipation.

It seems that the idea of sex for self-pleasure is almost non-existent across different cultures. So this anecdote brings me to my first piece of advice:

When you engage in acts of sexual pleasure, it should be for yourself first. Invest time in understanding your anatomy & discovering what truly makes you happy, sexually. So if and when you set out to please others, you are empowered to give & receive, bringing balance to the scales of self-love & love for others.

Self-Love

Self-love manifests in many forms, from sexual liberation to simple acts of taking a selfie, going to the spa, reading a book, disassociating from toxic people in life, or even social media blackout. Undoubtedly, self-love is one of the most critical dimensions of love often overlooked. Some of us are so focused on attending to others' needs' that we often neglect to care for ourselves. We forget that we cannot love others unless we know how to love ourselves first. My advice;

Learn to love yourself first before you can love anyone else, and do it without guilt or shame. Dare to decolonize beauty, rebel against body shaming & celebrate aging. Don't look to someone else to satisfy your emotional & physical needs. The human capacity to love is expansive and, therefore, can accommodate the love of others and self-love simultaneously. 

Dating

Dating norms vary across different cultural and societal practices. Some cultures are more accepting of dating than others. For instance, Pakistani society relies heavily on family and friends for match-making purposes (think match-making apps in the U.S.). Therefore, dating is not as ubiquitous as in Western cultures. Sometimes people pretend to be friends until they are ready to commit to avoid unwelcome attention. Sure, some people openly date, and the concept is becoming more common in Pakistani culture. However, it is still not normalized.

In contrast, while dating is an integral part of American society, I feel like the expectation to start dating from an early age can put undue pressure on young kids. It seems to me that sometimes, young people in the U.S. date to comply with society's implicit timeline for when to start dating. Bring social media, casual dating apps, and hookups into the mix, and you have new horizons to explore. I remember interviewing a guest for the season who mentioned how alcohol could sometimes skew a person's judgment about their dating experience and make it appear more pleasant than it is. My dating experience was almost two decades ago, and that too in Pakistan, where I did not know I was “dating” until he proposed to me. LOL. So my advice is based on observational knowledge, interactions with guests, and my team, primarily young women in their 20s.

Engage in a relationship when you are ready and try not to abide by a timeline that society dictates; otherwise, you will be miserable and make your partner feel unloved.  Also, for the folks who rely on alcohol as their wingman, try meeting people without it. A clear mind and open personality might do the same trick (and without the hangover)!

Arranged Marriage

I want to introduce the idea of arranged marriage, something people from the West often get wrong. First, an arranged marriage doesn't mean forced marriage. Yes, there are instances of forced marriage, however, most folks who go through an arranged marriage are themselves the final deciders about who they marry. Second, I feel arranged marriage is a more practical way to balance expectation and reality without emotions clouding our judgment, as may be the case for love marriage. Here's what I think:

Don't judge norms that you don't fully understand. Instead, invest the time to learn about other cultures by either reading books written by people from those cultures or making friendships that cross geographic, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. Be patient, and empathic–you may still not understand different cultural practices, but you can surely respect them.

To sum up, love is complicated, messy, fun, painful & much more. As we grapple with various iterations of love, we must know that we all experience similar emotions. The universality of love language is empathy and understanding of each other's experiences, with a smattering of compromise, and the rest will follow!

Saadia Khan is a Columbia University Graduate, a rights activist, story teller & a Pakistani American first generation immigrant. She is also the creator, producer and host of a weekly Podcast called ”Immigrantly” which features deeply personal conversations on race, identity, multiculturalism & the general messiness of being human. You can follow her on Twitter @swkkhan and Immigrantly @immigrantly_pod.