By Dimithri Wijesinghe
Valentine’s Day is coming up and in true meme fashion, people have placed themselves in two camps – one side comprising those who absolutely love Valentine’s Day and go all the way with gifts, chocolates, and flowers, and the other making fun of those who take the day too seriously while also indulging in some self-deprecating humour for being single and wine drunk on what they view as sickeningly commercial non-holiday.
While for the majority it is a lighthearted event, a chance to have a bit of fun, and celebrate the relationships in their lives, for others it is an excuse to be a little extra cheesy and romantic.
It is interesting to observe how something like Valentine’s Day is approached in a country like ours, where romantic love and relationships remain cultural taboos up until you’re in your mid 20s, when society deems that you are now suddenly ready to procreate.
If you attended school in Sri Lanka, especially a government school, then you are well aware of how 14 February is dealt with in schools. There will often be a full-blown ‘criminal investigation’ to ensure that you do not indulge in young love, because somehow falling in love with a fellow teenager is the worst thing a teenager can do. While it was somewhat exciting and a little bit hilarious at the time, there are those who are seriously affected emotionally by these actions of adults.
When young love goes terribly wrong
This suppression of emotions and overall taboo nature and treatment of young love and romance has had very unfortunate real-world consequences. Teenagers, who are experiencing strong unfamiliar emotions for the first time in their lives, are told that what they’re feeling is wrong or something to be ashamed of, or worse, something that should not be addressed at all.
We can see a very recent example of this, with the truly horrific incident that took place on 1 February, where a 15-year-old girl was murdered by a 17-year-old boy. According to Agbopura Police OIC Dahampath, and as confirmed by the Kantale Teaching Hospital where the young girl was taken to be treated for her wounds, she was severely injured at the time of reaching the hospital. On 4 Friday, they confirmed that she had died in Dambulla, while being transferred to Kegalle Hospital. The perpetrator, who was produced before the Kantale Magistrate, was ordered to be held in custody until 9 February.
Brunch spoke to OIC Dahampath regarding the incident and he shared with us some brief details of the events that transpired – noting that it was not so much a relationship, but rather that they were known to each other and it appeared that the young boy may have developed one-sided feelings towards the girl and somehow started to feel a sense of entitlement towards her.
He said: “You know how teenagers are, they don’t really understand what they are doing. This boy has been harbouring feelings towards this girl and they have had some close interactions. He was familiar with the girl’s family as well and they had spoken to one another in a familiar way. However, when the boy went to ‘ask her out,’ the girl had rejected him once. On the second occasion he had taken the weapon with him and asked her again and she once again refused him, which is when he attacked her.”
It was interesting to note here that according to OIC Dahampath’s observations, teenagers, or children of this age, don’t know what romance and relationships are – he said that they go by feelings and don’t have a real understanding of how to approach love nor any idea how to differentiate it from infatuation.
He also added that the Police often came across many incidents of violence where young love had gone awry. He said that to his understanding, today’s media had given children this idea of false machismo, what it means to be a man and how they must act, when in reality they are just only being shown one side of the world and are not getting the help and guidance they need to navigate this information that is being fed to them. Dahampath also asserted that a lot of the blame had to be placed on the parents and their environments because children were often left to their own devices nowadays, which could be harmful.
Reaching out to Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Yasodha Rohanachandra, we asked what could be said about the love lives of young adults and the way in which they navigate their turbulent emotions.
Rohanachandra said: “Adolescents and young adults have difficulty in regulating strong emotions as the part of their brain responsible for regulating emotions is not yet fully developed. The area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is responsible for judgement, decision making, and impulse control. This area of the brain is not fully developed till 25 years of age which predisposes adolescents to difficulties with emotional regulation.”
In addition to this, Rohanachandra said that it was important to note how emotional regulation was not a skill that was focused on in Sri Lanka: “We are taught to suppress our emotions instead of displaying them in appropriate ways. Suppressing emotions for a while may overwhelm someone after a while, making them have an outburst of emotions or display emotions in inappropriate ways. In developed countries, emotional regulation is a skill that is taught within the school curriculum, but this is not given attention within the Sri Lankan school curriculum.”
She also added that some blame could potentially be attributed to environmental factors and observation. “Watching adults model violence and aggression may also predispose adolescents to behave this way. Display of violent programmes through media or social media may lead to normalisation of violence among adolescents and youth,” she said.
Lecturer in the field of Sociology, Complex Emergencies, and Humanitarian Responses Nevanka De Silva Jayathilake shared his thoughts on this matter, stating that in the discussion of sexuality, love, and relationships in Sri Lanka, there was a lack of openness. Not only is there general silence on the topic and encouragement to keep things quiet and ‘private,’ there are also those patriarchal norms that are reinforced as a result of this silence.
“If you look at relationships, in Sri Lanka women are often framed in the light of being the subject with whom a relationship is to be formed by a man who is the dominant figure who must be the doer in that context,” he said, noting that this led to power imbalances. The sense of entitlement and power, this fear of rejection, may all have culminated in affecting the actions of the parties involved in this recent incident.
Child Adolescent and Counselling Psychologist Dr. Kalharie Pitigala said that personally she believed young love should be encouraged, but that youth must be given the right tools to navigate the accompanying emotions. She said that as was the nature in much of the Western world; when children reach teenage years, it was the norm to find a peer who was a romantic partner.
Teenagers are more inclined to exploration and they want to form new and exciting bonds and relationships. Considering that this is a normal part of life, Dr. Pitigala said that it should be encouraged and children should be allowed to have these experiences, which would, in turn, prepare them for their adult lives and the more complex relationships yet to come their way.
Noting that the world was often very small for young adults, Dr. Pitigala explained that bringing in links like a boyfriend or girlfriend made their world just a little bit bigger and allowed them to expand their horizons and grow and develop as people. However, she stressed that because of their lack of experience with the world, the responsibility fell upon adults to guide them – not micromanage them – and help them navigate these turbulent waters.
