Glenda Simms, Contributor
A CANADIAN daily, The National Post, reported on August 22, 2003, that modern ideas of romance are linked to Inuit teen suicides.
In the report, writer Chris Lackner informs us that a Yale University psychologist will travel to Nunuvut (Canada's newest territory, inhabited largely by Inuit people) to investigate the leading causes of the high suicide rates among young Inuits.
Lackner points out that since Nunuvut was created in 1999, 104 suicides have been reported within its population of 27,000 82 of the victims have been between the ages of 10 and 24.
The Yale team which has been doing research in order to understand this serious socio-cultural phenomenon, has concluded that these suicides result from "the cultural collision between the Western notion of romance and Inuit traditions." It is posited that this generation of Inuit young people are being bombarded by the overwhelming ideas of romantic love in English novels, television shows and films.
These ideas are diametrically opposed to the traditional knowledge of their parents and grandparents who were socialised to arrange marriages between individuals who were deemed suitable and compatible with each other in line with the value system of the community in which they live.
THE CINDERELLA COMPLEX
In discussing the link between the concept of 'romantic love' and suicide, Dr. Kraal, one of the Yale researchers, reviewed coroners' reports from two Inuit communities, which cited romantic troubles as precipitating factors in 68 per cent of 25 youth suicides between 1981 and 1998.
In thinking about this state of affairs in Nunuvut, it might serve us well to revisit the notion of "romantic love" and its impact on many other societies that are dominated by and reflective of Western cultures and value systems.
In the case of Jamaica and other nations of the CARICOM region, there are diverse ethnic and cultural groups in the populations. Some of these have been able to continue a tradition of arranged marriages either within the borders of their small nation states or between their offsprings and their counterpart in the metropolis from which they originated.
However, the majority of Caribbean young people have inherited, and is bombarded by notions of "romantic love". These notions are rooted in the colonial experience of all diasporic peoples.
Whether one is literate or illiterate, one has a sense of the "Cinderella Complex" which teaches young women that regardless of their circumstances the possibility of being transformed into a "princess fit for a king" is a reality. There will always be a "prince in shining armour" to sweep every starry-eyed girl off her feet.
She will know him when she sees him. She will fall head over heels in love. She will feel this love in her heart, the guts and the groin and she will live happily ever after with her man just the way they tell us in the fairy tales.
YOUNG AND RESTLESS
More recently, every young woman is being told that she will find instant love, if she keeps changing partners, just the way they do it in the Young and the Restless. After all, "woman luck deh a dungle heap".
By the same token our young men are seeking the latest "hottie hottie" to experience romance and instant happiness. Men like women would like to live "happily ever after" that "love at first sight" or is it "first bite"?
This idea of "romantic love" which will result in us "living happily ever after" puts pressure on young people to truly trust the myth of "romantic love" in order to find a state of happiness in a very immediate way.
This search for love's "holy grail" can cause confusion and a sense of helplessness especially in those who are going through rapid physical and psychological developmental changes.
In the May 7, 2000 edition of the New York Times Magazine, writer Andrew Delbanco in an insightful article entitled, 'Are you Happy Yet?' discussed how Americans have taken to heart Thomas Jefferson's formulation "pursuit of happiness" as one of the "self evident truths" in the Declaration of Independence, even though no one really knows what happiness means.
After discussing the biological, philosophical and psychological dimensions of the pursuit of happiness, Delbanco concluded that in whatever way happiness is defined, "when people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves."
Notions of the "pursuit of happiness through others" and "romantic love" must be revisited from time to time, especially when we are trying to come to grips with issues such as the changing of gender roles and relationships, gender-based violence, teenage pregnancies, the spread of HIV-AIDS and suicides amongst youth.
We sometimes need to seek answers to questions about the human condition that might appear to be unimportant in an ever changing and complex world. New ways of figuring out "what is going on?" in seemingly mundane aspects of our daily lives should be of interest to everyone.
In the area of "romantic love", women need to keep asking questions about themselves and their male/female relationships.
In the 1989 national bestseller, The Dance of Intimacy, author Harriet Goldhor Lerner wrote that "women are the experts" on the implications of romantic relationships. She argued then that "the rules of the game were clear and simple: men were to seek their fortune and women were to seek men Men must be somebody: women must find somebody."
In today's contemporary milieu, when women have broadened many frontiers in the workforce, in the academy and in the family dynamics, Lerner's thesis might need much revision. But are there still some truths in her basic understanding of the trappings of intimacy and romance? In the same way that the young people of the Nunuvut are sacrificing their lives in the search for meaning in "romantic love" so also are our young people "treading dangerous waters" in the search of romance.
ISSUES NEED TO BE DISCUSSED
These issues need to be discussed in the school's sex education curriculum in community groups, in churches and service clubs. Young people need to be encouraged to question the mythologies that have impacted on our psyche.
They need to be given critical skills to constantly critique long-held beliefs about what constitutes love, intimacy and all the other features of human relationships.
The situation of the Inuit youth might be the most extreme reaction to the clash of cultural values. They might be at one end of the scale but all the colonised peoples fall somewhere along a continuum of "love sickness".
We need to encourage the media to carry solid stories of relationships that are founded on friendship, love and trust, such as those carried in the Monday, September 22, 2003 copy of the Flair magazine.
Let us help our youth to understand that "romantic love" and "instant potato" have a lot in common. They might satisfy a "hunger pang" but they do not have enough substance to sustain.
Dr. Glenda Simms is the executive director of the Bureau of Women's Affairs.
