“we want to be free, we don’t want to follow “him” around!” they told me. Serval of their friends had boyfriends, but they could see how they needed to hide away to be affectionate and how they got attached and tied to their boyfriends, spending considerably less time with friends. Pemala once looked at me and said with an unmistakable discontent in her voice; “It´s expected that you follow him around and listen to him.” Even though they want to be free for now, all three of them told me that it is more common amongst their friends to have a sweetheart at a younger age than before. Where do they hide, then? How do they manage to have an affectionate relationship without openly dating? Where are the couples “free space”? Walking through the public parks in Yangon, this is not a mystery for very long. A public park is a space where young couples can meet, and they are used as such. In every spot possible, behind bushes, under the trees and in the shadow of statues or other somewhat shielded areas, the grass is flat from blankets or filled with couples. All day long you can find couples hiding in the shadow of one or two umbrellas for a little privacy and shade from the sun. It is a normal sight, and I would guess it has been the case for quite a while. Besides the public parks, these couples now have another platform to show affection. Facebook. Quite early, I started to notice many posts from my local Facebook friends, pouring out their hearts and feelings. Everything from love, anger, happiness, or other feelings. These posts stood out the most to me. I noticed how it was common to write about their affection without mentioning any names. Some examples from my Facebook feed is; “You got the ways of a woman in love!”, “To love is to suffer… To avoid suffering one must not love… But then one suffers from not loving…” “I keep U safe but U spoil” edited as a text into a mirror selfie. 10 Because of the content but also since they were often written in English, I could understand these posts. It is not only love and affection, but skepticism, happiness, sadness, and even hate and conflicts. Mimi and Pemala told me, while we were still at Ice Berry, that if someone misunderstood a post, they would rather believe their interpretation of what the Facebook post stated that what they would say to that person while speaking? It seemed like this was an issue they had encountered recently when Pemala explained; “It didn´t even say any name, it 10 These status updates were written in English. The Burmese written updates I was not able to read. 68