Posted on February 14, 2013
So it’s Valentine’s Day. The High Holy Day of romance.
The Facebook and Twitter feed is going to be loaded with messages about love.
The flower delivery guys are going to be working double time.
Husbands and significant others are going to be sweating bullets, especially the ones who haven’t gotten their act together.
To be honest, as a romance author, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to hold up the whole V-day thing. I mean, I’m supposed to be an expert on love and romance.
(Which is why I’m sitting right here writing my obligatory Valentine’s day blog article.)
And, you know, I am an expert on this holiday. But not the way you might think.
Once, a long time ago, I worked in public relations for a trade association of very large retailers. And one of my job descriptions was to sell Valentines Day. Every year we did a survey of shoppers to find out how much they were going to spend on this holiday. And every year the gender gap between men and women widened. Women planned to spend under ten bucks on a few cards and maybe something fun for the kids. Guys were going all out buying diamonds and flowers. On Valentines Day I would wake up very early and spend most of the day on the phone doing radio interviews about this gender gap. And then I would make suggestions to the forlorn husbands, boyfriends, and significant others who had screwed up and forgotten. Every year my assistant and I put together a list of romantic suggestions that the Valentines Day challenged could pick up at their local big box retailer on the way home from work.
This experience put me off the whole thing. I mean, reducing love to the value of a gift is pitiful. And, increasingly, this is what Valentines Days seems to be all about.
Yesterday a friend of mine who is going through a pretty bad break-up made the comment that it was particularly annoying to have a guy who ignores you 364 days a year, turn around and give you something expensive on V-Day. At the same time, I used to remember how my assistant, who was not married and didn’t have a boyfriend, used to turn into a total grump every V-day when we had to pull together romantic suggestions for the romance-challenged. She felt lonely and left out, and she shouldn’t have.
Love is not about Valentines Day gifts. It’s not about flowers. Or any of that. Sure, it’s awesome when some guy sends you flowers, but just think about how much more awesome it would be if your honey sent you flowers on some random day, instead of feeling obliged to send them on February 14? This year I told my hubby not to do anything. He takes care of me every day. He keeps my car running. He’s redoing the basement for me so I can have a sewing room. He’s taking me to Spring Training on my birthday. He tells me every day how much he loves me. Not in presents, but in his actions. I hope I reciprocate. I think I do. I mean, I do his laundry every week, and that is love.
If you want to be romantic, remember that love is an active verb. It can’t be bought for the price of a dozen roses. And we do our men a serious injustice by expecting them to put out on this day every year. It’s not fair to them and it’s not fair to us, either.
So, to get everyone into a truly romantic mood, here’s Clint Black singing one of my favorite loves songs, Something That We Do.
