When I was single I had this idea that once you were happily in a relationship Valentine’s Day was this magical day full of hearts and pink flowers. I thought it was incredibly romantic, and that of course anyone who was truly in love would go all out for it. I was sure if you were happily in love it had to be your favorite holiday.
I’m not sure where I got those ideas from. Maybe it came from years of working in offices that looked like a flower shop on Valentine’s Day, reading so many romance novels, or watching too many romantic comedies. I’m really not sure. As usual, reality has turned out to be very different from how I thought things would go.
I really think that Nick and I are just bad at Valentine’s Day, and I’ll freely admit that I’m definitely worse at it than Nick is. I’m not sure what it is. We’ve tried. We’ve really tried. It’s not that we don’t like holidays, and I think we’re fairly good at most other holidays. Nick is great at birthdays. Nick’s mom is great at Christmas, enough so that the rest of us can just kind of follow her example and be pretty good at it. I like to think I’m fairly good at Thanksgiving, which, for the record, remains my favorite holiday of all time. Valentine’s Day is just a completely different story for us.
It seems that most years at least one of us is sick on Valentine’s Day. We’ve both had the flu on Valentine’s Day. One year Nick left work with a stomach virus, and I ended up going to get the frozen bananas I’d had delivered to him at work. Some years the weather has wreaked havoc on our attempts at Valentine’s Day celebrations. There was the year that Nick sent me a gardenia plant at work. It arrived right after they closed my building ahead of a major snow storm, so it sat in its box in the security room for four days. It was a dead, crusty lump by the time I got it.
Emma’s birthday was the day after Valentine’s Day, and we always made a big deal out of her birthday, so last year was a little hard since it was our first year without her.Over the years we’ve lowered our expectations for Valentine’s Day. For a few years we just did cards, but it seemed like even that was a hassle that had at least one of us, usually me, out buying a card on the actual holiday. Again, I don’t know what it is with Valentine’s Day. I have several Christmas presents for this year already. I’m capable of cooking two separate Thanksgiving dinners on the actual holiday and having them both ready on time. I’m not usually the person running around trying to do things at the last minute. I don’t know why I can’t seem to get it together for Valentine’s Day.
This year, we’ve agreed that we’re not doing anything for Valentine’s Day. We have no plans for going out to dinner. We’re not sending each other flowers, candy, fruit, or anything else. We’re not even planning to exchange cards.
We briefly considered cards, but then decided against them. Honestly, it felt more like yet another thing on a to-do list than something we were excited about doing. We don’t save cards, so they just would have ended up in the recycling bin in a few weeks anyway. That seemed like such a waste, especially since Valentine’s Day cards seem to be anywhere from $5.00 and up. That’s admission to some museums or state parks, and since we’re trying to make more of an effort to do things this year we thought we’d be better off putting our time, energy, and money into going to a museum, state park, or even just trying a new coffee shop. Obviously not on Valentine’s Day, though, since our plans on that day never seem to work out.
It doesn’t sound romantic or exciting I know, but it has taken away a lot of pressure to plan, to spend, and to try to live up to expectations. It’s not that we’re anti-holiday. I’m sure that we’ll do our usual big events for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Everyone has to choose how to spend their time, effort, and money. We’re just choosing to acknowledge that Valentine’s Day isn’t the holiday that’s worth it for us to go all out for.
So what about you? Is Valentine’s Day a big event for you? Do you have better luck with it than we have? Or is there another holiday you prefer to make a big event of?
