I don’t like Valentines Day. Not because I’m single, or anti-romance, but because I don’t think V-day is actually romantic. Don’t get me wrong – I like getting presents, and flowers, and generally being spoiled rotten. I am a normal human, after all. It’s just Valentines I don’t like.
Call me high-maintainance, but if you’re going to give me flowers, I’d like it to be because you want to give me flowers, because I like and deserve flowers. Or chocolates or whatever it is you’re going to give me. I don’t want them just because of the date, because Hallmark and Cadbury and Interflora have wasted vast sums on convincing you that you have to.
This is the crux of it: giving me flowers is a romantic gesture that I will appreciate and that will absolutely win me over – if you do it for the right reasons.
If you give me flowers because you know I like them, or I’m having a tough week or just because. If you take me out to dinner somewhere local because I look too done in to cook, that’s sweet, and as the wine revives me, romantic. If you take me to the Ivy on V-day or my birthday, that’s just a cliché.
Romance is tricky, and like any good devil, is in the details, not the price-tag. This is good news for those of us who are tightening our belts and avoiding checking whether we’re overdrawn yet this month (again). Because the dirty little secret that the big companies are hoping we won’t discover, is that romance isn’t big expensive gestures and can be pretty cheap.
It’s in noticing your partner, not in noting the date: in seeing the fatigue and the stress and reacting to soothe them. It’s in hearing the chance comments about likes and dislikes and interests and pet hates and paying enough attention to absorb the information for future use.
(This is a valuable sneaky trick that enables you to pull amazing surprises out of the bag when you want to, because they will have forgotten they told you about that and you look nearly psychic).
I’m not against the principle behind Valentines – that it’s good to show appreciation of your partner, that it’s good to make someone you love or fancy feel special – but that’s just what Valentines Day isn’t anymore. These days it’s about obilgatory conspicuous – and competitive - consumption, and there’s a lot of pressure to outdo last year and all her friends boyfriends/girlfriends (I say her because it appears from all the endless ads and articles that the most pressure is on straight men). Maybe I’m blonde, but I don’t see what that’s got to do with love or romance, or even appreciation. I don’t think you can quantify love by counting red roses or overpriced table d’hotes or even uncomfortable lingerie. But then, I’m romantic enough to want love to be non-commercial, and non-material. I want to think that love is, in essence, actually fairly simple, if almost frightening in that simplicity.
So I shall be having an Anti-Valentines Day, refusing to buy, eat or attend anything with a bloody red or pink or heart theme.
And if you want to buy me flowers, wait until tomorrow.
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