And, what about people who are single and are encouraged by all the publicity to feel that they have failed in some way because they do not have a partner? I married later in life and was aware that I might live my life single. I thought then and I think now that life as a single person is much preferable to life in a toxic relationship.
Having said that, I've been married for nearly 30 years and I like it. Many times a day I'm grateful for my husband. He's easy to live with. He loves to laugh. We don't have to be doing the same thing to feel connected. He knows more than I do about computers and patiently answers my questions even though I have asked the same one before and, having failed to write down a procedure, have forgotten how to do it. I don't know about all male and female brains but I do know that ours work differently. Richard is much better than I am at seeing the principles behind how things work so I often come to him after struggling with something in the shop and say, "I need your boy brain." He comes out, looks at whatever it is, considers it and, more often than not, is able to help me figure out how to make it work. Sometimes I find this frustrating because I would like to be more independent but the fact that he is available and always willing to help means more to me than any bouquet of flowers.
In the last six months Richard and I have taken up ukuleles. In my case I played as a teenager. In his case the uke is completely new. We enjoy playing together and laughing at some of the ungodly sounds that issue from the poor little instruments. Sometimes we finish a song, look at each other and acknowledge that it didn't sound too bad after all. Richard is studying harmony and he has been writing down and arranging some of the songs we play by ear. He enjoys the challenge and I enjoy having the music to go from. Yesterday he finished an arrangement of "The Lark in the Clear Air" and gave it to me to play. He didn't do it because it was Valentine's Day and if he had finished it a day or a week earlier or later it would have made no difference. He did it because he wanted to and knew I would enjoy it. That kind of love and appreciation can happen any day of the year.
If Valentine's Day is a day you both look forward to as a chance to celebrate your relationship by doing something special then, by all means, celebrate. If however, it is a day that makes you feel you must come up to external expectations of what love is and how it's expressed then, please, let yourself off the hook. Flowers die and chocolate gets eaten. Respect and appreciation for another person is what endures and, in my books, what matters.
