Real Life Romance

It’s Valentine season again. If I had a least favorite time of year, this would be it. I don’t have anything against romantic love–far from it. My marriage has been one of the happiest parts of my life. But I can’t stand manufactured romance.

You know what I mean. Shelf after shelf of heart-shaped boxes of cheap candy. Hoards of mass-produced teddy bears hugging satin hearts. The incessant pinkness of everything.

The pinkness should tip you off, if nothing else does: Valentine’s Day, in its current incarnation, has turned into a festival of female appeasement. (More specifically: heterosexual, monogamous female appeasement.) It’s the day when each man is asked to prove his love for one woman–and woe be to the guy who doesn’t. He has to live up to a Hollywood standard of a room stocked with candles, rose petals, and champagne on ice. Anything less is, apparently, a sign that he doesn’t love that woman enough.

I once told a male colleague that I wasn’t a fan of Valentine’s Day, that I honestly didn’t care whether Mike gave me a V-Day gift. “Are you sure about that?” he asked. When I said that I was, he asked “Are you very, very sure?”

I’m guessing he wouldn’t have asked either of those questions if I’d been a fellow dude. Caring deeply about such silly things is the special province of women. (See: pinkness.)

Of course, women buy Valentine’s Day gifts for men as well. But the sea of pink through which we swim in February should make it clear that this is a girls’ holiday. If guys get gifts, that’s mostly a matter of fairness and reciprocity. Don’t believe me? Google “Valentine’s Gifts for Guys.” List after list explaining what women might buy for men. Women need those lists because, apparently, the shelves filled with candy and teddy bears are not targeted at just any Valentine.

(Some of my favorite suggestions from those lists: bacon brittle. A potted cactus. A heart-shaped box filled with jerky. Because nothing tells a guy I love you like the suggestion that he’s salty, prickly, and unpleasantly tough.)

Mike and I have been married for nearly 30 years. In the early going, we exchanged V-Day gifts and took great pleasure in having a Valentine to spoil. The first year we were together, he bought me a ridiculously expensive framed print that I had admired through a shop window during a trip to the local mall. It was an extravagant gesture that we couldn’t afford. But it told me  he’d do whatever it took to make me happy. That’s a nice thing to know about your partner, but also a point of caution. I’ve learned to be very careful about pointing out things I like, because that item might well show up on my doorstep in a box from Amazon.

We haven’t exchanged Valentine’s Day gifts in many years now. Sometimes we buy the half-price chocolate-dipped strawberries on February 15th (#RealLoveIsPractical), but sometimes we just skip the day entirely. We can do that because, if you’re involved in a real-life romance–whether that romance is with one man, one woman, or several different partners at once–the most important thing is knowing that you’re loved all the time. 

How do you know? Here are just a few of the things that have worked to maintain my own Real Life Romance:

We try hard to keep things equal, so no one feels unappreciated.

For instance: I make dinner, Mike does the dishes. Making the effort to be concerned about an equal division of labor every day tells your partner that you don’t want them to feel as if they’re being taken for granted.

We offer small surprises for no particular reason.

I mean very small. Like someone’s favorite candy bar, whenever it happens to be on sale. This demonstrates that we’re thinking about each other all the time–not just on the designated day of the year.

We make small gestures of connection.

Sometimes I get up early and take care of the animals so Mike can sleep in. Sometimes he does the same for me. Most mornings, he brings me a cup of coffee while I’m watching the news. If I see a book I think he’d like, I send him the link.

We listen to each other.

That means eye contact, which means putting down your phone (or turning off the television) when someone is speaking to you. And we do our best to remember what we’ve talked about, which shows we’re paying attention. But that gets harder as we age, so . . .

We forgive each other easily.

That means we talk out our anger, avoiding the passive-aggressive I’m fine stage of argument. We don’t hold grudges–when we’re done with an argument, we’re done. And, most importantly, we don’t dredge up past wrongdoing. If you really can’t forgive someone, that’s a sign of larger problems in the relationship that need to be addressed.

 

After many years of marriage, I’ve learned that the manufactured expressions of romance are the least meaningful. Really, how much effort does it take to run into Target and grab a stuffed bear and a bottle of champagne from the sale racks at the front of the store? When people talk about losing the romance in their relationship, I don’t think they mean those things. They’re talking about deep connection and reliable partnership. They’re talking about knowing that someone actually cares whether you’re happy, whether you feel appreciated for all the small things you do–things no one else would likely notice.

Real romance isn’t about Valentine’s Day at all. It’s about how you live your life on the other 364 days of the year.