A Little Valentine's Advice

I wanted to check in on Valentine's Day because I was struck by a thought that I wanted to share. I've been keeping busy when I'm not working by blogging on my football blog, which in case you forgot or wasn't aware, is inmuchlessdetail.blogspot.com. Now that football season's over, I'll try to make my way back here to my original blog much more often. Married life is definitely not perfect, but the only thing I'll say about that at the moment is, I still love my wife, she still loves me, we still got married for the right reasons, and we're going to work out our problems together as a team. That's not what I wanted to speak about. I just wanted to share my wife's reactions when her Valentine's presents were delivered to her job. First, she got a delivery from Shari's Berries, which are humongoid strawberries dipped in chocolate designs. She was happy about them, as I figured she would because she likes chocolate and she likes strawberries. Then her dozen roses came a couple of hours later, and she texted me, "You really outdid yourself this time!" She didn't expect the roses and the berries, so I'm glad they got delivered separately, though I didn't plan that. (She actually just texted while I was typing that the berries were a hit with the office.) I'm about to groom myself in preparation for an Italian dinner she's taking me to when she gets home. I have to address the issue of Valentine's Hate, which is not a man-woman thing, as both genders seem to be afflicted with it. Rather, it's an issue where someone is either single and trying to downplay their feelings of inadequacy, which is completely understandable, or in a relationship and trying to shove off the commercialism of it all, as if they're just so above that. You know who I'm talking about. "My significant other and I don't need to celebrate our love on a specified day. We let each other know every day of the week. No corporate holiday can tell us how and when we should be good to each other." Here's my response: I have now sent flowers and candy and berries to my wife on several different Valentine's, and her reaction is always to tell me how sweet I am and how great it makes her feel to be appreciated like that. Why in the blue hell would you go out of your way to NOT make your honey feel special on the one day where it's an unofficial holiday set aside to make your honey feel special? Some folks work so hard to be "above it all" that they lose sight of things. I don't care how many times your woman tells you that Valentine's isn't a big deal to her, it's a big deal to her. While you're busy being too cool to show her any kind of token of your feelings, she's gotta go through the day with red hearts everywhere she turns, and friends gabbing to her about the sweet thing their man did for them, and eventually, it makes her, if not sad and melancholy, reflective on your union, and that's not good. The only thing not doing anything for Valentine's does is give your woman cause to pause and think about how special you make her feel at other times, and unless you're giving her a unicorn every day, you're probably going to come up short in her eyes. "Oh yeah? Well, fuck her then! She don't deserve me anyway!" Keep going, tough guy, see how much good that attitude does you when you find her secret website and discover that she's been getting what she wants elsewhere. My point is, why single your girl out and make her feel lonely and unappreciated on this day just to prove that you're no slave to fake holidays? If it hurts that much to show her love on Valentine's, then either you're probably not ready for a relationship with her or your flame is out so it doesn't matter. Either way, sucks to be her. Drop your pride and get her something or take her out. Your ego ain't more important than your relationship, and if it is, then you need help.