Have you ever wondered how to bring love back to Valentine’s Day?
When I was a kid, I loved Valentine’s Day – the whimsical colours, the chalky-message candy hearts, the box filled with silly cards from all my classmates… but as an adult, I began to buy into Valentine’s Day pressure. Was I getting the right, most thoughtful gift from my sweetie? Did he have something special planned for dinner or flowers?
I really agonized about these things and they become expectations that lead to what expectations always lead to: disappointment. Every year therapists, psychics and astrologers hear from people who are on the brink of desolation because they are still pining for someone who left their life, or because they feel alone and unloved, or because their loved one isn’t meeting their expectations.
How did something that’s supposed to be fun get so dark? Ever since a certain famous card manufacturer started mass producing Valentine cards in 1913 in Kansas City, the world has had an arbitrary way to measure the presence and absence of love. And because comparison takes us away from what we HAVE, it’s given us a way to compare our lives to a story of what should be. The right ring, the right dinner, the right romantic setting, the right person. All that pressure adds up to disappointing bad dates, lonely nights, and worse. How do we stop this madness?
Here are Five Ways to bring LOVE back to Valentine’s day:
Have an Amazing Romance Instead of a Whirlwind Disaster
Are whirlwind relationships delightful breezes that propel emotional and physical attraction; that time when we can’t get enough of the other person’s presence?
Or, are whirlwind romances a hurricane gale force wind that will inevitably send us crashing into the rocks of relationship disaster?
It depends on how successfully we meld the zing of attraction with the discernment of our strength and authentic selves.
When we meet a new person, the temptation to throw ourselves head over heels into a whirlwind romance is heady. After all, we’re trained that whirlwind romances are desirable.
Romantic fiction, movies and media all tell us that real love is intense, destined, and can progress at the speed of light. “He swept me off of my feet,” they say, “I knew right away that this was perfect.”
We’ve all heard stories of the person who meets a guy on Monday and by Wednesday they’ve declared a new relationship status on Facebook.