The day is about two-way wooing between lovers

IT IS the month of love! A cheesy red and white month of soppy love and lots of face-value romance. Probably millions of proposals.

I wonder how creative guys and girls are going to be this year. What with the various hashtags and women empowerment on an upward trajectory, we surely aren’t waiting to be wooed when Valentine’s is about two-way wooing.

I know the sweetest Valentine’s Day for my husband includes chocolate, whiskey, and soccer.

If I can give him some kind of combination of those and top it off with a mini honeymoon night, I win “wife of the year”. Yup, I choose to speak his love language fluently on Valentine’s Day, then broken versions of it throughout the year.

As for the guys, how about you stop setting yourself a trap? You become Cupid’s second cousin on Valentine’s Day and Shrek for the rest of the year. Honestly. You ignore the fact that we record your behaviour on Valentine’s Day and go “so you are capable of being thoughtful and sweet, but you choose to only act that way on Valentine’s day just because every other guy is doing it!” Yeah, you can’t win. The best gift hubby can give me is a chance to sleep in, good vino and a good laugh. Easy. I am not big on gifts, I am big on events.

The originators of this month of love were supposedly drunk, naked Romans. It wasn’t called Valentine’s Day though, it was called Lupercalia. Women and men would be paired over this period and those who stuck, stuck, and those who didn’t I guess broke up and waited for the next medieval speed-dating event. I had such a good laugh reading about all this online. It sounds like there was a time single people actually looked forward to this day. I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a secret cult of cool people who celebrate it the old school way. Just old school Fifty Shades of Roman(s) – complete with consent forms because “hashtag twenty first century policing”.

That PR nightmare of the debaucherous festival somehow disappeared. It marks the martyrdom of saints called Valentine who were killed back in the day. Now, dark origins again, but the focus is the love aspect.

Am I the only one thrown by the fact that whichever way you look at it, these origins are dark?

This dominant red suddenly looks violent to me, and the white now symbolises hope. Maybe that’s why they say love is war. We go in with red bleeding hearts in the hopes of finding refuge in other people.

I wonder what Valentine’s Day will look like centuries from now, when that generation laughs at how we broke the bank to prove for one day of the year that we love each other. Maybe it will be a day that has something to do with disconnecting from the internet and being primal for a moment and enjoying reconnecting with yourself. Still less commercial, more heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day, lovers.