Shane Watson
Real romance isn’t tacky Valentine’s cards
So here we are on official International Romance Day. Also known as Trauma Day (if you’ve recently been dumped). Wind Up Day (if you are single). Sinking Feeling Day (if you are with someone but not convinced it’s for the long haul). Serious Cash Outlay Day (if you are senselessly rich, in which case you have had to book Elton John to hang from a rosetrimmed ladder, under a helicopter, singing Your Song).
Alternatively, if you are a normal couple, today is probably Don’t Give A Stuff (that it’s Valentine’s) Day.
We New Unromantics are unimpressed, often a bit creeped out, by anything that comes prefixed with the word romance. Romantic dinner for two. Romantic hotel with romantic view. Romantic sunset dolphin cruise. Oh no, do we have to? We get why the planetarium scene in La La Land is romantic, but those two characters have just met.
Real couples with years on the clock have no desire for that sort of romance. Couples’ massages (even the word couples), moonlit walks, sleigh rides, dancing cheek to cheek, tissue-wrapped undies, eating under the stars on the sand, with only a waiter for company – we’re not interested in any of it.
What we think of as romantic is the opposite of chinking glasses in a petal-strewn jacuzzi. It is someone who gets us. Not the one with Monica Vinader and Northern Lights trips on speed dial, but someone who knows what we need and tries their damndest to make sure we get it.
The Unromantic’s idea of romance is the everyday stuff that you can’t predict or request but which gives you the warm curdles when it
‘Real romance is lying at the foot of the bed reading to you when you’re ill’
occurs. It’s picking you up from the station without you having to ask, because it’s been a long week and it’s tipping down. It’s suggesting you have your parents to stay, because they’ve been a bit wobbly lately. It’s getting you a bike, when you didn’t even know you wanted a bike. It’s paying attention when you explain the pros and cons of the sexy shoes, and then egging you on to buy them. It’s going back into the freezing cold sea to swim with you because you missed out earlier. It’s lying at the foot of the bed reading to you when you’re ill. It’s spotting you’ve had too many white ladies and whisking you off to safety. It’s letting you rage about ham wastage, on a loop, and then forgiving you in the morning.
It’s being the first to say sorry. It’s hugging your mum when she gets confused. It’s driving miles late at night to get to the place where you are, even though the following day would have been acceptable. It’s understanding why you are sobbing about the death of the fish (it probably isn’t just the fish), and leaving a meeting to talk you down.
It’s going into a decline when you suggest hanging up your bikini. It’s finding you appealing even when you are fat/covered in eczema/in the middle of a hormonal hurricane which even you can appreciate is pretty horrifying. It’s not saying “I told you so” when that is the case. And it’s laughing like a drain when you tell your best funny story and mess up the punchline.
This is what New Unromantics mean by romance. We’re not going to say no, once in a while, to a weekend in a posh pub with square pillows, but that’s just fun. Romance is something else entirely.