I don't really do Valentine's day. One day cannot begin to contain the sum of my complex and still growing affection for Dean. And it would be unfair of me to burden him with expectations that he needs to deliver a momentous gift or gesture on this one day that will push all my love-starved buttons and prove his sensitive manliness. Our relationship is just not based on candy, cards, dinner, and the ability to read each other's minds.Here are a few quotes I found from people who think along these same lines and say it much better than I could. Enjoy!
I hate being told, “Today, you will be romantic. Today, you will be amazing. Today, you will ‘Get It All Right.’ And tonight, you will arrange for one of the most romantic evenings you two will have this year. Tonight, sex will be on a level with the Hallelujah chorus. Hollywood will have wished they had filmed this day.
Who wants to live under that kind of pressure?
The rule of human nature seems to be this: The harder you push, the more the heart flees. The more we demand the heart show up, the more it disappears. We may try to Get It All Right, out of fear or guilt (like most guys on Valentine’s Day), or maybe even out of a desire to be good. But that is not the same as loving. So I find myself dreading the approach of Valentine’s Day. Can I pull it off? Will she be happy? And now we’ve got a culture crazed with the upgrade of everything. Dinner and a card used to be a home run. That sounds so blasé these days, like you barely even gave it a thought.
Romance requires free hearts....Pressure, on the other hand, kills everything it touches.
- John Eldredge, "I Hate Valentine's Day"
I realized that for years I'd thought of love as something that would complete me, make all my troubles go away. I worshipped at the altar of romantic completion. And it had cost me, plenty of times. And it had cost most of the girls I'd dated, too, because I wanted them to be something they couldn't be. It's too much pressure to put on a person. I think that's why so many couples fight, because they want their partners to validate them and affirm them, and if they don't get that, they feel as though they're going to die. And so they lash out. But it's a terrible thing to wake up and realize the person you just finished crucifying wasn't Jesus.
I was interviewing my friend Susan Isaacs after her book "Angry Conversations with God" came out...Because so much of her book talks about relational needs, relational fulfillment and unfulfillment, one of the questions asked was whether she believed there was one true love for every person.
Susan essentially said no. And she said that with her husband sitting right there in the audience. She said she and her husband believed they were a cherished prize for each other, and they would probably drive any other people mad. But then she said something I thought was wise. She said she had married a guy, and he was just a guy. He wasn't going to make all her problems go away, because he was just a guy. And that freed her to really love him as a guy, not as an ultimate problem solver. And because her husband believed she was just a girl, he was free to really love her too. Neither needed the other to make everything okay. They were simply content to have good company through life's conflicts. I thought that was beautiful.
- Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.
May I be content in Love today, in whatever state of incompleteness it finds me.
This is some cheerio and nut art on my dining room table.
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