Valentine’s Day Pressure

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone. Yet another year another February and, hopefully, a renewed love. Valentine’s Day comes every February on the 14th and marks the day of love. It is a day to show love and be shown love and unfortunately, sometimes the expectation of your loved one for you to ‘show’ your love can lead to unnecessary and hopefully, unintended pressure.

Love Makes the World Go Round

Love is a beautiful thing no doubt. Love runs the world. As someone says, it makes the world go round. It actually does and maybe we need the science to explain how love-producing pleasure hormones lead to better overall health and hence, more productivity. Yes. I am a nerd I know.

Managing Valentine’s Day Expectations

Valentine’s Day is a day to treat your loved ones to a special dinner or buy them a gift to show them that you love them. However, in dating circles, there emerges undue and unneeded pressure, especially on the monetary side of things. Girls especially, since they are the ‘love lady birds’, tend to create such high expectations of what gifts they should be bought and where they should be taken on Valentine’s Day. Consequently, that leads to pressuring their loved ones wrongfully.

Stop Comparing Your Experiences with Your Friends’

To make matters worse, ladies will even compare their Valentine’s Day gifts and dates amongst themselves and this ‘competition’ may lead to the gents having to do more to impress their ladies. For instance, a girlfriend may have a friend that was taken out on a chopper ride to an island resort somewhere. She may feel that she too wants such an epic adventure and expect her boyfriend to provide the same. Unfortunately, she may be insensitive to the financial situation of her boyfriend and may lead him to feel heavily pressured financially to give her what her friends got.

Understanding Your Partner’s Financial Ability

Love is a beautiful thing and I believe we all deserve and should be in love. However, love should not be the reason to make others feel demeaned or unappreciated. As a girlfriend, your boyfriend may not have the finances to take you out on a chopper ride but you should appreciate whatever effort that they put in.

‘It is the Thought that Counts’

As it is said, ‘it is the thought that counts.’ With the right person, a box of chocolates can feel just as good as a candlelit dinner date and a camping trip can feel just as good as a cruise. Most of the time, I must say, it is the person you’re with that makes the experience special and not how big or grand the party was.

Appreciate the Love, Not the Gestures

So, what am I saying? What I am getting to is that we should all enjoy Valentine’s Day through the perspective of appreciating whatever little gesture or gift we get. It is the thought that counts! As such, Valentine’s Day should not be about what you are bought or where you go, it should be about appreciating that you were bought for a gift in the first place and/or taken somewhere. As such, enjoy Valentine’s by celebrating the love itself, not how it is expressed materially.

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