Romance in ruins: Confessions of a Valentine’s fanatic

Ah, Valentine’s Day. Like Christmas, it’s another date in the diary I’ve come to love and loathe in equal measure.

Despite hotly anticipating February 14 for six whole weeks post-festive season (a girl’s got to have something to get her through January!), by the time it comes around I’m usually found weeping into a box of Kleenex wondering what I’d ever been excited about. Turns out, I’m bad at expressing my expectations.

A planner by nature and a romantic at heart, I tend to take Valentine’s Day quite seriously. Of course, I try to show my partner I love them the rest of the year round, but Valentine’s is an opportunity to put my organisational skills into action, spoil someone, be spoiled, and feel all smug about how lovely we are to each other at the end of it. I’d find it all very gratifying, except I’m rarely rewarded for my efforts.

To me, Valentine’s Day should include an element of surprise. It’s not romantic if you know what’s going to happen, is it? So why would I ever tell my partner what I’d like to do? He should think long and hard about it, and then, surprise me. Right?

Unfortunately these old romantic notions often leave me disappointed. Last year I spent weeks planning a gift for my partner that I knew would make his day. It was presented with a personalised card and a handwritten love note. So wrapped up in my preparations was I, I failed to tell him what we should do for the evening. I thought I could leave it up to him.  

And where did we end up? At a pub round the corner from his office where we ordered lasagne and chips and he asked me if I’d, “mind paying half, ‘cause I’m a bit short this month?” He then produced a card he’d bought five minutes earlier from a cut-price corner shop, with the 99p sticker still on the back.

The problem wasn’t that he didn’t have the money to shower me in roses or whisk me off on a hot-air balloon experience. It was that he hadn’t considered that finding a way to spoil me on a budget would be even more romantic. A home-cooked meal would have demonstrated effort. A handmade card would have shown that he cares. Add an original Valentine’s verse and he could have guaranteed tears of joy and a hot dinner on the table for the rest of the year.

But we’d been together for years, recently moved in together, and he didn’t realise all this romance was still important. Perhaps it’s my fault for not telling him.

This year we’ll play it differently: I’ll lower my expectations for the day; he’ll raise his. We’ll communicate our plans, and come up with something we both enjoy doing. Check back to thecoupleconnection.net blog over the coming weeks and I’ll share some of our V-Day inspiration with you. Just make sure your partner looks at it, too.

• M (a member of thecoupleconnection.net team)

Need help managing you or your partner’s expectations on Valentine’s Day? Take our quiz and get some useful tips to put into practice this February 14.