SWM015: Valentine’s Day Dangers

Valentine’s Day is a few days away, and if reading that made you sweat, I feel for you. I think it is potentially one of the most dangerous days of the year for a married couple. Check out the show notes here for more details and links. The arithmetic is simple. Expectations are high, stress is high, and communication is low, and high expectations plus high stress plus low communication reliably produces a failure to meet expectations. It is a holiday built on fantasy rather than reality, which sets couples up to want a fairy tale and then be disappointed when they get a Tuesday. It is also a day of contradictions. It is supposedly about love, but in practice it is about meeting a manufactured expectation out of fear. You are meant to guess what your spouse wants most, and if you guess wrong it is your fault. The prize for winning is great sex, the cost of mediocrity is obligatory sex, and the punishment for losing is no sex, on the one day of the year you have been told everyone else is having it. A thoughtful gift or a nice dinner on any other day reads as romance. On the 14th it reads as the bare minimum. Three things that help: celebrate on any other day, which also gets you cheaper flowers, easier bookings and an available babysitter. Have sex before the big meal rather than after it. And if you are buying something, buy something that lasts and draws the two of you together.