I don’t do Valentine’s Day, never have. I prefer a V.D. free life. If you’re a happily romantic or sentimental person who thinks it is just grand and wonderful, sure, celebrate it to your heart’s content in any way you see fit, but do everyone else a favour, and leave it there, please. Don’t foist it or your ideas about it on other people. From where I sit, it’s a burden of expectation, yet another thing you don’t dare forget or you’ll have a pissed off partner[s], and it’s a serious burden on those who are not in a relationship, or just come out of one.
The history is a very old one, and it’s based on the martyrdom of christian saints. Like so much else, it’s now turned into a multi-billion dollar enterprise for everyone except those who celebrate it. Perhaps instead of piling money into the pockets of those who don’t need it, you could do something simpler for a partner, a thoughtfulness based on your actual lives, rather than hearts, flowers, candy and an expensive dinner somewhere. Just a thought.
Or just shed the ‘celebration’ altogether. I don’t need an assigned day to tell my partner I love them, that happens all the time. ETA: Right now, my partner is acting as my primary caregiver in regard to my cancer, they could hardly express their love more than that, which makes me loathe the superficiality of V.D. even more.
We don’t do Valentine’s either. Yesterday we were at the grocery store and walked by the greeting card aisle and it was packed with men (patriarchy FTW) looking around with stressed out expressions on their faces. Why? It’s such an impersonal thing. I can’t think of anything less romantic than a universal day dictated to everyone to show their love on no matter what because reasons. It has nothing to do with your loved ones. And the partners who get pissed off are just conditioned to be pissed off, again because reasons. The same goes for things like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but those don’t seem as intrusive and annoying as this.
Saad:
Yes, yes. I have never understood the urge to drown yourself under such expectations. Life has enough of them already.
I’m with you.
First of all, I hate all this compulsory celebrating of relationships. Mother’S Day and Father’S Day can die right together with VD.
At one point we celebrated VD as a day of friends, which I rather liked, because nobody got left out.
I know that a happy romantic relationship is something many people want but only few get, so why rub it into everybody’s face?
Giliell:
Agreed. There are a lot of people who don’t have anything to “celebrate” on the parental front, either. I loathe such expectations.
I’m using it as an excuse to give Paul some neon Sharpies.
The chocolate will be cheap tomorrow.
Anne:
The gifting of Sharpies needs no excuse! :D
Chigau:
Oh yes. Our local “get it cheap” store, Big Lots, always has a fucktonne of V.D. chocolates afterward, if you want chocolate, that’s a great time to get it.
Tonight, I am cooking a nice dinner for Wife: Uncle Bill’s Chicken, roasted Brussell’s Sprouts, and some nice buttery grits.
Take care, Caine. Keep being you. It fits you.
That’s a really thoughtful thing to do for your wife, Ogvorbis.
And thank you. Being me is all I know to be.
There is probably a social science study that shows that randomized gifting has a more positive impact than expected giving. Well, there should be, so like a good evolutionary psychologist I’m just going to assert it has survival value and Valentines’ Day reduces fitness because predators are more likely to lurk near the chocolate supply waiting for food. Random-givers probably are more likely to get out of cycle sex and are more likely to reproduce while competitor males are shopping for greeting cards… uh, how am I sciencing?
Caine:
Sorry. I meant that as a counter to the whole ‘be positive’ bullshit. As if one size ever fits all.
Oh, yes: random reward reinforcement.
Ogvorbis:
I know! And I appreciate that, because it can be hard to hang on to “me”.
Marcus:
Yeah, I agree. And I think random gifting is a much more positive thing, because it’s unexpected, and little things can count for so much.
Oh yes, with you all on VD, MD and FD.
And I very much agree about random gifting. We don’t really do birthdays either, if one of us happens to find something near the others birthday we might save it until then, otherwise if we find a good present the other gets it straight away.
We are having a quick from the freezer meal tonight (gyoza, prawn toast and chinese leaves with soy) as I’m in the middle of marmalade making and need to portion and freeze all of the dog meat I got from the butcher yesterday. Really no time for cooking a fancy meal.
Random gifts mean “I thought of you (when I saw this) and wanted to make you happy”.
“Mandatory” gifts say “the whole world says I should give you this. Here”
Though of course there are also exceptionally wonderful gifts for “mandatory” gift days. I’m more talking about the “chocolates and flowers” kind of gifts.
For myself and the Partner, every day we are together is a celebration. We just see life as one big party, basically, although yeah sure, we have problems like everyone. (Our friends find our attitude a little sickening. :-D ) So for us it’s “happy Wednesday!” and VD does not really come in to it.
We’re still going out for lunch though. ;-)
No comment. Just QFT:
My partner and I don’t really celebrate either. We’re getting take out tonight. I’m on call, so we’ll eat whenever I get home from the hospitals. The big event will be our love-child coming home from kindergarten today with cards for us.
Mr Jazz bought home a coule of my favourite almond croissants which he does every now and then, When challenged he said he hadn’t realised it was VD day (very likely) and was in the shop anyway buying himself some sliced meat for his sandwiches. He was appalled I even suspected he might have gone all VD on me. :)
This thread is making me laugh partly because in my youth VD was shorthand for venereal disease, really not a romantic gift, but also because it reminded me of one of the jobs I had as a student. The university had a building providing food and drink called the Vauxhall Dining Centre, which made it sound far posher than it actually was and it was inevitably shortened to the VD Centre. I did bar work there one year and it’s where I met Mr Jazz. There are so many memories, including with reference to another thread, the night the manager of the bar had gone downstairs to phone herself a taxi leaving the rest of the staff upstairs finishing off the cleaning up. We heard a scream and assuming someone had managed to get in the front door and was attacking her we all rushed down to defend her. We found her standing on a chair screaming ‘it’s moving, it’s moving!’ at a crisp (chips) packet. The packet was indeed moving as it was full of cockroaches -- I said the place wasn’t posh -- someone wearng Dr Martins stamped on the packet and that solved the immediate problem. I never ate anything there that didn’t come from a sealed packet.
yeah. within the last month or two i was socially punished for expressing interest in someone on a dating site -- thereby finally driving home the fact that for me it is not even okay to ask, ever -- and an unrelated event i don’t want to describe in detail forced me to face that fact that i am big and weird-looking enough that nothing about my body is okay, and it is Bad to even want people to interact with it. i am not asexual, but all expressions of sexuality or romantic interest from me, no matter how light or flirty or pressure-free, are forbidden on pain of immediate ostracization.
i have to burn a lot of calories on ignoring all this every day just to function, and today’s the day that prances around in front of me screaming about how things like me have no place in society.
abbeycadabra:
Still is. I think that’s part of Caine’s humour showing through.
Of course, given that there are 398 Catholic saints whose names begin with the letter ‘T’, every day, From Saint Tabitha’s Day to Saint Tzechima’s Day, are all STDs!
@23 Ogvorbis
That was Jazzlet. I knew the reference and also was whining about something else entirely.
Sorry, abbeycadabra. I was just looking for an excuse to reference all the Saint T* days.
And I did mix up comment and commenter. Sorry to both Jazzlet and abbeycadabra.
I think I’m just giong to give up for the day. Notheing good can come of commenting that is this bad (my commenting).
[tightly pursed lips and a stern slow shake of the head at Og’s commenting]
Picked a red red rose for the love of my life on the 13th just as i did on the 11th and the 8th, because they were ready, not because it was VD . Any I’m trying to go cold turkey on chocolate this week because Partner gets red red rashes from eating too much of it and I don’t want her to miss her knee replacement operation in a week’s time because of a weird skin condition.
These days I barely even notice it is Valentine’s Day until someone points it out to me (today it was google, then I forgot all about it again, and now I saw this post). Doesn’t bother me much nowadays, but I remember that when I was in school it was nearly torture. Every year some teacher had to force every single one of us to do something VD-related, a card or whatever, and tell us to give it to “someone special”. And I fucking hated it. I actually think I remember crying once or twice. I never had anyone I wanted to give it to and the whole situation just made me anxious and left me feeling weird and “not normal”. Now I know why, I eventually found out, much much later, that I am aromantic asexual and bit romantic-repulsed at that. Took a while to figure that out and even longer to accept it. Now it’s fine, I no longer feel “not normal” and I can just ignore the whole thing. But it left to some scars, I’m not going to deny it.
Caine and Giliell:
Yeah, those two can be a serious burden on many people as well. I was shaken to my very core a few years ago when my cousin’s daughter, 10 years old at the time, told me in tears that mother’s day was the day of the year she hated the most. She had lost her mom 2 years before. Being in school and having the whole class doing those damn cards, I can only imagine her suffering.
Ogvorbis:
Yes, indeed. :D