My best and worst Valentine’s Days

Spoiler: there aren’t many good ones

Valentine’s Day can be mighty divisive, can’t it?

When asked their view on it, people tend to say things like ‘you should celebrate your love every day’, or ‘it’s too commercialised’ or ‘it’s too hard – everything gets booked up ages in advance/ is too expensive’.

It can be particularly depressing when you celebrate it in a relationship that isn’t working well. The last-minute dinner reservation, table next to the toilets at 9.30pm, the dawning sense that you rarely, if ever, sit down and have a conversation anymore. The sudden awareness of the wedge that has grown between you and the uncomfortable contrast of the joyful, delicate food with the giant shadowy horrors unfolding in your head.

I‘ve tended to want to celebrate it when I’ve been in a relationship, because I like an excuse to go for dinner and I tend to be a more or less compliant person; I believe in taxes, respect a queue system, and celebrate whatever event the greeting card people put in front of me.

I’ve searched my memories, though, and I can’t remember a good Valentine’s Day.

Take my last one with a long-term partner. I had to cajole him into marking the occasion (always a good start), him residing in the ‘you shouldn’t need a special day..’ camp, and totally ignoring what his partner was virtually screaming at him and had been for a while – I want more time with you, just us, talking, sharing. I need to feel more connected to you. Suffice to say it had taking on more importance for me that year. Overall, I would say the backdrop was one of strain. Sexy, right?

We ventured into central London for some strong, sickly, cocktails and a pub dinner and made stilted conversation. No sooner was desert set down than he suggested we might go meet friends in the pub back in our neighbourhood where we spent every bloody weekend. I sulked, we argued, and he stormed off into the night. To the pub, of course. Solace in friends and beers, handily getting exactly what he wanted, what he always wanted, while I waited up festering in the emotional stew.

Another year, another horror. I was living in a big, fun, house-share and having been royally screwed over by one of the male housemates, had careered into the next nearest flatmate for a short and tumultuous rebound. This new guy, let’s call him Gareth, seemed easy going and fun when things were platonic. Generally seen as a ‘good egg’, my friends bloody loved him. The greater intimacy between us revealed that was Gareth was emotionally illiterate, clingy, and verbally abusive. He was also a gambling addict and I lent him a lot of money during our brief time together; £1200 hard-earned pounds I never saw again. Hardly the Tinder Swindler, but still…

Valentine’s day 2010 was the night things came to a head for me. The expectations surrounding the day suddenly revealed the reality that I couldn’t stand to be near him anymore, as tactfully and gently as I could, I ended it. The tidal-wave of relief when he left was short-lived. He drove all the way back to his mum’s hours way, only to drive all the way back to me, bent on working things out. I had often listened to ‘I drove all night’ by the late great Roy Orbison and wished someone would drive all night to see me, running on pure passion, but it wasn’t this guy. I think would have preferred whatever was left of Roy to turn up.

There were some other V-days that I would file under ‘damp squib’. I remember a floor picnic in my university halls, a curry cooked from a jar-sauce, bits of dry chicken floating in it, and my first ‘proper’ boyfriend shaving slithers of garlic for a pasta dish, cos-playing Goodfellas and ultimately producing a meal that tasted of nothing. A fitting precursor to the intercourse, probably.

The best years, on reflection, were the ones that yielded a surprise gift from an admirer. A bunch of roses waiting for me in drama class, bottle of red wine on my doorstep, a hand-made card in the post. I always knew the gifter’s identity, and from memory the admiration wasn’t often reciprocated, but it felt good to be adored, nonetheless.  

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash